How to build a call center knowledge base?

The application of knowledge base software is not limited to the self-service solution, rather they also help service personnel support customers during calls and emails. The support executives greatly rely on centralized knowledge management tools to provide assistance to users. 

Why do Call Centers Need A Knowledge Base?

One of the biggest challenges faced by contact centers is the turnover of agents. Businesses face capital losses in thoroughly training agents, only for them to leave as soon as 6 months later. Therefore, the call center is looking for ways where training times could be reduced and agents are still able to handle customer inquiries with confidence. A well-maintained and adaptive contact center knowledge base software can decrease training time by 50%. When new recruits can perform a search against a central repository containing essential training materials and up-to-date client documentation, they are able to learn the basics in up to half the time.

We have a special article to emphasize the role of a knowledge base in the call center. Please make sure to read it.

Building a Call Center Knowledge Base

The BPO contact center is evolving. In the 21^st Century, customer has a choice of channels such as web self-service portals, agent chat, forums, social media, mobile, and traditional phone call. Regardless of the channel, organizations must ensure consistency in the answers they provide to their customers, making sure that the same knowledge base and the same up-to-date information lies at the hub of all customer service operations.

1. Data Mining, Data Analyzing, and Data Filtering

Building a call center knowledge base from scratch should start with looking at your call center data. A call center knowledge base should be centered around user queries. Therefore, involving support executives in knowledge base creation is a key factor. Determine the most frequent customer inquiries and discover what products and services customers frequently request. Process-driven contact centers can be very prone to error, especially when the processes exist in the form of complex spreadsheets or when they are buried within multiple processes. You can start with a small base of knowledge and expand it over time, but it’s best to start with your most common and straightforward cases before moving on to those that are unique. 

2. Choose Knowledge Base Software

After understanding the nature and users of your data, the next step is to finalize the knowledge base tool. A mistake here can cost in long run. The purpose of knowledge management software is to make an organization leaner, more efficient as well as more profitable. The knowledge management tool not only just records your data but should also seamlessly integrate with existing processes and company culture and is cost-effective and efficient. For more details, you can refer to our knowledge base article on how to select the best knowledge management software.

3. Decide on Content Creators

The next step is deciding who will populate the knowledge base. For effective writing, a domain expert and writing professionals should work together. No one can understand the battlefield better than the soldier. Therefore your team of writers not only includes content writers but also call center managers and agents. The tacit knowledge earned by call center staff over years of experience is valuable for your company and will turn out to be an asset for newcomers.

4. Categorize the Data 

The next step is to categorize the call center's data such as company manuals, and user queries into clusters or groups that you can expand over time.  Start with a top-to-bottom approach, making root-level clusters and then making sub-clusters out of them. While selecting the knowledge base tool, make sure you consider the software which provides the facility to create a hierarchical data structure. By creating proper categories, you’ll have a well-organized system and agents will find the relevant information on time resulting in satisfied customers. 

5. Design Content Templates

Before generating the content, it is advisable to standardize the structure of your knowledge base articles. For instance, a template for a case study; having a heading, problem definition, solution, and reference areas predefined will help in rapid article creation. Similarly, you might have information such as disclaimers, help tips, contact information, or some tabular data that is usually repeated in your help article. So, instead of manually adding the same content, you can simply create a template once and then re-use the contents of this template in other articles.

6. Create Clear and Straightforward Content

As soon as you know what problems you’re going to address and how they’re going to be categorized, you can now start creating your knowledge base content. The solutions not only be precise, tested, and to the point but also be presented well. The content you produce might it be a how-to article, a video, or infographics—must therefore be easy to understand. The instructional content you’ll write must thus be well-organized, jargon-free, and straightforward. A knowledge management system like PHPKB makes this step easy by providing a powerful WYSIWYG editor. The advanced editing facilities allow you to insert multimedia content such as text, graphics, videos, and icons. 

7. Intelligent Search Capability

For a call center knowledge base, response time is crucial. Customers don’t want to be in long waiting lines and will shift to another brand if not served on time. Moreover, one of the primary goals of a call center knowledge base software is to improve productivity by reducing the time support agents spend searching for information.

The best call center knowledge base software should offer intelligent search capabilities similar to Google so that support agents can quickly find what they’re looking for, even if they don’t know the exact title or tags of the content they need. As you evaluate your options, look for solutions that deep-index all content across all file types (including the content of attached files and the text search on images) so that everything becomes searchable, not just document titles and descriptions. Ideally, your knowledge base software should weigh different factors, such as the number of times a keyword appears and where it appears on a document, to deliver the most relevant search results first.

Therefore, you need a solution that offers an intelligent, fast, and advanced knowledge base search where your support agents can filter the results as per their needs. 

8. Publish Your Knowledge Base

Once everything is set up, it’s time to publish your knowledge base. The next step is to publish your knowledge base. If this has been designed specifically for the call center team, make it an internal knowledge base that should be accessible from the agent's screen. However, if it is multichannel, set it as external knowledge base software which should be easily accessible from the home page of your company's website.

9. Update Regularly

Knowledge base creation is not a one-time process rather it is an ever-evolving process. To ensure customers and executives have accurate information at all times, update your content and inform customers whenever necessary. Processes, product items, services, and policies to be offered by brands change regularly. Therefore, it is important to update your existing content and inform your customers and agents about these changes. If applicable, provide them with tips on how to adjust to the changes.

Strategically planning a knowledge base and using its tools helps call centers reap the benefits.