Imagine this: a customer purchases your product or service, uses it for a day or two but runs into a problem that ruins their satisfaction with it.
What can your customer do in that case?
If the only options you offer are in-person support in your stores or offices and manuals that are most likely long discarded or deleted, you’re at risk of having them churn.
Nowadays, customers are aware they can get more than that, and you need to provide it, and make it easy for them to find the information they need on their own.
With that in mind, let’s check out seven different knowledge-sharing platforms you can use to simplify usage for your clients!
Self-Service Help Center
Self-service help centers are a tried and true method of bringing information to your clients.
Zendesk’s 2022 CX report claims that 70% of global customers expect a company to have a self-service portal or content available.
Therefore, you need a help center to keep your customers happy and informed.
Moreover, Deloitte reports that today’s customers switch between different channels and platforms to get the information they need.
Since the times are changing and the internet is available to most people, customers have and expect more options from businesses.
They now choose between different platforms to get the experience they need, which is why you should be present on more than one.
The best way to offer knowledge to your customers is to create a self-serve help center, where visitors can search manually by entering a keyword or looking through the articles or FAQ you offer.
Canva is a great example of this. In fact, their help center does a great job at educating customers.
As soon as you land on the homepage, you see a prominent search bar that lets customers enter a keyword.
This is a great option you can offer your customers, too.
If you don’t want to search using a keyword, Canva also links eight broad categories that cover various aspects of customer experience, such as subscriptions, account settings, the teams option, and troubleshooting.
Another excellent example of a self-service help center is Airtable, whose help page is organized similarly to Canva’s. There is a search bar that lets you look anything up.
Suppose you don’t want to search for a keyword and instead want to explore.
In that case, you can click on any significant categories relating to getting-started guides, webinars, account information, and billing.
When creating your self-service help center, ensure that visitors have different ways of getting to the data, such as articles, images, and video content.
In-App Content
If your customers use one of your apps, think about sharing knowledge through it.
Instead of investing in other software or modes of contact, why not use the app you are sure your customers already use?
Of course, this rings true for the companies that already have or are planning on creating apps.
Using your app to communicate updates and share insights with customers will help you save on costs and have a total overview of knowledge-sharing.
Besides, you want the information to actually get to your customers.
Since people spend a third of their waking hours using phones, why not tap into the potential of allowing them to find information quickly using the app they probably also use on their phones?
In-app content is the content that informs the client base directly from the app.
You can add your product articles to a particular section within the app, allowing customers to turn to it whenever they have an issue.
But, if you want to notify clients of something important, you can push in-app notifications.
That’s what Braze does. They offer users more options for notifying customers, starting from slide-up messages, modal notifications, and full-screen announcements.
Select an app that lets you choose between different types of notifications as they might be annoying to users, especially if they’re full-screen and happen often.
That way, you’ll be able to choose the full-screen announcements only for the critical updates that apply to all users.
On the other hand, the slide-up option seems easier if you’re just notifying people of minor tweaks.
Anyone interested in finding out more can click on the notification and go to the full announcement offering more information.
You can also opt for software like Help Shift, which lets you help your customers straight from your app instead of asking them to switch to your website.
Using software like that, you can make it easy for your customers to chat with your CS or find the solution to their problems themselves.
If you’re someone who has a company app, in-app content is the way to go.
Public Engineer Documents
Another fantastic way to share your insights and information with your customers is to allow them access to your engineer documentation.
If you don’t already use software with this feature, you’re probably uploading your files to a file-sharing platform or sending them via email. However, these options aren’t exactly the best.
Neither file-sharing platforms nor emails have to be secure, which means they’re a potential threat if you’re sharing confidential data.
Moreover, it’s so easy to make a mistake and send an email to the wrong person, thus allowing them insight into confidential information not meant for them.
This scenario is more than probable, according to Tessian's research. The company found that more than half of the employees have sent emails to the wrong person.
Is that something you want to risk with sensitive information?
Furthermore, with such solutions, you risk having multiple versions of the files because you sent them to different customers over time.
When there is an update or a tweak, you should resend the files to all customers.
Therefore, the easiest way to share necessary documentation with your customers would be through your documentation software.
You can upload the files with all your other documentation with such software, like Archbee.
If you think the general public should have access to some of them, you can publish them.
On the other hand, you can only allow access to visitors who have the page link or whose email you’ve manually entered into the system. After all, not everyone should see specific files.
With these options, you can have a central data source that your team uses, including some files that your customers need access to, such as product documentation, troubleshooting features, updates page, and whatever else you think might help them.
FAQ Page
A frequently asked questions (FAQ) page is one of the most common ways to inform customers about your product and help them troubleshoot.
Most companies with websites offer some form of an FAQ where they respond to questions their customers or potential customers usually ask.
FAQs are a great way of informing customers of how your product works and how to get the most out of it while also diverting traffic from your CS team.
After all, you need your team to help customers with issues that can’t be solved by simple troubleshooting.
So, the best way to do that is to offer the solution to minor problems or explain the things that usually confuse clients.
