What is knowledge base software and how can it help your customers?

Catherine Heath | August 29, 2016

Knowledge base software is a thriving area of the customer relationship management (CRM) industry, and, if your business has customers, you’ll be likely to need one.

It is is a subset of CRM, and other subsets would be helpdesk software, or a customer database.

A knowledge base is a centralized repository of information online, which is standard practice when almost all businesses now rely solely on technology for their infrastructure (goodbye, filing cabinet).

Although it can seem like a simple website, a knowledge base is still a CRM tool designed to improve business productivity by helping you to understand your customers.

A good knowledge base streamlines operations by reducing the amount of time agents need to spend helping customers, by enabling the customer to self-serve their own enquiries.

Customer support software

Consider these areas of customer support software:

• Team inbox (shared messaging platform that replaces the email inbox)

• Knowledge base (repository of customer information)

• Forum (a forum where customers can answer each other’s queries, moderated by your agents)

• Social (listening tools for platforms like Facebook and Twitter)

• Chat (Pop up chat box on your website)

• Phone support (telephone platform with the ability to log calls with customers)

• Mobile support (SMS support)

CRM software like Salesforce and ZenDesk provide a lot of functionality including the majority of above list. Such platforms have historically dominated the market, and because of this they are a staple of many established businesses.

But the technological landscape has changed.

The history of CRM software

CRM software has historically been difficult to use, traditionally aimed at large businesses with thousands of customers and huge budgets. The software has been installed on-site at business locations, contrasting the trend now for software solutions to be cloud-based. They have focused on security and scaleability.

As a result, the complexity of these applications has often resulted in the sacrificing of usability for customer support agents.  

If your agents are spending the majority of their time wrestling with a difficult system, that’s time wasted that could have been spent helping customers. Unsuitable software also lowers staff morale.

Knowledge base functionality has often also felt tacked on – a side dish to the main course.

More options for knowledge bases

There is now a wider range of CRM tools available that are specifically targeted at small businesses. A number of different applications have been developed that allow users to create their own standalone knowledge bases, rather than simply as part of a CRM package.

In contrast to multi-functionality CRM tools, standalone knowledge base solutions like KnowledgeOwl and HelpJuice are specialized by providing knowledge base functionality only.

While multi-functionality, enterprise software solutions can be great if you’re a large company with a complex customer support service, a specialized knowledge base solution may be more suitable for your business size.

Capterra has a great list of knowledge base software solutions if you want to compare and contrast products to find the best one for you.

Your focus should be on enabling your customers to easily access the information they need, ideally based on their search history, and tailored to meet their needs.

KnowledgeOwl is standalone knowledge base software for small business to enterprise. We'd love to chat if you want to learn more!

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