How a Knowledgebase Can Quickly Help Reduce Customer Support Costs By 33% or More
What is a knowledge base?
A knowledgebase is a software tool that enables your customers find answers to their support questions on their own, without having to email or contact you for help.
A knowledgebase doesn't have to solve every problem your customers might have. Just the most common ones.
As we've learned from talking to hundreds of businesses over the years, if you feel overwhelmed by everything you have to do in a day, you’re not alone.
Dozens of founders, CEOs, and small business owners we’ve talked to describe a lack of time and resources. Much of their days (around a third of their time) are spent handling customer support, reading and responding to emails. Time that could be used more efficiently and productively growing their business and doing things they love.
"Don't repeat yourself" (DRY, or sometimes "do not repeat yourself") is a principle of software development aimed at reducing repetition of software patterns, replacing it with abstractions or using data normalization to avoid redundancy.
Every company has customer support questions that come up over and over again. Questions that could easily be answered with knowledgebase articles. Just imagine how much time and effort you could save each day by enabling your customers to quickly and easily find their own answers to questions that they have about your product or service.
Another factor is that many customers don't want to take the time and effort to contact a company to find the answers to their questions. 53% of US online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. Sending a contact email or calling on the phone is counter productive, when the answer to a common question could have been found in your knowledgebase.
Most growing companies will eventually need to hire staff to help customer support. Even then, the supports staff's time would be much better utilized handling uncommon customer support questions. A knowlegdebase is complementary to your support staff, it can help them find answers quickly and use their time more effectively.
For less than one month's salary of a support staff member you could have a full featured knowledgebase system that enables customers to help themselves 24/7.
Before you start hiring support staff, get your knowledgebase software in place.
Knowledgebase software can lower support volume by 33% or more.
Knowledge base software will lower support volume. In our internal testing, we found the impact can be a 33% or more reduction in support requests.
It will help you (and anyone helping you with support in the future) answer common support questions much faster.
By improving the process you use when your company responds to customers, you’re establishing efficiency that will help anyone with support responsibilities at your company—now or in the future.
As with any purchase decision however, there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all knowledgebase software.
Some knowledgebase options will be better for your company.
7 key features of knowledgebase software to know
As you evaluate your options, make sure the knowledgebase software you’re considering has at least the following options in place.
1. Search
A good knowledgebase system will always enable articles to be found by entering search terms. Customers should be able to enter their question and find a solution within the first few articles.
2. Back-end dashboard
There should be an easy to use back-end dashboard that empowers you to easily create knowledgebase articles. Including the ability to format text, insert images, and media content (video clips, etc.).
3. Categories
Categories give customers and support staff an easy way to find related articles as they look for a solution within your knowledgebase. It also gives you way to organize articles in the system, making it easier to keep track of the resources you’ve created for different issues or different products or services you provide.
4. Mobile optimized
More than 50% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Make sure your knowledgebase software is mobile optimized from the start so your customers can still find answers—no matter what device they’re using.
5. Contact form or support ticketing
Even an excellent knowledgebase won't resolve every question a customer might have. If a customer needs to contact you with a question, make sure they can do that easily by using a contact form within the knowledgebase or have an integrated support ticket system that can handle the exceptional requests.
6. Web widget
A web widget is a small popup that displays in the bottom corner of your main website. If you’re using integrated knowledgebase software, you can include a field that lets customers search the knowledgebase without ever leaving the your main site.
A knowledgebase with an integrated web widget is one of the more powerful tools for reducing the number of support emails you receive.
7. Reporting
Finally, quality knowledgebase software will have custom reporting options specific to the knowledge base articles, including views, visits, and time-on-page for each article.
Conclusion
A quality knowledgebase system is one of the best investments you can make. You save time, the most precious of all commodities and you avoid losing customers due to their inability to find the information they need about your product or service.
The return on investment: Typically 33% less support inquiries and 30-40% faster response times.
Most of our knowledgebase customers see a minimum of 33% drop in total inquiries once they publish support articles for their customers.
When a common question does make its way to the inbox, a knowledgebase makes it easy to simply pull up a support article and send along the link, increasing your response time by as much as 30-40%.
That’s the power of an effective knowledgebase.
It makes responding to inquiries much faster—because you don’t have to write a new answer to every question that comes in.
Most importantly, a knowledgebase decreases the volume of emails you receive in your inbox and increases the number of happy customers —something we know every business owner will appreciate.
Contact us to get started or learn more about implementing a knowledgebase for your business.