In the ever-evolving digital workplace, Microsoft's suite of software stands as a beacon for organizations seeking efficient knowledge management solutions. This blog explores the Microsoft technology for knowledge bases, providing valuable insights for organizations aiming to optimize their knowledge management strategies.
A knowledge base is a library of information about your company, product or service and the questions or issues people might ask about it. A knowledge base allows people to find answers and solve problems on their own so it's an essential part of good customer service, whether your customers are members of the public or internal customers – i.e.; your colleagues.
The best knowledge bases typically include frequently asked questions (FAQs), a user forum, articles, whitepapers, how-to articles, video tutorials, case studies and glossaries.
A knowledge base allows you to create self-service content around recurring questions, issues and themes. It’s important to note that the point of a knowledge base is to help users complete a task or solve a problem. The knowledge in your knowledge base needs to be actionable.
An organization with a call-center or a team of customer service representatives will undoubtedly use a knowledge base to ensure that each customer receives the same information and as an easily navigable database for a wide range of queries. The use case for a knowledge base within a company or B2B environment is perhaps less obvious, but extremely beneficial – and the focus of this blog.
You know the importance of delivering excellent customer service, but when you find yourself inundated with queries, many of them repetitive but essential to the person asking, or many of them easily answered but still preventing you from getting on with your ‘real’ work, it can become frustrating.
Everyone knows customer experience is a major factor when deciding whether to buy from a business. A great online or in-store experience has a ripple effect on the customer’s perception of the company, how likely they are to recommend or review your product or service and become a repeat customer. But your customers can be found within the business too: internal customers could be one team requiring a service from another team. Similarly, a frictionless process for requesting and receiving service within a company can help build cooperative, collaborative personal and inter-departmental relationships.
Another benefit is that knowledge bases help people find answers on their own. Research by Forrester found that most people favor knowledge bases over other self-service channels – probably because people typically want an immediate answer to their question. The best knowledge bases get people to those answers easily and quickly.
The best knowledge bases:
Some common ways to build a knowledge base include:
You could also try mould your current CMS software into a knowledge base. However, if your criteria include scalability and flexibility, you will require a knowledge base solution. Some questions that may help you choose one could be:
As most of our clients – and over a million companies worldwide – have invested in the Microsoft technology stack, Microsoft software is a practical option, so let’s discuss the pros and cons of using SharePoint for your internal knowledge base.
Microsoft Copilot, emerging as a new player in the field, brings AI-powered capabilities to the forefront of knowledge management.
❌ Not a knowledge harvesting tool
❌ Leverages generic information only
❌ No single governance approach across multiple copilots
❌ No control of prioritized knowledge
❌Available only to internal personnel
Read more about Microsoft Copilot in our blog "Everything you need to know about Microsoft 365 Copilot".
How do I build a knowledge base?
The primary function of a knowledge base is to help people self-serve and complete a task or solve a problem. In other words, it needs to be user-friendly and useful.
The structure and design of your knowledge base is critical: it needs to be easy so users can find the information they need on it.
Search and navigation therefore need to be carefully thought out, and the homepage should address key focus areas, by prominently displaying links to content for the most frequently encountered issues, requests or questions. To achieve that you need to understand what drives those requests for content – do people tend to ask for the same information all the time or are there trends and types of questions that come up at certain times or when certain events take place?
You also want to avoid duplicate content otherwise you need to make updates in multiple places. Aim to have one page for each main concept or feature and link to that page from related topics.
Having established your knowledge base navigation and how people will find the content, it’s time to outline how content is added, presented and managed.
Knowledge base articles are educational in intent, so the writing needs to be clear and to the point, and always created with the end user in mind.
Write a clear, descriptive headline – you want to write the ‘label on the can’ so people immediately know what the article is about and how it will help.
Establish a process for how content will be added, by whom and how it will be updated or maintained. Assigning content owners ensures someone is responsible for keeping content current.
Once your knowledge base is built, it needs active management to stay relevant and useful. If it becomes out of date it will lose credibility. Any changes to the company, product or services need to be reflected in the knowledge base immediately.
Provide content that’s relevant and appropriate to your readers. Make articles straightforward, easy to understand and concise – and above all, answer your readers’ questions. Otherwise they’ll simply contact you for clarification which will defeat the purpose of your knowledge base.
As with your website, your knowledge base needs to meet accessibility standards. Fonts and colors need to be clear and easily read. Guide the reader through the article through the use of thoughtful formatting – bullet points, hyperlinks, subheads and short paragraphs.
Make sure your knowledge base can be accessed on any device.
As with your company website, you need to look at how your knowledge base is performing. If people contact you to ask about something that is already on the knowledge base, either your content isn’t sufficiently easy to find or it’s incomplete. And while Atlas comes with analytics that make it easy for you to measure how effective your pages are, you can also include a simple ‘Was this article useful?’ survey at the bottom of a page.
Atlas is the first intelligent knowledge platform specifically designed for Microsoft 365. Integrating intranet, collaboration, and knowledge management with governance and AI, Atlas tackles the critical organizational challenge of improving business productivity by unlocking knowledge within Microsoft 365 and other enterprise systems.
Atlas stands out with its advanced AI features, surpassing the traditional knowledge base approach. These AI integrations offer credible sources of enterprise knowledge, smarter search capabilities and personalized content recommendations, transforming how knowledge is accessed and used in the organization.
Provides structure and curation of subject matter expertise
Manages consistent IA and taxonomy
External data sources can be added to knowledge collection
For those eager to explore further, a plethora of AI and knowledge management blogs and ebooks are available, providing deeper insights and strategies tailored to various industries. Embracing Ai and KM is not just about keeping pace with the digital world; it's about leading the charge in innovation and efficiency.
From journalism to content marketing, I've always enjoyed learning and writing about a diverse range of topics, but the digital world has become particularly interesting to me over the last decade or so. ClearPeople gives me an opportunity to shape my work life and it's fascinating how technology allows me to create great working relationships with colleagues across continents and time zones.
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