A poor knowledge base can cause more chaos than not having one in the first place. The chaos can look like –
Repetitive questions. Outdated information. Data silos. Costly errors.
In this guide, we’ll share knowledge base best practices, real-life examples, and expert insights to make finding information a breeze at your company.
Getting your knowledge base right is like solving a really big jigsaw puzzle. There are hundreds of pieces that need to come together. You can either get right into it or lay out a plan.
It’s a no-brainer as to what we would suggest.
Here’s a game plan to start with. A well-defined customer support strategy is crucial to ensure the knowledge base meets the needs of both customers and support teams.
You don’t want to create a knowledge base that’s just noise. To create one that your team benefits from, first understand their requirements. The best way is to let the team or project head take the initiative as they know the in-and-out of their team or project.
Here are some starting questions:
Most companies make the mistake of adding all sorts of information to their knowledge base. The result is employees getting overwhelmed when they see large walls of never-ending text.
Instead, imagine yourself as a new hire on your team.
Say, a content writer. Think of everything you would require to write your first article. This could include details on the ideal customer profile (ICP), key features, competitor differentiation, guidelines, tone and voice instructions, and relevant links to example articles.
For example, I received this one-stop knowledge base for writing my first article for Slite.
It was a welcome change. Because I did not have to open five Google Docs and read through everything. All the details were in one tab.
Pro-tip: Make a list of all topics for the knowledge base articles. For each topic, ask yourself, “Does my team require this?” Eliminate everything that pops up a “Maybe” in your mind. The best part about a knowledge base is you can always come around to add new sections if your team keeps asking for the same details.
Design your knowledge base in a way that your team can easily get answers. Below are three common structures:
Whitney Blankenship, senior content marketing manager at Modash, talks about how she structures her knowledge base, “For a lot of my documentation, I go through things step by step. I think this is a helpful, A-Z style of doing things. For example, I have each step laid out in tutorial style so that anyone can pick this up and do the task with little to no involvement from me.
For resources, I use the table of contents feature, and I format the process’ main points in H2. I think this helps with navigation, and getting to where I need to go quicker.”
If you’re unsure of the structure, just use our AI-powered wiki generator that will provide a tailor-made structure after asking you a few questions. P.S. It’s free.
Your team should not be left with additional questions after going through articles in the knowledge base.
Here are 3 best practices (with examples) to create documentation for your knowledge base. Additionally, it is important to optimize knowledge base articles by implementing SEO best practices to improve visibility in search engines.
You’re writing for your entire team. Your docs can be read by anyone, ranging from your manager to your CEO to the design intern. How do you write in a way that all these people - with different contexts, job roles, and functions - still get it?
Here are four tips we recommend:
Here’s how Instagram’s helpdesk gives a sneak peek into the Reels section at the top. The structure is easy on the eyes, and users can view more information by clicking on the collapsed sections.
Here’s a step-by-step example from Dropbox’s help desk.
For example, all of us are familiar with the bell icon for notifications. WhatsApp still shows the icons in their helpdesk to make things easier to understand.
Picture this: Your team creates detailed SEO briefs for each article. Each brief has multiple sections to ensure minimal edits and better rankings. Instead of creating these briefs from scratch, the SEO head can save time and deliver information in a consistent style to writers.
More importantly, it ensures key sections are never missed or omitted.
That’s why having templates for set processes is crucial.
You can either start with ready-made templates or create your own and set them as default for recurring tasks or docs.
65% of people are visual learners, with the brain processing images 60,000 faster than text. In fact, the first thing people see while skimming through content are images.
At Slite, we often use visual elements such as images, videos, and infographics in our helpdesk to guide our audience through the next steps.
You can even convey key information by adding tables and diagrams to your articles. For example, I loved how easy it was to learn about Slite’s unique features through the table provided to me in the knowledge base.
Slite also allows you to create diagrams using the ‘/sketch’ command. It’s perfect for you to create a quick flowchart to explain processes. Or even a quick wireframe to convey your ideas to the design team more carefully.
Creating a user-friendly knowledge base starts with providing a branded feel and accessible design. Your knowledge base should reflect your brand’s personality, using consistent colors, fonts, and logos to create a cohesive look. This not only makes the knowledge base visually appealing but also reinforces your brand identity.
The design should be intuitive, with clear and descriptive labels for categories and subcategories. Use tags and keywords to enhance search functionality, making it easy for users to find the information they need. Organize content in a way that allows for easy skimming, with headings, subheadings, and bullet points to break up large blocks of text.
