Building a Knowledge Database - How to Successfully Do it for Your Company

The fact that you really understand your craft can be recognized by the fact that you know the needs of your customers and make it clear to them that you always offer them the right solution for their problems. You can convey this in the form of product texts, blog posts or even social media posts. However, sometimes customers are looking for answers to a very specific question and do not want to search your entire website to find the relevant information. Therefore, you should provide them with the most important information that might be of interest to them separately.

An efficient solution for this is offered by a knowledge database, often also referred to as a help center on company websites. Here, your prospective customers can familiarize themselves with you and your products at their own pace and build a deeper relationship with you. In order for you to be able to establish your own knowledge database for your company, we have put together some information on knowledge databases in this article for you.

Now that you know what a knowledge database is and what benefits it offers you, let's look at how to identify suitable subject areas for your knowledge base and structure them. Subsequently, we present to you the three best knowledge database software for your customers and the internal use of the company. Finally, we give you a step-by-step guide to building your own knowledge database.

Definition: What is a knowledge database?

In a knowledge database you collect valuable knowledge about your products, your services and your company. So it is a central collection point for important information that you want to make accessible to others. These are also important for your customers, who search for answers in the FAQs to make a purchasing decision.

But a knowledge database can also be useful for your colleagues if you publish regulations for processing various processes, tips for using software or other information concerning your company. The way you prepare the content is up to you. You can inform your customers and colleagues, for example, through blog posts, videos or graphics. You can quickly and efficiently organize and convey this knowledge through your knowledge database.

These are the advantages of a knowledge database

Setting up a program for your knowledge database in particular relieves your colleagues from customer service. Your customers demand outstanding service on the one hand and the ability to inform themselves independently on the other. With a corresponding database system, you provide the knowledge about your products and services outside your service department, thus generating real added value for your customers.

In addition, as a result of documenting your knowledge, you extend the lever for customer acquisition through your marketing and your sales, as interfaces between your various departments are created through the central documentation of company-relevant knowledge. Furthermore, a knowledge database offers additional training opportunities for new colleagues and thus increases your efficiency and productivity.

When you create a knowledge database, you can control the quality of the information yourself, as the content is centrally fed in by your editors. Since all colleagues can access information about your internal processes, system operation, workflows or your contacts, you increase their scope for action and enable them to work more independently.

This is how you define the structure and subject areas of your knowledge database

Before you throw yourself headlong into building your knowledge database, you should first answer some important questions that can provide you with important insights about the future structure:

• What goal do we want to achieve with this?
• What functions do you want to integrate?
• What interfaces must the software provide?
• What knowledge is really relevant for your company and your customers?
• In what form do you want to provide this knowledge?

From the answers to these questions, the main categories that you want to fill often arise fairly quickly. In the next step you have to fill these contents with different subject areas. It is best to list all ideas in the respective main categories. Among other things, you can use the following sources:

• Frequent questions that come up to your customer service
• Incoming inquiries and comments on social media
• Information on topics that your colleagues regularly need or ask for
• Inquiries from media representatives about company information
• Product details that you particularly want to emphasize

Make sure that you create different knowledge databases if you want to offer added value to both your colleagues and your customers. Many company internals do not belong in the hands of outsiders. Moreover, your colleagues are familiar with your products and services and could hardly benefit from this part of a product database.

These are the three best knowledge database software for your customer support?

To make it easier for you to decide which Knowledge database software you should choose to provide information for your customers, we have compiled the best three here for you. We provide you with further information, user reviews and tools at OMR Reviews.

• Zendesk Support Suite The Zendesk knowledge database offers you a complete solution for all customer service processes. In addition to a help center, you can integrate community forums, chats and many other highlights. You can use the Zendesk Support Suite from 49 euros per month.
• Zoho Desk The Zoho Desk customer service solution makes it easier for you to build your knowledge database, uses workflow automations, and unites communication with your customers via email, chat, and social media. The software is free for up to three employees. The other three usage packages you can purchase for 14 - 40 euros per employee per month.
• LiveAgent About this software for your customer support, you can use more than 130 ticketing functions and integrations. You can connect emails, contact forms, social media, chats and video calls together and thus organize your conversations in one place. You can also connect other tools with LiveAgent to optimally design your knowledge database. In addition to the free version, you can choose one of three usage packages, which cost between 15 - 39 euros per user per month.

