The consequence of information chaos is not just frustrating—they’re expensive. This is just one of the many reasons why knowledge base software solutions have soared to popularity. In this digital era, where information is king, having the right tools can make all the difference.
Imagine the resources (time, money, energy) wasted just because your team has to sift through scattered data before answering customers’ questions. According to a study, heavy workload is one of the reasons why 74% of customer support agents risk burnout. Worst of all, poor customer service drive most brand switches according to research from Qualtrics.
So think about it: Can your business afford dissatisfied customers and overworked support agents?
If that’s a solid no, you would want to have exceptional and efficient customer service. A team with a well-organized repository of information to assist them—the very role of a knowledge base software.
In this blog, it’s time to learn more about the transformative power of a knowledge base software. Know more about its role in empowering customers and organizing support teams. Plus, we’ll also go through our top ten recommendations.
What is a knowledge base software?
A knowledge base software is a digital repository that stores and organizes company information usually about the product, services, and processes.
Think of it as a digital treasure chest where your team can store, organize, and easily retrieve all the gems of information needed to ace customer service. That’s the essence of a knowledge base software—a robust solution designed to empower your customers and customer service teams with the right information at their fingertips.
Interestingly, the primary benefit of a knowledge base software is to empower customers who prefer self-service. However, customer service teams also use it to provide faster and more consistent support. Other internal teams also use it as a knowledge-sharing hub for additional resources and updates.
Most knowledge bases are accessible to the public, but it’s often managed by only a few contributors. Here’s what the digital library usually consists of:
- guides on how to use products or services
- FAQs
- tutorials
- documentation of company policies and procedures
- compliance and legal information
One point of clarification is that the knowledge base is different from a help desk. The only thing in common is that both are used by support agents.
Technically, knowledge bases are like libraries of company resources that anyone can visit. On the other hand, a help desk is where the customer support action happens—the place where your team actually interacts with customers to answer inquiries and support tickets.
Though a knowledge base software is viewed as a static resource for information (and a true testament to organizational knowledge), it dynamically contributes to elevating customer satisfaction and streamlining internal processes.
Here are six ways that illustrate how knowledge base software and knowledge management solutions (including internal knowledge bases and external knowledge bases) benefits companies:
1. It empowers customers to solve their queries independently.
Your knowledge base is housed on your website and acts as customer self service hub. If they have minor queries, the customer knowledge base software contains answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) so they can find answers without reaching out to your support team.
The truth is, 70% of customers prefer to get answers on a company’s website than by phone or email. This is a win-win situation for both customers and support agents: customers can quickly get their answers, and support agents can prioritize more complex queries that can’t be found in the knowledge base.
2. It also empowers internal teams.
Knowledge is power, after all. Knowledge base solutions empower not just your customers, but your customer service teams as well. Build them up to be the heroes your customers deserve.
With a knowledge base tool at their fingertips, they become experts, ready to tackle any inquiry or challenge that comes their way.
3. It enables users to resolve issues promptly.
If a customer encounters an unexpected error while using your product, they can quickly find a detailed troubleshooting guide thanks to your customer facing knowledge bases. That way, instead of waiting for traditional customer support channels, they can just diagnose and resolve common technical issues within minutes.
Additionally, 51% of users actually prefer a knowledge base for technical support—so this adds to the reasons why setting up one is a good move.
4. It’s available 24/7.
Yes, one of the major benefits of a knowledge base software is that it allows customers to access it any time of the day—24 hours, seven days a week. The 24/7 accessibility of the knowledge base is far more than useful for global users too.
Of course, inquiries range from simple to complex ones. Customers with inquiries that can easily be solved with information from the knowledge base will be satisfied.
However, for businesses that cater to a global audience, there might be a few very complicated issues that may arise in the middle of the night when your support agents are away. Here’s where outsourcing a 24/7 customer service team can come in and complement your existing knowledge bases.
5. It lessens support tickets.
It’s the domino effect of empowering customers to self-serve. If they can solve it alone, there will be a substantial reduction in support tickets—effectively rendering the ticketing system to be more efficient.
Overall, a knowledge base software can help alleviate the support team’s workload by helping them focus their time and energy on more complex and unique issues that truly require their technical expertise more.
6. It centralizes business information.
Even if you’re not in the customer service team, you can also benefit from customer facing online knowledge base tools.
The most comprehensive knowledge bases are for company sharing of information and it serves as the central repository to promote consistency across departments and to avoid sifting through various documents and systems.
7. It’s good for institutional memory preservation.
This is about an organization’s way of documenting its knowledge, best practices, history, and even culture so they are readily transferable to new team members.