Accessibility is also key. Ensure that your knowledge base is accessible across all platforms, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. It should be compatible with different operating systems and browsers, ensuring a seamless experience for all users. By focusing on a branded and accessible design, you create a robust knowledge base that meets the needs of your users and enhances their overall experience.
How you organize information in your knowledge base will determine whether your employees can find what they need in 2 minutes or an hour. Here are three knowledge base best practices for content organization. Effective knowledge base management is crucial for organizing and delivering information efficiently to users.
When companies grow rapidly, keeping track of internal documents and communication can get messy. The same happened with Commsor, a platform for community leaders.
That’s when they turned to Slite. The first thing they did was structure their workspace.
Here’s how you can get inspired from their structure:
Your knowledge base will likely have hundreds of documents or articles. To keep your sidebar or panes clutter-free, utilize tags. For example, you’re running multiple social media campaigns in the marketing channel. Mark these documents as “SM Campaigns”.
This helps filter and find relevant articles related to the campaigns swiftly.
By creating a collection in Slite, you can house all documents related to social media campaigns in one place. You can even set fields for the collection, summarizing each document at the top.
When you have a large number of documents in your knowledge base, many will slip through the cracks without proper linking. The same happened with Commsor.
"When you're five, eight people, communication just kind of happens," Mac , Commsor’s CEO, reflected on their early use of Notion. By the time the team expanded into various departments, they had a knowledge management problem. "We were realizing we'd created this sprawling mess of documents that were not connected. I kept calling them 'orphan documents.' If you lost the link, that document was gone forever."
One way to solve this is to place doc cards in Slite. This helps users quickly reference related content and improves the overall usability of your documentation.
For example, here’s how we linked to our article on creating a great doc in “Adding content to your knowledge base section.”
If Mary from the development team has to go through 10 pages to find what she requires, would she use it again? Or would she prefer to text her colleague because it’s the faster option?
To avoid this, here’s what we recommend. Using knowledge base software can significantly enhance accessibility and functionality, ensuring users can easily find the information they need.
In 2015, companies used an average of 8 SaaS tools. This number grew to 130 in 2022. This shows that teams already have their hands full with a large tech stack. You don’t need to overwhelm them with multiple knowledge base platforms.
Instead of making them jump from Google Docs to Excel, house everything on one platform.
But that’s not all. Here are four tips to make finding content easier:
Every department in your organization will have multiple docs and sub-docs. For example, HR may have company policies, how-to guides, new hire modules, employee benefits, performance tracking guides, etc.
Instead of letting your employees toggle through all this information, provide a search function that reduces frustration and downtime.
Agorapulse, a social media management software, houses all their data on Slite.
“All our discovery insights, our roadmap, communication documents are on Slite. Everything we do is on Slite. Slite is really the big repository of all our documentation."
Their team then leverages the search functionality – the “Ask” function in Slite.
For example, during the sales process, prospective customers naturally want to know why Agorapulse is the right choice to buy. This is where Ask comes in.
Because they have all their competitive intelligence on Slite, all the SDR needs to do is go to Slite and Ask, “Hey, why do we win versus Hootsuite?” or “Why are we better than Buffer?” With one click, Slite surfs the competitive intelligence information and gets them an answer to this question.
Learning style indicates how a person prefers to absorb, process, and retain information. While some of your employees may prefer reading, some may prefer getting information through a quick visual.
For example, you can explain an issue resolution process in steps (text) and through visuals (pictures). To create easy-to-understand visuals for processes, you can resort to tools like Miro and Figma.
One format that is less popular for knowledge bases but equally impactful is video.
Videos are best for explaining lengthy processes, providing step-by-step instructions, and showcasing examples.
Here’s an example from Spotify’s helpdesk.
Shyamal Parikh, SmartTask’s CEO, talks about the benefit of using videos in their knowledge base, “We use videos extensively in our product channel in the knowledge base. We can show them the different features instead of asking them to read and understand at the level of the author. Not only does it help grasp complex topics easily, we have also seen our employees engage more with videos and retain that information.”
If your product, service, or processes change, so should your knowledge base. Otherwise, you can cause confusion, lead your team to make mistakes and waste time.
Here are three ways to keep content fresh and updated. Support teams play a crucial role in maintaining and updating the knowledge base to ensure it remains relevant and accurate.
