“Can I speak to a manager?” How an internal knowledge base can reduce customer service friction

Summary

• Poor customer service, often caused by unprepared or under informed agents, results in significant revenue losses and customer dissatisfaction.
• Implementing an intranet knowledge base helps improve service by giving employees quick, accurate, multilingual, and mobile-accessible access to essential information.
• Effective knowledge management empowers staff, enhances the customer experience, and contributes to overall business success.

While 80% of B2C leaders believe they deliver excellent customer experiences, less than half of consumers agree.

Ouch. That’s a huge gap. 

And it’s estimated that in the US alone, over $62 billion in revenue is lost every single year because of bad customer service.

Customer service is a broad term used to define how a company supports its customers before, during, and after a purchase. It can include an employee at a call center, a receptionist, a concierge at a hotel, or a bank teller. 

When done correctly, customer service has as much impact as an excellent sales funnel or strong marketing efforts. Conversely, poor customer service can impact sales, increase turnover, and harm your brand and reputation. 

From the perspective of a customer service agent, it isn’t always pleasant on their end either. 

It makes sense: if a customer is satisfied, they won’t need to complain or ask for help. As a result, customer service agents often handle upset customers, further complicated by the demand for instant solutions.

So why is customer service so bad?

One survey found that 36% or respondents thought the most frustrating aspect of a poor customer service experience is an agent that lacks the knowledge or ability to solve the customer’s issue. To satisfy customers, customer success agents need the resources to do their work effectively, and deliver the right answers to the right customers. 

What can we do about it?

Despite the research citing the challenges within customer service, there is actually a lot we can all do to improve it.

1. Create an internal knowledge base

An internal knowledge base helps employees find information, collaborate with others, and locate subject matter experts. By using your intranet as a knowledge base, you can store policies, handbooks, guidelines, and share information cross-departmentally. As a single source of truth for your organization, employees can trust the information they access is correct and current. 

2. Make information multilingual

Multilingual employees are the backbone to many customer service roles,  so it’s important they can access your internal knowledge database in the language of their choice.

If your customer service team is multilingual, you might want to consider using the services of someone who specializes in translation. For small and minor updates, you can make use of free websites that translate text from one language to another. However, be careful since the translation may not be the exact same dialect as that of your employees. 

With ThoughtFarmer, content creators can build pages in multiple languages, using either manual translations or auto-translation for supported languages. When users visit a page, they’ll automatically see it in their default site language (if available), and pages in their preferred language will be prioritized in search results.s. 

3. Make information easily discoverable

An internal knowledge base is only as good as the speed in which information and expertise can be surfaced. Employees will lose faith in their knowledge database if they cannot find the information they want at the speed they expect. 

Research estimates that a company with 1,000 employees may experience an annual productivity loss of $2.4 million as a result of ineffective knowledge management. Your internal knowledge database should allow faceted and filtered search and should pretty much resemble the ease of Google search. Anything less is wasted time—and money.

4. Meet accessibility standards

Accessibility is about providing the same user experience for all users and ensuring no one is excluded. An accessible internal knowledge base ensures the functionality and content is accessible regardless of physical barriers, and creates an overall positive user experience.

The beneficiaries of an accessible knowledge base can also serve those with non-disability issues. This includes employees located in regional offices with slow internet connections, team members not fluent in the primary languages, and workers on the road who need to access vital company information via other non-primary devices (such as a desktop or laptop).

At ThoughtFarmer, we follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), a framework for making digital content more accessible. While originally developed for websites, these guidelines can—and should—be applied to intranets to ensure content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

5. Ensure the database is mobile accessible

80% of the overall workforce are deskless workers, and only 23% of frontline workers feel they have the necessary technology to perform their jobs efficiently. This contributes to deskless employees and frontline workers feeling left out, uninformed, and disconnected from corporate strategies, which is crucial in customer-facing roles.

To address this, internal knowledge bases must be mobile-accessible. For example, the ThoughtFarmer mobile intranet app extends the functionality of your intranet beyond the office, allowing employees to browse content, access directories, and bookmark important pages directly from their devices. This makes it easier for them to stay connected, whether on a job site, visiting clients, or working remotely.

Conclusion

Great employee experiences lead to great customer experiences. By implementing an internal knowledge sharing strategy, involving the right people, and providing the right technology, companies can leverage knowledge management to enhance customer service and drive revenue.

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