What happens if a key team member leaves the organization? With robust company internal knowledge base software, the insights, strategies, and lessons learned are not lost. The internal knowledge base software then becomes an instrument for storing existing company knowledge, detailed product specs, change logs, known issues, relevant articles, archive of customer queries, and workarounds.
The top 10 best knowledge base software we recommend
The benefits discussed above are not just hypothetical. They’re the real and tangible rewards waiting for your team.
The question is not whether you need a knowledge base software, but rather, which one will you choose to unlock these transformative advantages? Let’s dive into our top 10 recommendations and find the perfect match for your business needs
By now, we have already cemented that the right knowledge base software solutions can definitely aid your customer support team in delivering exceptional assistance.
However, choosing which platform to use can be overwhelming—especially with the many knowledge base software providers available to choose from.
To help, we’ve compiled this list of the top 10 knowledge base tools worth recommending.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service software that comes with a knowledge base solution. Its user-friendly interface allows agents to manage customer queries without direct interaction. Agents basically act as managers and experts, actively ensuring that the knowledge base and help center are always up to date and valuable.
This means that common articles like frequently asked questions, product details, and policies can be accessed easily by customers without having to send an email or make a call.
Key features:
- knowledge base tools are easy to use and customize to fit your help center themes
- built-in AI-powered tools help uncover customer needs and suggest new articles to fill knowledge gaps and make sure existing articles are up to date
- has a collaboration tool so the customer support team can collectively create, review, approve, and publish relevant information for self service
- acts as a multilingual knowledge base with the ability to localize content in over 40 languages
Price: Free trial is available but paid plans start at $55/agent/month payable annually.
2. Freshdesk
The Freshdesk knowledge base software is best known for helping customers help themselves—so it helps enhance customer self service processes.
With this tool, content management becomes a breeze for your team of support agents and technical writers. As a result, customers are empowered to find answers on their own, which reduces the need to create tickets for every minor query.
Key features:
- comes with a ready-to-use rich text editor for structuring your content and answers better
- lets you create pre-filled templates so you can create articles like how-tos, user guides, and FAQ pages for both external and internal knowledge management
- can convert ticket replies into knowledge base articles
Price: Freemium plan available for up to 10 agents; paid plans starts at $15/agent/month billed annually
3. HubSpot
Among the HubSpot customer platforms, the knowledge base functionality is included in the Service Hub. Using this feature, you can easily create a knowledge base system with help articles and organize them into categories and subcategories. You can even tag them with relevant tags and advanced search capabilities.
Key features:
- allows you to organize and preview your knowledge base articles
- automatically records which articles customers have already viewed, so your team never sends them the same thing
- comes with a built-in reporting dashboard that measures the impact of your content and how much the knowledge base software helps
Price: Professional plan with the knowledge base feature starts at $450 billed annually and includes five paid users.
4. Confluence
Confluence is a team knowledge base software that helps employees stay informed with the entire company’s information. In all honesty, Confluence shines as both a knowledge base software and documentation repository.
The organized space structure and advanced search capabilities make it the central source of truth for companies with documentation & product requirements.
Since this is a product by Atlassian, Confluence integrates seamlessly with their suite of products including Jira and Trello.
Key features:
- the powerful search functionality makes for easy information discovery based on an intuitive hierarchy of content
- lets you create and organize unlimited content for your team.
- comes with permission settings to keep employees fully accessible to the information they need, while sharing and protecting sensitive information.
Price: It is a free knowledge base software for up to 10 users; paid plans for 11-15 users costs $900 per year.
5. Help Scout
Help Scout is a central solution for all agents which includes a ticketing system and shareable external knowledge base. One of the best things about Help Scout is it’s very easy to set up and it doesn’t need any coding for managing knowledge base articles.
Key features:
- can build self-service help center in minutes
- with an extensive array of color and formatting options for customization—boost your style with custom CSS.
- has access controls for making the help center articles public, restricted, or authorized to specific users.
Price: Plans start at $20/user/month for an annual subscription.
6. Bloomfire
Bloomfire is a company knowledge base software for professional internal knowledge sharing. A central repository like Bloomfire is necessary to keep knowledge flowing across the organization and to avoid internal silos. In a nutshell, this tool is perfect for teams looking to exchange information in an easy, secure, and process-driven manner.
Key features:
- centralized database for storing and retrieving digital knowledge
- document management system features manage your entire digital library in one location.
- has conversational AI so users can just ask questions, and the AI-powered worker locates the answer in your knowledge base
Price: Offers 30-day free trial then fixed monthly rate (you must schedule a free consultation for pricing)
7. Stack Overflow for Teams
Stack Overflow for Teams is another knowledge base product for technical information sharing at an organization level. With this tool, businesses empower employees to be creative, participative, and always willing to learn. The impressive result? Even your most junior support team member can hit the ground running fast and resolve tickets a lot faster.
