What's a knowledge database? What do you need to build one
As a company grows with new customers and staff, the more likely it is that they will require help somewhere along the way -- whether that's figuring out some functionality of your service or product as well as training new employees or even training your employees already on the latest products.
The issue you may face with the growth of your business is that your customer support staff and your internal management team are quickly overwhelmed with frequent questions. The solution is to develop a solid information base.
What is a knowledge-base?
A well-functioning knowledge base provides an self-service database of documents for customer and company support used to answer customer questions as well as provide assistance with troubleshooting, and also generally for training onboarding.
What are the advantages and uses of the knowledge base?
Specific benefits and use cases of knowledge bases will depend upon the type of company or industry you're operating in. We'll be looking at a few cases in the coming days. But, there are some overall aspects you should consider regardless of the type of company you manage.
Benefits of having a knowledge base
The primary reason for a knowledge database is that it can serve two main purposes:
- Customer education. Nowadays, if a customer has a question their first stop for an answer is on your site. A good knowledge base can help the majority of clients that prefer make themselves available to help with.
- Staff education. The expansion of teams in any business can be a daunting task for any HR and legal representatives. A knowledge base is a place to save crucial information on training (for employees who are new or existing) to ensure that the essentials are covered.
Benefits of a knowledge base
You'll reap many advantages on both sides of the business by establishing and maintaining an impressive knowledge collection.
For customers:
- Better customer experience. Did you think your query was so simple to resolve, but you're spending so much time trying to sort it out over the phone or by email? If the client is self-served through a database of knowledge, they get their queries addressed immediately.
- 24/7 customer service. Another issue that customers frequently experience is not being able to reach customer service outside of office hours. Knowledge bases solve that problem since it stays accessible 24/7 and with real-time support.
For managers:
- Cost of training is lower. If you build a strong information base that is frequently updated and maintained, you can trust it to be able to respond questions from your new hires and provide their fundamental training. It can also help reduce the time (therefore expense) of delivering in-person instruction.
Higher resolution rates. People who have quick response times can boost your resolution rate significantly. Not to mention you'll open additional support tickets for customers whose questions are genuinely more complex.
Knowledge base examples
Both as an employee and an individual customer I've come across pretty solid knowledge bases in my journey through various fields. While many of them are different in their design but they do share features that are common to all including a search bar subject-specific organization as well as contact information in case you can't locate a solution within the knowledge base. Below are great examples (with pictures) of knowledge bases that are currently in use.
Toggl Track
If you're into productivity software, you've come across the Toggl plan, a time-tracking tool to assist you in determining the place your time is actuallygoes. The knowledge base currently is organized simply according to topic. It also includes subtopics related to using their software.
Interestingly, they have various knowledge bases for each of their products that could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the perspective you have.
ManyChat
If you've had the pleasure of encountering chatbots that was powered through Facebook Messenger and Instagram, there's a strong chance that the website or page on social media utilized ManyChat to build the bot. The process of building a chatbot may seem pretty daunting to some, ManyChat knows this and so they have a large expertise base in order to improve the user experience.
They cover topics from the basics of using their product to more advanced topics like the use of plugins, widgets, and API development tools.
Video Library Video Library is a place for corporate videos to live with advanced search functions and information architecture.
How to create a knowledge basis that is yours
Now that you understand what a knowledge-base is as well as the reasons why they're amazing, and have seen a few examples, do you feel attracted to building one? If so, stick around!
Since knowledge bases can be different depending on the needs of the business (and the customers it serves), we'll go over the main steps you'll need to follow when creating one when you're creating it for the first time.
- Find a voice tone and formatting guide before starting.
Customers will feel more confident in learning from a place where there is consistency in the your communication. Content should be consistent with basic rules in order to create this coherence (such as not using industry jargon).
- Learn from your front-line teams.
It's important to ask the customer service teams of your company what queries they're asked regularly to ensure that you're addressing real issues. It's also worth diving into any satisfaction surveys or retention surveys that you might have given out in order to gather this information.
