Why Do You Need an Online Knowledge Base?
Online documentation is highly efficient for many reasons:
- It is available 24/7 from any device and location;
- Unifies and centralizes information;
- Contributes to case deflection;
- Provides readers with various types of content: video, audio, screenshots, diagrams, tables, graphs;
- Provides technical writers with statistics and shows user behavior.
That’s why creating an online knowledge base is a perfect solution for those who want to provide users with a highly efficient documentation repository.
A knowledge base — is a collection of documentation that can include troubleshooting documents, instructions, how-to guides, FAQs, etc. It is designed to provide readers with information and allow them to find answers to their questions themselves. An online knowledge base implies online storage.
It is common for the majority of companies today to have an online knowledge base, especially when they have tonnes of documentation. An internal knowledge base supports decision-making and standardization of all the internal processes. An external knowledge base provides customers with the relevant information on how to use a product or service and get the most out of it.
Who needs an online knowledge base? All kinds of businesses:
- Huge enterprises. They have a lot of clients. It means that their support teams are burdened with tickets. As was mentioned above, an online knowledge base is a great solution to reduce the overload as customers can find answers to their questions themselves.
- Small businesses. First of all, they are looking for inexpensive but efficient solutions. Online documentation is one of them.
- Startups. They are looking for scalable solutions that will change along with their business.
The benefits of an online knowledge base:
- Improved customer experience;
- Better product adoption;
- Quick and efficient onboarding;
- Reduction of costs (support and onboarding become less expensive);
- SEO effect in case of public documentation;
- Standardization and unification of workflow and all types of algorithms;
- Quick and timely delivery of relevant information to the right audience.
These are the main benefits, but one can find even more; it depends on the specific needs of a company.
One of the most important things when creating an online knowledge base is to choose the right tool that will meet all the needs of your company. These are the basic requirements:
- Easy collaboration. As a knowledge base is a type of technical documentation that is created by a team of tech writers and reviewers, there should be a convenient environment for their cooperation.
- Simplicity. It is vital to choose a tool that is easy to use without a long learning curve. Simplicity saves time and effort.
- Online hosting. One should not only create content but solve the problem of hosting.
- Single sourcing and content reuse. These features give the ability to create multiple versions of one and the same document and easily update them.
One of my favorite technical writing tools is ClickHelp. It meets all the above-mentioned requirements and is perfect for creating an online knowledge base.
