The question of how to reduce support tickets has bothered companies for so long! Luckily, the answer has arrived. With the latest generation of customer support software, you can create a thorough and robust knowledge base that digital natives adore. Since 2017, Millennials have dominated the worldwide population landscape and they rely almost completely on their smartphones and other digital channels when making purchasing decisions.
Enabling anonymous searching for a solution is the key approach for this target market. The younger generations also embrace these trends, but Millennials are most interested in this category. Even Baby boomers enjoy the benefits of tech advancements in terms of responsiveness and privacy. Regardless of age, most modern consumers demand instantaneous, high quality answers enabled by today's tech tools.
With such a high reliance on technology, it is no wonder that 91% of customers would surf through a knowledge base that is carefully tailored to their needs. Moreover, 89% of Millennials prefer using self-service over a phone call as their first support step.
How many support tickets could you avoid if you have an easy self-service web page and a winning knowledge base strategy? The answer is too many. No one wants to waste time waiting for a reply these days when they can be doing something more enjoyable or productive.
Therefore, let’s learn a little more about knowledge bases and see how you can reduce support tickets with top-notch knowledge base strategies!
A. What is a Knowledge Base?
A knowledge base, or help center, is a published collection of articles that aim to assist your customers in using your product or services. It typically includes how-to guides, answers to frequently asked questions, and troubleshooting instructions. The key purpose of a knowledge base is to allow customers to look for and find solutions to their issues without having to ask for help. You will need a whole webpage to act as your knowledge base!
B. How to reduce support tickets using Knowledge Base strategies?
Struggling with a support ticket backlog and increasing downtime? Scroll down for a solution!
1. Design a user-friendly help center
A knowledge base or help center should be helpful, right? Your customers certainly don’t want additional troubles besides those that are already driving them to seek help. Therefore, making it easy for them to navigate relevant content is a critical knowledge base strategy. When it comes to the look of your help center, make it clean and appealing to demonstrate your focus on knowledge and providing complete support.
It is essential to incorporate white space and minimize overcrowding as this will cause your customers to leave your website. Undoubtedly, spamming your visitors with too much information will not help you convert them into buyers. In fact, overwhelmed customers will even exit at the last pre-purchase step if they don’t have sufficient details.
2. Understand common customer inquiries
Now that you have the foundation, we can move to the next knowledge base strategy: content development! Content quality determines the heath of the help center as that is what your customers are looking for. But what it should be? A good starting point is looking through your common customer requests and trying to answer their questions as thoroughly as possible. This may look similar to a FAQs page, however, a help center offers professional articles that provide more assistance than a simple answer to a specific query. You can still have an FAQs page but help centers are making this option more and more redundant as they continue to grow in popularity.
3. Analyze search and ticket subject lines
This knowledge base strategy is quite a support hack! By analysing your search and ticket subject lines, you can get a complete insight into your customers wants and needs and then tailor your articles accordingly. Sounds so easy, yet so powerful! That being said, you need to have customer support software that incorporates such a function.
4. Make complex issues easy to understand
There is no place for ambiguity or mess in your knowledge base. Here, you should deliver concise and explanatory articles that your customers can consume with ease. Clear categorization of the articles and search tags is crucial for the success of your self-sufficient customer’s journey. This knowledge base strategy is especially important if your business belongs to the tech or finance industries, where terminology can be sometimes confusing to a less-experienced user.
5. Write sweet and short titles
When crafting your article titles make sure to keep them short and catchy as the majority of people don’t like to spend a lot of time reading these pages. Of course, there are those who love to read but to satisfy the needs of those less willing to opt for written content, you can create short titles full of relevant keywords. The keywords will help your customers find their answers quickly and satisfy their self-service desires! There is no doubt that this knowledge base strategy will significantly increase your customer satisfaction score!
6. Improve knowledge base content over time
The golden rule that “There is always space for improvement” definitely applies here! You can’t just leave your content sitting there forever. Your customers’ preferences will change over time as well as their inquiries. Your business is also subject to change as you may decide to add some new features or services, which would require related troubleshooting articles in your knowledge base.
You can see your help center as a manual as well as an FAQs page! Additionally, it is possible for a customer to spot a mistake in your article, so editing such an article should be a high priority task on your board!
However, with a knowledge base you will need a lower investment of effort compared to traditional customer support methods. You will be able to cut your customer support costs tremendously by creating an automated inquiry and answer source! Both trivial and more complex issues can be found here, leaving your support reps with a lot more time to deal with urgent customer problems.
7. Create an eye-catching search bar
Do you remember what Google’s search box looks like? It is placed front and center on their homepage and requires almost no effort to be located. The search box is the only direct way for your customers to find the answers they need in your help center. Therefore, the more prominent it is, the easier it will be for them to get the help they need and then quickly get back to using your product.
8. Deliver responsive design
In the era of multiple Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it is almost irresponsible to create a knowledge base solely for desktop or laptop use. As mentioned before, today’s digital natives love their smartphones. Whether they are in a coffee shop or at home chilling with a cup of tea, they want to be able to search for your content on any device they happen to be using at the time. Thus, making your knowledge base suitable for mobile, PC, and tablet use is required if you want to leave an impression as a prestigious, modernized brand. Moreover, a Microsoft study revealed that 65% of respondents (and 79% of Millennials) favor brands that offer a mobile self-service portal.
9. Move the most popular articles to the top
Another case where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) analytics are useful is in making your audience’s most wanted articles more accessible. You can simply track usage analytics to identify the most popular articles and then move them to the top of your page. This will make the search process even easier, as your customers may not even need to search for the answers they need. You will undoubtedly earn your customers trust and respect if you offer them this kind of instant solution! It’s definitely worthwhile to keep in mind this particular knowledge base strategy.
10. Integrate an additional helper
What if you could offer knowledge base help on every page? Many of your customers will opt for a chat experience first. This can be an AI chat or Live Chat service. If your AI chatbot can’t assist in a certain area or your Live Chat agent is not available, Helpy's knowledge base widget can deliver relevant support info anytime, anywhere. Offering this feature will show your customers that you prioritize their time and needs! It will help to drive home the point that you will go above and beyond to get them the help they need! Wouldn’t you like to cooperate with a company that is this dedicated to its customers’ happiness?