- Collate and adjust existing contents.
For customer service it is possible to look at any blog posts you might have written, social media posts/replies, and pages for your product or service. Internally, if you have expanding teams, chances are you have documentation in place. This is the case. Collect everything and make sure you make changes to it keeping your voice tone and formatting guide in mind.
- Take a look at your design and the structure.
Like creating the tone of voice as well as formatting guide for individual pieces of content, you'll also want to figure out the overall layout and structure of your base prior to beginning to construct it. The most common structure is to organize topics and subtopics.
- Build or find a home for your knowledge base.
- Create content that is new.
At this point, you'll be armed with everything you require to start making new videos, articles as well as other types of content to build your library of knowledge. Keep in mind your customer research, but it's worth looking at result pages of search engines for content ideas too.
- Maintain and update content regularly.
There's no greater affliction on the experience of customers than searching for help and being faced with unreliable'solutions'. While you expand your expertise, make sure to review the earlier posts or videos to look for any inconsistencies.
How can you incorporate videos into your existing knowledge base
Many people consider themselves visual learners and prefer to see exactly what you're talking about rather than reading about it. It's a good idea to incorporate video (and video transcriptions/captions for accessibility) into your knowledge base wherever possible.
It is possible to convert existing content into video and then embed videos on the same webpage (and include them in the Video Library) in order to users decide what they would like to study.
It's typically advisable to establish a 'knowledge management' team or the person responsible for helping make and manage the videos.
Internal knowledge base or external knowledge base
In relation to visual learners, to demonstrate the differences between internal and external knowledge foundations, we've developed this infographic to make it easier for you to understand the main aspects.
Utilize-cases as a way to build internal knowledge bases
I've mentioned points about internal knowledge base applications before and it's the ideal solution for employee onboarding as well as the training of employees who are new or existing. However, it's worth getting more specific in this area.
To staff members who are boarding:
- A knowledge base within the company is a great place to talk about employee benefits, products or services, or corporate rules and regulations.
- An internal directory can let new employees feel more comfortable in asking the right person to help them if their knowledge base doesn't cover their questions.
- It can also be used to keep blank copies of the HR and legal documents needed for onboarding purposes and review the documents, reducing the time of both sides.
Training staff members:
- Creating standardized workflows can help with initial staff training as well as a guideline for those who lose the knowledge (happens for us all).
- Knowledge teams can create videos of how to properly make use of any of the company systems and also the most common issues to be solved.
- In the event that you launch a brand new service, product or feature, make use of the internal base to keep demonstrations and key information to remember.
What makes for the best knowledge base software?
The short answer is that it's dependent on what you need, and different software options have different functions to meet these needs. For a general idea of finding out which is best suited for your situation, you should ask these questions:
- What is the price of the software cost and will it fall within our budget?
- Does it allow various levels of access to certain users?
- Is it easy to navigate?
- Does the software come with reports or metrics?
- Should we be concerned about integration?
- Do we really need to have a community forum functionality included?
Answering these questions will allow you to determine the best possibilities.
Knowledge base FAQs
What is the knowledge base make up?
Customer support and documentation for the company pieces that could be written or infographics, charts of workflow, videos, screenshots -in essence, any kind of information. What's a self-serve portal?
Self-service portals are the main page of your knowledge base. It's the place where customers and employees can look for solutions to their inquiries and look up information. What's the other word for a Knowledge base?
Some other words for knowledge base are:
- Help desk
- Database
- Wiki's How can you handle an information base?
Contributions to a knowledge base typically are decided by a specified group of knowledge managers. But, you may also elect different team members to participate in (and maintain) the knowledge base.
Learn more today.
This guide has walked you through what a information base is, the benefits of having them, some examples, as well as the steps to make one for yourself. We hope that you are now encouraged to provide the gift of self-knowledge to your staff and customers!
Remember you can build one for yourself using the help from a helpful developer or choose an elegant, pre-built solution like's Video Library.