A new look for a new era of customer service.

Hi there,

We hope you like the new look around here – it’s just the beginning of a fresh design you’ll be seeing more of in the coming weeks.?

But it’s far from the only thing that’s changing. There is so much transformation happening in the customer service space it can feel hard to keep up, so you will not want to miss our forthcoming event on?April 10th at 5.30pm BST / 12.30pm EDT / 9.30am PDT.

Sign up here ?to join our CEO Eoghan McCabe as he shares some big news about our latest AI breakthrough. In this 15-minute, action-packed broadcast, you’ll learn how we’re evolving our entire platform to make things easier for your customers, your agents, and your support managers.

Central to this period of change is the support content you create. All of us who work in customer service know the importance of knowledge management – the creation and upkeep of all that information that enables us to provide support to our customers.

Time to prioritize knowledge

It’s always been important in the support world, and most companies that offer online support will have some sort of a knowledge base or help center. And it’s only getting more important with the rise of AI support tools, which mine those resources for the information it serves up as answers.?

But when you talk with support leaders about how they have prioritized managing their knowledge base over the years, most of them admit that it’s really hard to set aside time to make sure it’s properly maintained.?

Which makes sense. When you’re constantly firefighting and tackling support queues, carving out time to do other things like create help content can feel costly. Every time you take people off queues, your SLAs, SLOs, or response times are going to be affected.?

On the other hand, your help content is a key source of information for your customers, your team, and now AI as well, so it’s really important to invest time in it. It’s a careful balancing act, and something we’ve talked about a lot on the Intercom Support team.

Best practices for your help content

For us personally, this new era of AI-driven customer service – and our AI agent, Fin – have been a forcing function for us to make that trade-off. AI will only ever be as good as the information that it has to work with, so in order to truly take advantage of all the benefits it has to offer, we need to focus on its power source – our help content.

In terms of finding the “right” balance, we’re still figuring things out. But we’ve seen just how powerful Fin can be when it’s fed good information. Fin has proven that the short-term trade-off is worth it for the long-term gain.

If you’re not sure where to even begin with getting your help content ready for AI, here are a few tips based on what we’ve learned so far to help you get started.

Consolidate content sources

• Where possible, centralize all help content to minimize the number of places that information needs to be audited and updated.?

Identify any gaps in your knowledge base

• Audit your content to ensure all of the information in your knowledge base is accurate and up to date.
• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes – search for answers to common questions to understand if new content needs to be created.?

Optimize your content for humans and AI

• Structure your knowledge base so it’s easy for humans to find their way around.
• Use clear and concise language so it’s easy for AI to understand.

Learn and adapt as you go

• Regularly review how effectively AI is using your knowledge base content to resolve customer issues.
• Identify gaps where AI might be struggling to answer questions and create content to bridge those gaps.
• Set up feedback loops with your team and customers and use this feedback to refine and adjust your knowledge base content.?

Foster a culture of shared knowledge management

• Make knowledge management a shared responsibility and cultivate a company culture that recognizes its importance.
• Get input from other teams – like product, engineering, sales, and marketing – to help you create new content and keep existing content up to date.
• Establish a system where teammates from across the company can flag outdated content or suggest additions.

It’s clear that knowledge management is going to play an increasingly large role as AI drives innovation in how companies support their customers. To learn more about all this, be sure to catch our major announcement on April 10th to discover how we’re fundamentally reimagining customer service.

Look forward to seeing you there!

If you’d like to read more top tips, actionable advice, and industry trends, follow our newsletter right here or sign up here to get The Ticket newsletter delivered in full to your inbox every other Wednesday.

Product announcement:

On April 10th, we’re announcing something big. There’s a new way to do support. Join us live on LinkedIn .

What we’ve been up to:

What's happening in customer service?