The psychology of self-service: How to dazzle your knowledge base users

So you’ve got a knowledge base and you want to optimize it to have the best user experience possible.

In software development, terms are used all the time to describe practices that can really be explained in plain language: you want to make your knowledge base a delight to use.

As with any system used by humans, your knowledge base needs to be intelligently designed, regularly maintained and have consistency. You want to reduce the cognitive load for your knowledge base users so they actually enjoy using your knowledge base. You want to show customers you have thought about their wants and needs when creating your knowledge base.

Psychology is defined as the study of the human mind and human behaviour in a given context, so we will apply an understanding of psychology to knowledge base building now.

Apply social intelligence

Social intelligence is a useful concept to keep in mind when building and maintaining a knowledge base.

People like consistency, and they want to feel assured that there’s an intelligent design behind the system they’re using.

This means that customers should know what to expect when they come to use your knowledge base. It has to be clear that you’ve thought about the layout of the content and provided easy functionality for them to find what they need.

Reduce cognitive load

Place the search bar prominently on the homepage where it will catch the user’s eye as soon as they hit your knowledge base, in order to reduce their cognitive load in having to locate it.

If you can, use intelligent software that shows users popular content based on their past behaviour, anticipating their needs.

As with all user experience design, the process of using your knowledge base will be a lot easier if you have consistency of style across your articles. Have only one question answered per article so the information is easy to find and digest.

Use visual cues like headers and images to break down your information, and write in a clear, concise and friendly manner.

Show you care about your customers

Project the impression that you care about your customers and that is why you’ve provided them with this knowledge base.

Even though most queries should be answerable using your knowledge base, you want to have your company contact details displayed prominently on the homepage to make sure your customers know they can contact you.

It can even help to ask them for feedback on your knowledge base in order to demonstrate that you care about their opinion. Provide a simple yes or no rating system on each article for whether or not they found it helpful.

Have your knowledge base represent your company values

If you’ve chosen to have a knowledge base that probably means you care about your customers - and your support agents.

You want to reduce the strain on your staff so you can invest the cost of handling the same queries repeatedly into improving your products or services, reaching more customers, or some other business goal.

Apply the same logic and efficiency you would use to run your company to your knowledge base, and you will have a well-oiled machine that provides continued return on investment.

Your customers will intuitively sense when a system has been created with their needs in mind rather than the company’s, and will be happier with your service as a result.

KnowledgeOwl provides all this functionality and more, at an affordable price for small businesses. Contact one of our agents to find out more, or trial a demo today.