Creating & Managing a Knowledge Base

A knowledge base can be a game-changing tool for sharing critical information, support, and best practices with a distributed audience. However, there are also challenges to be aware of if you want to get the most out of your knowledge base. 

Here are some advantages and potential risks of running a knowledge base, and how to address them. 

Knowledge Base Benefits

1. Single Source of Truth

Knowledge bases make a world of difference when it comes to information discoverability. 

If you’re setting up an internal knowledge base for employees, your team won’t wonder where they can find answers, nor do they have to worry about conflicting information. 

For customer-facing databases, help centers act as the single source of truth. Customers don’t have to wonder if the information they’re seeing about a product or their account is accurate. They also don’t need to turn to Google to find the answers when it’s all right there in your organization’s knowledge base. 

Plus, not everyone within an organization has editing rights, reducing the risk of file duplicates or factual errors.

2. Knowledge Retention

Another impactful benefit of a knowledge base is being able to retain knowledge, specifically within your internal teams. 

Employees come and go. And as soon as they leave, not only do you lose a great team member, but also all the knowledge they’ve gathered about their role, the product, or processes. It can be a massive setback for the company if you weren’t able to document that employee’s knowledge before they left. 

If you actively encourage your team members to regularly share their expertise — whether in written or video format — you can retain at least part of that knowledge. This will not only serve your existing employees but also be of great help to new ones.

3. Customer Support

Did you know 81% of customers attempt to take care of support issues themselves before reaching out to a customer representative? Additionally, 77% of customers view companies more positively if they provide self-service options. 

Since customers are looking for self-service resources, a knowledge base is essential to meet those expectations. 

Use your knowledge base to build a library of helpful articles. Consider what questions customers have most often and base your articles around the solutions. Your help center articles can cover everything from account settings to product walkthroughs to tips for getting the most out of certain features. 

Better yet, you can refine your knowledge base articles by collecting feedback. A simple “Was this article helpful?” button could do wonders.

4. Maintaining Consistency

Consistency is about more than unequivocal answers. It’s also about the company image and employee productivity.

For internal teams, for example, including an After Action Review library as part of the wider knowledge base helps employees follow company guidelines with a recommended course of action for complex situations. Agents can see how others tackled similar issues while staying aligned with company policy.

5. Better Productivity and Automation 

Few things at work are as frustrating as spending hours searching for information. You know it’s somewhere, but you just don’t know exactly where. By keeping knowledge in a single place, you save people from wasting their time searching for information or disturbing their colleagues. This increases team productivity and saves time spent on repetitive tasks.

6. Increased Team Alignment 

Not only can a knowledge base aid in customer support as a self-service tool, but it can also be a great way for departments to align. 

In fact, data from HubSpot found that leaders who say their customer service team is aligned with their sales team are 75% more likely to say their customer service strategy was effective. 

For example, if sales and customer support collaborate on learning more about their customers, they’ll likely identify questions or concerns they see come up often. They can then pass this information on to product marketing — or whoever manages the company’s help center — so that team can add or update articles that better address customers’ needs. 

7. Training Benefits

Knowledge bases can also help you train and onboard new staff.

How? You can use content in the knowledge base to supplement traditional on-site training with self-paced guides. Your senior staff members can stay focused on their daily work instead of dedicating several hours or days to training sessions.

Using a knowledge base as a training tool is much more seamless than having to call, email, or interrupt more senior colleagues. A simple search of the knowledge base for the information can give new employees the information they need without disrupting workflows.

Knowledge Base Challenges

While the benefits of a knowledge base far outweigh the challenges, being aware of the challenges can help you be proactive about them.

1. Staying Up-to-Date

Since things change at your company over time, you’ll need to continuously check your knowledge base for accuracy. This can be daunting, particularly if you’ve built a massive knowledge ecosystem. If it’s hard to notify the moderator about an outdated resource, there’s a risk that some employees may not do so.

The best way to tackle this issue is to schedule regular checkups — for example, once a quarter — where each department checks the validity of articles from their field.

2. Including Enough Information to Support Self-Service 

If you want your knowledge base to serve as a self-support tool, it’s important to include sufficient information. It is not a mere FAQ, but thorough documentation walking customers through set-up, usage, and troubleshooting. If your knowledge base is not adequate, customers will still have to call your help line after being frustrated by the lack of information in the knowledge base.

To overcome this challenge, someone from a different department can read and follow the instructions you’ve written. They can check for ambiguity, missing steps, and redundancies. Also, record and address any problems about your articles that users flag.

3. Maintaining Security

Maintaining your knowledge base security must be a top priority. As it stores all the key company information, some of which might be confidential, you’ll need to ensure that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

When choosing the right platform for your knowledge base, make sure that it’s protected from data leaks and unauthorized access. Then, carefully consider which employees should be granted editing and moderating permissions. 

4. Encouraging Employees to Share Knowledge

Certain team members might be reluctant to contribute to your knowledge base. Some may lack the time, while others will be tentative about sharing their expertise.

This might not be a huge inconvenience for you as long as they’re available for any ad hoc assistance. But what happens when one of your organization’s key figures leaves the company? Unfortunately, they’ll take all that invaluable, first-hand knowledge with them.

That’s why it’s so important to get buy-in from your staff and encourage employees to contribute to your knowledge base from day one.