To enhance accountability and streamline the review process, you need clearly defined roles. For example, you wouldn’t want employees to edit your templates or key policies mistakenly.
Appoint a knowledge manager who establishes clear guidelines on what makes quality content. This may include criteria for clarity, accuracy, and relevance. This guideline should also detail how contributors should submit content for review to document owners before final additions or edits.
In Slite, you get a comprehensive dashboard showing which documents are outdated, need verification, and have been empty or unread for a long time.
The document owner can then check the documents requiring action, update them, and reset the verification.
Running a knowledge base is not a solo task. Even if you have a knowledge manager who makes all the important decisions, that person may not be an expert in all fields. Thus, we recommend assigning ownership to project/team heads for their respective channels.
Say, the marketing head as the owner of the marketing channel.
This person will be responsible for reviews, updates, and optimizing the content in their channel.
By encouraging team contributions, you get your team to keep referring and using the knowledge base. To encourage contributions, actively reach out to your team and ask them:
This gets them involved, and you can then encourage them to add/edit information to the documents. Let the document owner then review these changes and finalize the document.
Many employees will still turn to Slack or reach out to colleagues to ask questions that can easily be answered through the knowledge base. The only way to solve this is by actively promoting your knowledge base.
Here are three ways to do that.
Let's rewind a few years. We were using the basic text messaging app on our phones. Would we have continued using it? Definitely.
Things changed. WhatsApp came into the picture. Instant messages, group chat, location sharing, and the ability to send voice messages. They made a solid case for switching to this app. Today, it is used by almost 3 billion people.
That’s how you need to introduce the knowledge base to your team. Instead of portraying it as a thing they “should” use, portray it as a thing they “can’t do without.”
How?
When Alex Wiley, OneUp’s Head of Product, first started with Slite, he hosted a lunch-and-learn to show fellow employees why to use a knowledge base and how to document their work. In his words, “When people saw how docs could save time, and prevent people from asking the same questions over and over again, they were sold.”
Imagine this. An employee raises a question about the leave policy in your Slack group.
Scenario A: Someone from the HR team answers the question.
Scenario B: Someone from the team shares the link to the doc in the knowledge base.
In which scenario do you think the knowledge base would be adopted more? Scenario B, right? That’s because you direct your team to those documents every chance you get.
Rithvik Harikumar, account manager at Peoplebox, professes the same, “We prioritize promoting knowledge usage in every interaction. When an employee or customer has a question, we include a link to our help documentation in our responses. After onboarding, we provide a curated set of links for customers to share internally. Additionally, all admins and employees are informed about our help library during their training and introduction to our tool.”
Slite fits naturally into your daily workflows by integrating with Slack. You can ask any question on Slack by mentioning “@slite” and get exact answers with citations. Here’s an example.
You can find areas for improvement by collecting user feedback on your knowledge base. It could be team heads who ask their teams or knowledge managers running a survey throughout the organization.
Make this survey as simple and short as possible so more employees participate.
Ask them what’s missing or what could be improved upon. Inculcate this feedback and keep optimizing your documents.
Running a knowledge base isn’t a one-time activity. You constantly want to gauge success and improve it. Here are two best practices for this.
How do you check if your teams are actually using and benefitting from the knowledge base? Check quantitative metrics. Here are a few we use at Slite.
Let’s assume your analytics point out that the customer support docs are rarely viewed. This insight is of no use if you don’t dig deeper and find out why.
There could be plenty of reasons—outdated documents, limited information, questions answered by teammates, or difficulty finding information.
You can survey the team to figure out the exact reason. For example, you discovered that it takes too much time to find information. Next, you can improve the structure, put in search functionality, and archive unwanted docs to provide a clean layout.
Hours saved every day turn into months saved every year. And an up-and-running knowledge base is one way to make this possible.
It’s equally rewarding for employees looking for information as it is for customers looking for quick and effective support.
If you’re just beginning your knowledge base journey, we recommend sticking to one platform and creating a few articles to get started. Build on that content by following the best practices mentioned above.
Before you take the plunge, take Slite for a free spin and discover how a modern knowledge base works.
Nidhi Parikh is a SaaS content strategist and writer who helps B2B companies tell compelling product stories. Her work has been featured in leading tech publications including Mention, Mailmodo, and SendX, where she specializes in writing about productivity, collaboration, and business growth.
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