5 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself before Choosing a Knowledge Base Creation Tool
Sohaib Qaiser
Aiding Organizations address their Knowledge Management Needs | Technical Writing | Online Help Center | Knowledge Base | Release Notes | Product Documentation
Rapid advancements in the Information Technology (IT) sector, especially the inception of SaaS products, have made rapid release cycles a norm. As a result, the need for an effective and updated product knowledge base has magnified. Talking about a new product, the need for a knowledge base usually arises a couple of weeks before the product goes live. At this time, I have seen numerous business owners worried while they are on the lookout for a technical writer to work some magic and have the knowledge base up and running in a fortnight.
In order to create an effective help center, you need to follow a set of best practices. However, before documenting anything, the selection of the best-suited knowledge base tool is imperative as it sets the tone for how the whole process would go in the long-run. Taking into consideration my own experience with the business owners at this point, here are 5 questions you need to ask yourself while choosing the ideal KB creation tool.
1. What Level of Integration does the Tool Offer?
To ensure all features of your SaaS product run in a seamless manner along with convenient access to the help center, you need to look for an all-in-one solution. Once the product is live, you need a ticketing system to address the concerns of the customers as well as handle onboarding queries. At the same time, you do not want your customer success department to be overburdened by the customer queries. Therefore, an all-in-one solution does not only allow you to create a help center and ticketing system at the same time, but also offers intelligent chatbots (Finn by Intercom) to crawl through the help center content and pull up relevant articles based on keywords in the customer query. Some great options in this regard include:
2. What Level of Access Control is on the Offer?
Access control also comes as an important aspect of the knowledge base. A SaaS product with a help center accessible to everyone would defeat the purpose of subscription-based billing. Moreover, if your product deals with the healthcare or finance sector, you have to stay compliant (HIPAA, SOX) at all costs. Therefore, you need to make sure that the knowledge base is only visible to the subscribers of the product and the potential leads can schedule a demo. Tools that offer such level of access control include:
3. Can I Create Multiple Knowledge Bases?
This is one of the most important phases of knowledge base creation. Features offered by a SaaS product often vary for different types of users. For instance, if your product is meant for the academia, the features accessible to the students and the faculty members would be different. This is where the ability to create multiple knowledge bases comes in handy. If available, you can configure each help center to be visible to the desired audience.
Additionally, this feature also helps when you are offering different features to different clients. Most of the renowned SaaS products offer customized packages with the chosen set of features. In this way, you can train their users on the available functionalities, easing navigation as well. Some of the options you can opt in this regard include:
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4. Can I Create a Multilingual Knowledge Base?
This question comes into play when you are operating in a specific region and planning to expand. I have seen business owners having an existing knowledge base in a different language and wanting to create an additional version in English. For this to be done, you need a tool capable enough to create the new version without compromising the existing one. A wide range of tools offer multilingual support, but some of the renowned names in this regard include:
5. How Easy is the Tool to Operate?
This question is directed towards your in-house knowledge base creation team of technical writers. From a writer's perspective, quality of a knowledge base creation tool is directly proportional to the ease of use it has to offer. For instance, a tool named Tawk.to does not allow you to copy the image from your snipping tool and directly paste it into the editor. As a result, you have to save each screen on your local storage and then upload them individually in the specified image blocks. The burnout caused by creating a knowledge base with 5-600 screens this way is hard to fathom! Moreover, it does not have the auto-save feature and in case you are finishing up an article and there is an internet connectivity issue, you will have to do it again.
Considering the ease of use, some of the tools I have really liked include:
Summing it Up
Knowledge management is undoubtedly an integral part of the release cycle. Effective creation and maintenance of a knowledge base significantly brings down the burden customer success has to face, allowing them to engage in more intricate tasks. Each release cycle requires someone to document the release notes that could bridge the gap between the technology implemented in your product and a non-tech customer. With each passing day, more and more tools are coming to the fore, aiding the coverage of product workflows. What started with simple MS Word documents has now moved towards power-packed tools like Intercom and digital adoption platforms like WalkMe. Considering the breakthroughs in AI, the number of available tools is only expected to increase, making knowledge management more convenient.