Isn’t the best complaint the one that never has to be delivered?
With more and more customers taking their service woes to social media and review sites, companies have to focus on their experience for sustainable success. And, even though attention and budgets are growing, the overwhelming majority of customer service resources are reactive.
The most frustrating part? Team members in almost every department already know what customers are likely to complain about. Aside from a few random outliers, complaints tend to cluster into a few specific buckets that reoccur time and again. If I asked you to stop reading right now and write down the five complaints you hear most, almost all of you could do it within 60 seconds. It. Is. Obvious.
Yet, even though we’re aware of our customers’ struggles, we’re not getting ahead of the problems.
Certainly, with customer service becoming a spectator sport, handling questions and complaints better and faster will have a material impact on your business. If your customers have positive experiences, they’re more likely to become repeat buyers. Fully engaged customers represent a 23% premium in share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer.
And, not to pile on, studies show that 81% of customers try to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a human service rep. And, when they do make contact with your team, your company has already failed to deliver their ideal experience.
Enter self-service.
Customers want to find the answers to their own problems. Maybe people are too busy to try and talk to a real live human. Or maybe they’re too embarrassed by the problems they’re encountering. Or perhaps we’re all just a little socially anxious. Whatever the reason, you need to deliver. This is where customer service knowledge base software comes into play. It’s the foundation for all your self-service efforts.
What is Customer Service Knowledge Base Software?
Customer service knowledge base software is a tool that can store and organize information. It’s like your digital library, holding all your important knowledge and resources.
The software acts like your go-to encyclopedia. It holds info like your FAQs, guides, manuals, troubleshooting tips, and helpful articles. It’s a one-stop shop where customers and agents can get all the answers they need to solve problems faster.
By using customer service knowledge base software, you can improve your service in a few ways. First, most obviously, it’ll lead to faster responses and lower hold times. It’ll also help you keep your info consistent since both customers and agents have the same, centralized knowledge. Plus, it can boost efficiency by removing the need for repetitive tasks and manual searches.
Main Customer Service Knowledge Base Software Features
Here are some key features:
Intuitive search functionality
Let’s face it, nobody wants to spend hours sifting through information. The most suitable customer service knowledge base software has intelligent search features. That lets users find relevant articles or documents without hassle. Say goodbye to the days of digging through endless pages of content.
Customizable templates
Every business has its unique branding and style. With the right knowledge base software, you can customize the look and feel of your knowledge base to match your company’s identity. This personal touch not only enhances the user experience but also reinforces your brand presence.
Seamless integration
Your knowledge base software should integrate with your existing systems and tools. When it does, it can pull info from your CRM or helpdesk to ensure a smooth transfer of info, which saves tons of time for your teams.
Automate Your Work
Capacity’s enterprise AI chatbot can help:
- Answer FAQs anytime, anywhere
- Find relevant documents within seconds
- Give surveys and collect feedback
Analytics and insights
You’re competing based on the decisions you make, so you have to make the best ones. This means problem selection based on data is absolutely essential. Look for software that gives you insight into the usage of your KB. These metrics can help you find knowledge gaps and areas of improvement. And they can also help you find popular topics and subjects to lean in on.
Multilingual support
Today’s global marketplace means you have to cater to customers in different regions. But customer service knowledge base software makes it easy. It can dish out multilingual support, which lets you provide information in several languages. That ensures all customers and agents can access the info they need, regardless of where they are.
Collaboration features
Effective knowledge management often requires collaboration among team members. So, your software should let your teams work together. It should help any of them contribute, review, and update articles. This fosters knowledge sharing. And it empowers your team to give consistent, up-to-date info to your customers.
Top 10 Best Customer Service Knowledge Base Software in 2023
Here are the top 10 software:
1. Helpjuice
Helpjuice is a user-friendly knowledge base software that focuses on simplicity and ease of use. Its advanced analytics and reporting give valuable insights into usage and content performance.
Key Features
- Customizable branding. Customize the look and feel of your knowledge base to match your brand identity. This ensures a seamless and consistent user experience.
- Version control. Version control functionality makes it easy to manage and track updates to your knowledge base articles. This helps you to confirm the accuracy and relevance of your content.
2. Zendesk Guide
Zendesk Guide is a customer service knowledge base software that’s known for its intuitive interface. It makes it easy to create and manage your KB content. It also has community forums, which let customers engage with each other and collaborate to find solutions.
Key Features
- Advanced search capabilities. This helps users find relevant article fast. And that then cuts back the time to resolution.
- Customizable templates. Customize the look and feel of your knowledge base to align with your brand identity. This creates a consistent and personalized experience.
