Knowledge sharing is one of the most important focus areas for many organizations. It helps improve productivity, quality of services, decision-making, collaboration, business resilience, and training processes. However, to drive business growth and gain long-term success, organizations must understand how to use knowledge assets efficiently.
This is where the knowledge base plays a significant role. It can be defined as a self-serve customer service library or a centralized repository where all the internal information is organized, including product details, customer data, market reports, and employee documents. It also includes the most critical knowledge assets of an organization, such as best practices, crucial business processes, and more.
Why Is Knowledge Base Management Important for Organizations?
Every individual wants access to information instantly and expects real-time resolution of their queries. This makes a knowledge base so important. Creating a comprehensive knowledge base improves every aspect of an organization. It empowers employees with the necessary resources to independently address issues, save time, and maximize the value of the IT help desk. However, setting up a knowledge base without using a technical solution is difficult. A knowledge base management solution helps businesses organize knowledge assets, provide greater readability, and deliver accurate and up-to-date information.
Outlined below are a few tips on how to make efficient use of your knowledge base management software.
1. Collect and Reuse Knowledge
A robust knowledge management software collects and adds information from every department of the business, such as customer support, employee training, employee onboarding, product guides, and more. The knowledge management software must be filled with relevant information and resources to help employees work more efficiently. It must be designed to deliver accurate information to every individual in an organization seeking help.
For instance, it should enable sales teams to find case studies, presentations, email templates and other required information to talk to prospects, new employees to find training guides easily, and achieve so much more.
Moreover, if the organization already possesses assets in the form of articles, documentations, user manuals, service guides, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. The information can be reused or imported using advanced features of IT knowledge management software.
2. Promote Self-resolution
To make the organization’s knowledge base a dedicated resource, IT admins must:
- Use content that is easy to understand and supports the specific needs of employees.
- Add self-service knowledge base articles, important issues and topics, frequently asked questions, and guides for different teams in the organization.
- Think about the purpose of the content and the audience who is going to explore it.
For instance, a legal guidebook should be in accordance with the guidelines and laws pertaining to the subject, but customer service handbooks could be more interactive with content such as Questions and Answers.
3. Address Common Queries
If the IT agents notice repetitive service requests with a similar solution, they must use demand-driven article-submission features of knowledge management software. Submitting and sharing the knowledge base article consisting of a repetitive query and its resolution greatly helps. Employees resolve the queries on their own by simply going through the article without the need to interact with the concerned department.
Additionally, IT teams can embed videos and attach files to the knowledge base articles to make the information crisp, informative, and interactive. Adding robust knowledge-based articles with media content helps in maximizing the success rate of self-service resolution.
4. Manage Internal and External Knowledge Bases
Organizing your knowledge base not only boosts employee productivity but also enhances the performance of the IT service desk. Use knowledge base management software to organize information by categories including specific topics, order articles to highlight important guides and tips, and leverage analytics to track how users browse your website and articles.
Additionally, IT teams must determine which information must be made available for external and internal use. They can restrict access to the internal knowledge base articles from clients or end users and grant access to internal teams or people with permission rights.
5. Update Your Knowledge Base Regularly
It’s crucial to update your knowledge base when an organization’s branding, services, and products change or improve. Set-up a review process to ensure any video, content, or guide entering your knowledge base is relevant and up to date. Filtering out irrelevant information or poorly formatted content ensures only the highest-quality resources are stored in the organizations’ knowledge base.
Web Help Desk: The Best Knowledge Base Management Software
SolarWinds® Web Help Desk® offers a suite of tools designed to perform various tasks such as handling support service requests and managing internal and external knowledge bases. Web Help Desk helps teams to display relevant knowledge base articles to minimize service support tickets and promote self-resolution. It enables IT agents to provide a hot link to the FAQ to address queries quickly.
Additionally, the solution offers a demand-driven knowledge base article submission for resolving repetitive service requests. It also includes import utilities to centralize knowledge management and make the information accessible via the help desk portal. The tool reduces the overall cost of incident resolution with its self-serve knowledge base management.
Conclusion
Following the above-highlighted tips, every organization can efficiently use its knowledge base management software. While traditional knowledge base platforms look more like an indexed encyclopedia, most of today’s platforms are feature-rich and technology-driven.
We find SolarWinds Web Help Desk as the most reliable, easy-to-use, and simple knowledge base management software on the market. Besides providing a centralized knowledge base, it offers web-based ticketing, change management, and IT asset management, making it a perfect choice for organizations looking for cost-effective IT service desk solutions. Organizations can download its 14-day free trial to understand its standard features and functionalities.