Canva, whose help center is one of the best, offers an FAQ page. You can find it on the homepage of their Help Centre.
If you browse the “Fix a problem” category, you’ll see the most frequently asked questions from the seven major categories related to Canva’s services and features.
Each category offers the most frequent questions, but you can use the “see all” button to see even more questions customers might have about using Canva.
In this way, the company makes it easy for its users to find the answers they are looking for, thus saving time.
When wondering what to add to your FAQ page, definitely consult your CS team or the people responsible for talking to customers.
They will know what type of questions your clients have and what answers to give them.
Chatbots
If you want to keep your customers comfortable and informed, allow them to chat to your chatbot.
Chatbots aren’t exactly a novelty in customer communications.
Business Insider reports that 40% of Internet users prefer talking to them over real CS agents, which should be enough that you should tap into the chatbot potential.
This software lets you automate at least a part of your customer service responsibilities and free up some time for your CS staff.
Gartner's research found that organizations saw a 70% decrease in customer calls and tickets after implementing artificial intelligence to help customers.
It’s easy to see why that’s the case.
When you use a chatbot assistant and train it to respond to questions, the software will give the customers answers to those simple, everyday questions instead of your team.
If the chatbot can’t help the customers, they should be able to talk to a real person, too.
The Zendesk report reveals that more than half of customers find chatbots annoying because of the number of questions they have to ask to get transferred to an agent.
So, it would be good to offer this option early on.
For example, Chatbot shows how quickly the AI offers customers an option of contacting support, i.e., talking to a real agent.
Of course, the tool also offers another action the customer can take to solve their issue, which is resetting the password in this case.
While browsing Chatbot’s website, you can also talk to one yourself and test it out.
The best thing about this technology is that you can usually insert links in responses the chatbot sends to your customers.
So, if a user has a question about a specific feature of your product or service, the chatbot can answer but also offer a link to an article that covers that question in case someone needs more details.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a pretty standard way to keep your customer base informed.
Newsletters are bulk emails you send to clients. Usually, companies use them to promote their products and inform clients about upcoming sales and events.
But, you don’t have to use this platform solely for marketing. You can send information on essential updates or share knowledge with your customers.
For example, if your app gets some new features, your newsletter can serve as a way to explain what these features entail, how they can benefit your users, and how they can start using them.
Grammarly sent out a newsletter to its subscribers when the app became available for Microsoft Word on Man and Word Online.
The email was short and straightforward since its primary goal was to explain that subscribers could now use the app on more devices.
The email also explained how Grammarly worked and linked a couple of articles for additional reading.
So, if you opt for a newsletter as your knowledge-sharing platform, ensure that your emails are to the point.
Nobody wants to waste ten minutes reading an email that doesn’t say much in the end. Lead in with what is new, and link additional resources at the end of the email.
Your newsletters don’t have to revolve around updates.
When Zendesk published a new yearly report on customer experience, they notified their subscribers over email, offering a couple of notable stats to attract attention.
Customers interested in the report could click on the “Get the report” button in the email and read the entire thing.
The email contains eight sentences, three of which are statistics from the report.
Therefore, Zendesk managed to notify customers of something new in just five sentences, actively garnering attention without wasting those not interested in the latest findings too much time.
Speaking about newsletters, you can subscribe to our Archbee blog weekly Newsletter!
SMS
SMS might seem a bit outdated, but it is still one of the most personalized ways to contact a customer and ensure the information gets to them.
After all, we all read SMS messages. It’s mainly because we don’t get so many, so they’re more effective than emails. People get many emails a day, meaning they could miss yours.
SMS is a different story, according to eMarketer’s SMS Marketing Report. The report has found that most customers have opened a text from a business.
An additional 43% texted a business themselves, which just shows SMS is nowhere near done being a good communication channel.
Customers not only open SMS from companies but reach out to them using the same platform.
Whenever there is an update you want to share with your customer base, you can send them a short message explaining what the update is about and link a KB article or a webpage that gives more details on what’s new.
Anyone interested in that specific update will know where to look for information.
Supergoop!, a skincare brand that stresses the importance of sunscreen, does a great job at educating customers through SMS.
Those subscribed to this platform got a 15% discount on the website.
The company’s Sun 101 series provided information on why sunscreen is so important for the skin and how to select the right product for your skin type.
Each text included a short article description and a link for those who wanted to read the article.
When you have a product update, you can use the same strategy and announce it through texts, especially if it’s something that directly impacts most of your client base.
Conclusion
Sharing knowledge with your customers is a must-have in this day and age.
Your clients expect to have access to data that helps them use your product and service, and you can decide how to do that.
Besides the usual customer service agent method, you can pick any platform that best suits your company.
The best thing about sharing knowledge is that you don’t have to limit yourself to just one of these platforms.
For example, you can have a knowledge base to share product documentation and host a self-service help center, including an FAQ page.
On top of that, you can also contact customers via SMS and newsletters if you have something important to share.
Offering your customers different ways of accessing knowledge about your product will strengthen your relationship with them and reduce churn.
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