These are the three best knowledge database software for internal company use

If you want to create a knowledge database for internal company use, we present the three best Knowledge database software for this purpose below. We provide you with further information, user reviews and tools at OMR Reviews.

• Notion: Notion
  (Directly to the Notion website)
  is a cloud-based all-in-one workspace for databases, wikis, notes and tasks within your company and thus serves as an organization tool. The team versions are available from 8 USD per user per month.
• Confluence: The open workspace Confluence can be used to edit joint projects or manage tasks as well as channel information. The use of the knowledge management tool is free for up to ten users. For more users, the packages cost between 5 - 10 USD per month per user.
• The project management solution ClickUp
  (Register now for free)
  aims at increasing efficiency within your company by providing you with lists, boards, diagrams and workloads. You can also integrate these into your knowledge database and present information in an understandable way. The paid packages range from 5 - 19 USD per user per month. Step-by-step guide to creating your knowledge database

Step by step to your own knowledge database

To ensure that the knowledge database you have created is not simply a collection of information, we have prepared some tips for you that can help you fill your knowledge database software.

Step by step to your own knowledge database

Step 1: Analyze your CRM data and frequent customer inquiries

In the first step, you should note down all the products and services about which your customers have already asked you questions. From these follow-up questions and the corresponding answers from your colleagues, you can derive further relevant topics and also include them in your knowledge database. This can be used to build a first rough structure.

To ensure good findability, you should always think from the customers' perspective. Ask yourself the question, in which category your customers might search for the respective information. For you, it may be logical to locate a question under a certain point because you deal with the products and services every day - but your customers may have completely different lines of thought.

Step 2: Create content with added value for your customers

Now it is important to process the answers to the identified questions. To do this, always put yourself in the position of your customers. Which form of presentation would help them most? This can be infographics, videos, short answer texts or longer blog articles. You know your customers best and know how you can convince them of your expertise.

When creating your content, work with clear and precise headlines so that they can quickly find the appropriate answers and do not have to search for a long time. This could lead to them breaking off the search process annoyed. In addition, you should consider building a search function into your knowledge database. Then the searchers have the choice between the direct word search or the selection in the corresponding menu tree.

Step 3: Use a consistent presentation for your content

In the simplest case, use templates provided by the software for your knowledge management. You can adapt these to your corporate design and thus continuously establish a reference to your brand. But also a uniform guideline for the creation of texts creates a professional impression for the readers, which makes them feel well taken care of. You should communicate these guidelines to the authors who write texts for your knowledge database and check the contributions against them in order to ensure a uniform appearance.

Step 4: Intuitive and cross-device access

Make sure that the design of your database is set up in such a way that the searching persons quickly and intuitively know how they have to act. It doesn't help if you have to first create a user guide for someone to find their way around your knowledge base. You should also make sure that it works across all devices., meaning that the customer experience must always be flawless, no matter whether they call up your site via their smartphone, tablet or computer.

Step 5: Publish your knowledge database

Once you have set up all templates and written all content, you can publish your knowledge database. You can either do this as a subsection of your website or use a subdomain for this purpose. In any case, it should be easily accessible and directly findable on the website.

Step 6: Collect feedback and optimize

The software is running, the knowledge database is online - and now? Now it's about finding out whether the provided content is really helping your customers. Get personal feedback from them, use a comments function under your posts and continue to evaluate inquiries to your customer support. In addition, you can integrate buttons via which the readers can indicate whether the contents were helpful or not.

You could also consider introducing a point "Your question was not there?" via which the searchers can send their question directly to the support and do not have to switch to your contact page first. With the insights from these surveys and evaluations, you can further optimize your database and ensure that you always offer genuine added value to your customers with your content.

Targeted information optimizes the experiences of your customers and colleagues

Knowledge databases can be used autonomously by your colleagues and customers to retrieve and use information when they need it. By doing this, you optimize work processes within your company and build a basis of trust. So knowledge means not only power, but also trust and progress. So, get to the keys and document what your "gray" cells produce.