Key features:
- central hub for up-to-date technical and expert knowledge
- enables employees to upvote questions to indicate that they found the question useful
- gamify the knowledge base to make it fun for your team to collaborate
Price: Free for up to 50 members
8. Yext
Yext is a knowledge base and live chat software for managing everything customer support-related. It’s a central repository for answering support questions even before they become support tickets.
The tool’s self-service solutions empower customers to find instant answers to their questions via FAQs, guides, tutorials, videos, ebooks, manuals, and more. Also, its AI technology—Yext chatbots—helps to effectively solve complex questions that used to be complicated for bots.
Key features:
- lets you track customer questions and results
- supports document search to better serve your customers by searching long documents
- AI search technology powers chatbots to better support self-serve solutions
Price: You can schedule your personal demo to get started
9. Guru
Guru is an easy-to-use company knowledge base software. With Guru, the support team gets a single source of truth to centralize help resources, troubleshooting guides, and learnings from company experts. This is one powerful platform that combines enterprise AI search, employee intranet, and company wiki. All customer issues can easily be resolved using the tool because you can easily search keywords that can help deliver the best resolution.
Key features:
- AI-powered drafting, editing, translating, and improving content
- problem-solving guides and solutions built from past customer and agent interactions
- enterprise-grade governance, including permissions, revision history, and admin-only access
Price: It’s free to try, but a paid subscription starts at $10/user/month
10. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is a knowledge base platform where customers can easily search through the help articles before submitting a ticket. If your customers require help 24/7, having a website-integrated knowledge base makes life much easier.
So, if these customers need service at any given time, they can simply search for a search widget in the customer portal. Plus knowledge base lets you document everything online, which makes the response time of your agents faster.
Key features:
- search box to help customers locate answers or specific topics within your knowledge base
- supports both internal and external knowledge-sharing
- user-friendly dashboard
Price: Trial is free, but paid plans start at $9/agent/month per year
How to look for the right knowledge base software for your business
Choosing the perfect knowledge base software for your business can be time-consuming and complicated. After all, the decision-making process requires a thoughtful evaluation of several key criteria.
So, here are some questions you can ask yourself first to ensure that you choose the solution which fits your business needs.
Does it come with all your needed features?
First, check if the knowledge base software you’re leaning towards to has the key features (creating knowledge base articles, search functionality, support tags, or taxonomies) you need. Then see if the secondary features can also help you—some have ready-made templates for self service knowledge bases, version control, and customizable themes.
Is it within your budget?
Clearly define your budget for the knowledge base software. Take into account both upfront costs and ongoing expenses—including potential scale-up costs. Things to consider when it comes to finalizing your budget include non-negotiable features, integrations with your current tools, and how many seats for your team you need to get.
Can your team use it right away?
Often, anything new can be met with resistance. Team members accustomed to traditional methods may resist adopting a knowledge base. The key? Clear communication on the benefits, hands-on training, and showcasing how the knowledge base makes their lives easier.
Opt for a knowledge base tool with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It ensures that both content contributors and end users can navigate the site and content easily. Additionally, plan out a smooth transition and tutorial for your team to familiarize themselves with the SaaS knowledge base software.
Can the help center match your brand style?
Look for a knowledge management system or software that allows customization of the customer facing parts so you can customize it to match your brand’s aesthetics. Themes, custom colors, and customizing your knowledge base to fit your business’s requirements are essential to keep the customer experience smooth and seamless.
Is it compatible with your current tech stack?
Ensure that the comprehensive knowledge base software can seamlessly integrate with your existing tools. That way, you can maximize the value of your tech stack.
Let’s say you are already using customer support platforms, CRM systems, or even project management tools. Check if there are native integrations that will allow you to seamlessly connect your knowledge base software to keep your team’s workflow smooth and efficient.
Tap into the power of the best knowledge base software for optimal customer-centric solutions
Customer service teams can greatly benefit from the right knowledge base software. First, self service tools empower customers. Then, if and when human agents are needed, the digital library equips them to deliver prompt, accurate, and consistent solutions to customers.
Our hand-picked list of recommended knowledge base software above is meant to elevate the customer service experience by promoting a top-tier environment for self service.
Are you looking to make the most of knowledge base software? Partner it with first-class customer service from real people. Book a consultation with LTVplus, where a dedicated customer service team can expertly manage multiple knowledge bases and complement these tools with their expert customer support delivery. Reach out today!