3. Capacity
You didn’t think we forgot about our own platform, right? Capacity is an AI-powered support automation platform. It connects your entire tech stack and automates all kinds of support tasks – including your knowledge base. In fact, our AI-powered knowledge base makes it so you never have to answer the same question twice. And it’s helped our existing customers have an average 94% deflection rate. Then, when a human does need to get involved, the platform makes it easy to do so. Request a demo to learn more.
Key Features
- All-in-One Helpdesk for FAQ Management. Our all-in-one helpdesk simplifies and streamlines the management of your FAQs.
- Low-Code Workflows for Process Automation. The platform is low-code, which means you can automate processes and tasks without calling in IT for every step.
- User-Friendly Knowledge Base and App Integrations. We empower employees with easy access to information through a user-friendly knowledge base.
4. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a popular customer service software that has a robust knowledge base management system. Its standout feature is its AI-powered virtual assistant, Freddy. Freddy helps customers find answers to their questions.
Key Features
- AI-powered self-service. Freddy uses AI to provide automated and personalized responses to customer queries. And that then enables self-service and reduces the load on support agents.
- Collaboration tools. Add collaboration to your workflow. This lets your team contribute, review, and update knowledge base articles together.
5. Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud is a comprehensive customer service platform with knowledge base capabilities. Its standout feature is its integration with the Salesforce ecosystem. And that enables seamless data flow and unified customer information.
Key features
- Omnichannel support. Serve up seamless support whether you’re interacting via email, voice, or text. This ensures a consistent experience.
- AI-powered recommendations. Add AI into your workflow. With Service Desk, AI can give you intelligent recommendations to support agents and customers. This helps them in finding the most relevant knowledge base articles fast.
- Mobile accessibility. Have access to your knowledge on mobile, letting agents and customers get the info they need, exactly when they need it.
6. Confluence
Confluence, developed by Atlassian, is a popular knowledge management and collaboration platform. It integrates with other Atlassian products, such as Jira and Trello. And that creates a unified ecosystem for efficient project management and knowledge sharing.
Key features
- Team collaboration. Create, edit, and review articles together and foster sharing and teamwork.
- Powerful search. Search lets users to find the information they need quickly and accurately. And that then improves productivity and efficiency.
- Customizable spaces. Create customizable spaces for different teams or projects. And that lets you provide a tailored and organized knowledge base experience.
7. Intercom
Intercom is a customer messaging platform that also offers a knowledge base solution. Its standout feature is its live chat functionality, which enables real-time customer support and interaction.
Key features
- Live chat support. Have instant with your communication with your customers via chat. This lets you give personalized help and facilitates quick issue resolution.
- AI-powered suggestions. Use AI technology to get suggestions for relevant knowledge base articles. The AI can even use previous queries to personalize recommendations, too.
- Customer segmentation. Segment your customers based on your unique identifiers. This lets you serve up personalized, targeted knowledge base content to different groups of customers.
8. Guru
Guru is a knowledge base software that emphasizes real-time knowledge sharing and collaboration. Its standout feature is its browser extension, which provides instant access to knowledge base articles in the workflow.
Key features
- Browser extension. Guru’s browser extension lets users access knowledge base articles in their workflow. This removes the need for switching between several applications.
- Team collaboration. The software promotes collaboration among team members. This lets them contribute, review, and update knowledge base articles collectively.
- Verification workflows. Guru offers verification workflows, ensuring that knowledge base articles are accurate and up to date by involving subject matter experts in the review process.
9. Help Scout
Help Scout is a customer support platform that includes a knowledge base feature to assist businesses in delivering efficient self-service support. Its standout feature is its intuitive content creation and management interface, designed for ease of use.
Key features
- Intuitive interface. Help Scout provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface for creating and managing knowledge base articles, making it easy for support teams to update and add new content.
- Article rating. Let your customers rate your articles, so you have constant feedback on the usefulness and quality of knowledge base articles. This helps you identify areas for improvement.
- Advanced reporting. Advanced reporting gives you insight into usage, customer feedback, and article performance. That way, you can make solid, data-backed driven.
10. KnowledgeOwl
KnowledgeOwl is a knowledge base software designed for simplicity and efficiency. Its standout feature is its comprehensive analytics dashboard, which offers detailed insights into knowledge base performance.
Key features
- Analytics dashboard. An analytics dashboard gives you detailed metrics and insights into knowledge base usage, search queries, and article performance. This lets you optimize your content often.
- Multilingual support. Support several languages, which lets you provide information in different languages to cater to a diverse customer base.
What are you waiting for? Try Capacity for free today and get started!
