Information technology has played and continues to enact a major role in knowledge and information distribution. It would be appropriate to say that the Internet, which is primarily IT driven, has witnessed an exponential growth leading all of us into the digital era. Smartphones and tablets have now emerged as must-have commodities. According to Statista, there are more than 2.32-billion smartphone users and the same source expects that this number will reach almost 3 billion by the year 2020.
Trends can be followed by metrics; metrics that, as it seems, lead to major changes in all fields, especially in the business world. Look at this one for instance: as of October 2016, the share of search traffic in the U.S. originating from Google was 81%, in Germany, it was 90%, while India it touched 96.5 %.
Businesses understand the relevance and are of the opinion that the online population have the higher tendency to seek answers using the Internet before contacting the support agents. Therefore, businesses are offering the quick response in order to meet the expectations of their customers.
Let’s take a look then into the ways IT can help customers become more proficient in their approach.
Build A Knowledge Base
Knowledge base stands for the data comprising of the best organizational practices, procedures, customer support policies etc. It also stands for the varied experiences of key departments that are can be easily distributed and shared among other employees. But how can IT be used for knowledge base software that can help different department and customers? Information technology can be leveraged to place the entire knowledge base onto the cloud and make it available on the official website of a company.
What is more important, users can be shared edit and/or view privileges so that the data can be used for different purposes. The one being used by your employees is the internal knowledge base and the one your customers will be using is called an external knowledge base. This option comes in handy because there are certain entries that are both useful for the workforce and the customers, such as product and service manuals and disclaimers.
Make it Searchable
The external one, also known as a help desk, encompasses of a feature that makes it look like a search engine – a big search box. The search option is a key factor that makes a knowledge base robust in its approach. to improve it further, the editors need to coordinate with the IT department to ensure the creation of concise article names and actionable content.
The IT department can help the users enhance their proficiency by using search engine optimization (SEO). By using Google AdWords, IT guys can view performance insights and keyword ideas for the articles inside the knowledge repository. SEO of knowledge base is important because, once you put it online, the search engines will index it and if you have provided relevant, valuable and actionable content, your articles will have a better chance of being found among the top search results.
This will lead to increased website rankings, more traffic, followed by increased customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Create a Public Wiki
Wiki software makes the creation of Public Wikis easier than it was in the past. And, by doing so, it will help the users and lead to the creation of a setting in which users will have the power to help other users by sharing their knowledge and experience firsthand. Advanced features of this software are what really makes building and publishing a Wiki very easy. Moreover, publishing a Wiki with content placed in it will help the users understand the structure to be followed when they decide to share an article.
If you are worried that some valuable information will be lost if some user decides to delete and edit something, don’t worry; Wiki software has the option to view the history of changes and lets you choose to restore to the best version of the document.
Create and Publish FAQ Pages
FAQ pages are usually something an average customer in distress clicks on first in hope of finding the answer to their queries. But, over time, FAQ lists and pages tend to pile up as the products and services multiply along with the growth of the customer base. Making a separate HTML FAQ page for each product out there seems absurd and can seriously jeopardize the architecture of your official website.
FAQ is an important aspect of a good customer service. Hence, it is best to deploy this as part of a large self-service solution. They can be inculcated as a part of your knowledge base, a task easily achievable with knowledge base software.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that Information technology is capable of improving the overall efficiency of a business and users. They are capable of making people’s live easier and hassle free.
Robin
