Extra features to make your knowledge base stand out from the crowd

Catherine Heath | October 14, 2016

It’s getting more and more common for companies to have a knowledge base, but you can add extra features to yours to make it stand out. 

The type of features you add will vary by industry but here are a few ideas to give you inspiration. You want to focus on improving the customer experience in order to make your knowledge base stand out. 

Real-time apps for travel companies

If you’re a travel company you can include features on your knowledge base that provides real-time updates for your customers. 

We’ve mentioned the Trainline in our post about examples of awesome working knowledge bases. They’re a British company that provides cheap train tickets and travel support for their customers. 

They’re renowned for their customer experience and have anticipated their customers using their knowledge base while on their journeys. As such, they’ve installed a widget on their knowledge base which provides real-time travel updates for customers. 

Similarly, the Greyhound bus website has a link to their real-time bus tracker from their knowledge base, because they know this is something their customers will find useful. 

Features like these improve the customer experience by making your customer’s journey easier and creates loyal customers. 

Size charts for clothing customers

The Target knowledge base has a helpful size chart as they know their customers will be buying clothes. Rather than navigating to an external website for size chart information or accidentally buying the wrong size, customers can find the information they need on Target’s knowledge base. 

This is a great example of a company going the extra mile to improve the customer experience by answering their needs and smoothing out the purchasing process. 

Personalized content for customers

You can surface different content based on the type of user in your knowledge base, like Airbnb do for travellers and hosts. This requires a login function for users to enter their account details so you can correctly identify different types of users. 

Your software should also be sophisticated enough to suggest articles to users based on their history of searching in your knowledge base. This helps with customer experience by anticipating their future needs and offering solutions to their problems. 

Imagery

Many companies don’t invest much time in the visual style of their knowledge base because they’re too busy with marketing to new customers. 

Of course, if it doesn’t fit with your brand then don’t do it, but a knowledge base can really benefit from attentiveness to visuals and imagery to improve the user experience. 

For example, Asana have an incredibly visual knowledge base to help introduce new users to their relatively complex platform. 

You can also add a ‘zoom in’ function like Asana to help your customers learn about your platform in more detail. 

Your turn! 

Adding extra features to your knowledge base should be about improving the customer experience, not showing off. Remember, if you add too many extra features it might end up being too cluttered and have the opposite effect you intended. 

Above all, empathise with your customers and how they will be interacting with your knowledge base in real life to make your knowledge base truly noteworthy. 

KnowlegeOwl provides sophisticated, affordable software that allows you to make your own noteworthy knowledge base. Contact us at support@knowledgeowl.com today to find out more.

{{snippet.Disqus}}

{{snippet.authorCatherineHeath}}