Put Dust on Your Call Center Headphones with a Knowledge Base

Back in the day, the arrival of cheap call center solutions has revolutionised the world of customer support. It became more accessible, people started to have more faith in their providers, and customers were able to resolve their problems a lot faster.

However, the world moves on and advances. Today, more refined and advanced methods to help the users are available, and one of the best customer support tools you can have is knowledge base software.

Here we are going to discuss why the call center is slowly being abandoned, and why a quality knowledge base tool is a superior method of customer service. Not only does it increase your availability, but it is also preferred by the customers and cheaper to implement. So, get ready to say goodbye to your call center headphones and take a bold step into the customer service of today with a knowledge base.  

1. More customers want self-service

Yes, believe or not, customers don’t want to call their providers if they don’t have to, as people feel silly knowing that they made a mistake with something that is supposed to be easy to understand. So, self-services is the preferred approach to handling the situation, and with a good knowledge base you get the opportunity to make this possible.

The major trait of any knowledge base is that it supports different formats, so you can use text, images and videos to equip your site with content that users will find helpful. Also, a quality knowledge base is easily searchable, which makes it possible for the users to find the specific information they were looking for with no trouble at all.

Basically, once you create a thorough FAQ page, you can handle the vast majority of customer questions and concerns with little if any involvement from your support team.  

Here’s an example of an FAQ page created with ProProfs Knowledgebase

2. It’s more convenient for the customers

Another reason why knowledge base trumps call centers is simple convenience. Even though people could reach you and talk with employees over a call center, a knowledge base simply eliminates all of the drawbacks of a call center.

There were no costs for using a phone for starters and for business that run on a global or international scale, this was an important trait. In other words, customers who didn’t live in the same town, or country were charged more for calling, which made providers a less likely option for the users.

Cost effectiveness is not the only advantage of a knowledge base, at some point call centers become too busy and too complex. So, aside from waiting for the other party to pick up the phone, they needed to redirect to the support team that is responsible for handling your problem.

With a knowledge base ticket system, you are immediately connected to the support team member who can solve your problem, and that is only in the event that there is no solution on the FAQ page, or if no online tutorial for the problem exists.  

Here’s an example of user guide created with ProProfs Knowledgebase   

3. It makes the customer support’s job easier

Your customers are not the only ones who benefit from a knowledge base solution, your support team will be happier with their job as well. They will have a set of prepared answers available for some of the most common questions. In other words, if a customer didn’t take some time to search the website for the answer, an employee from the support center can easily give them a link that leads to it.

Furthermore, it speeds up the pace of waiting queues, so more customers can be served in a shorter time frame. So, the support team gets to be more efficient and finish their job quicker. A really good advantage is the ability of one support team member to talk with multiple customers at the same time.

What made this possible is the integration of the Live chat feature, which gives users the opportunity to communicate via synchronous chat. This again increases the availability of the support center, and it allows for multiple customers to receive help.

4. More satisfied customers

Finally, this only leads to more satisfied customers, considering how their issues are dealt with more efficiently, or how the majority of customers has no need for contacting the company at all. This only leads to better brand loyalty and to more positive reviews, and better customer acquisition.

However, this does not imply that you need to get rid of the call center if your users prefer this way of communication. In fact, there are still customers who prefer to use a phone rather than a computer, and it is important to be there for those users as well. The point is, if you have a large number of customers overseas, and all of your users opt for contacting you online, then you can easily cut back on the unnecessary costs and leave it behind.

To sum up, it is necessary to move forward and adopt new and improved means of communication. Your call center is slowly becoming obsolete and you can do so much better by adding a knowledge base to your customer support arsenal. If you are planning on expanding, and are going to have many more people from all over the globe asking for your products or services, you will definitely need this highly effective solution.

This guest post was kindly provided by ProProfs Knowledgebase – it lets you create help sites, knowledge bases, user guides, manuals, wikis & more.