7 min read
We live in an age of independence. Everything from self-improvement to self-checkout is putting the self first, empowering individuals to deviate from relying on others. Because of this, modern consumers desire the proper tools to help themselves solve any issues they discover.
Self-Service is how you empower customers to help themselves. It's not just about providing easy-to-use websites and applications, but also delivering a knowledge base rich with effective content. Why does that matter? Because customers who are successful with products and services tend to buy more, use more, and recommend them more frequently. When it’s done right, your customers will find exactly what they need without friction, quickly, and conveniently.
However, a lot of times, self-service can fall flat, failing to provide customers with the relevant information they are searching for, stinging with drab, hard-to-read language. Instead, the knowledge base should be your customer’s confidant; ready to support them anytime, anywhere, for any scenario.
There are many factors that go into creating effective self-service experiences: website design, content creation, making it easy to find, exposing it everywhere they need help, building awareness of the self-help so more can experience it. The list goes on. In this article, we will explore the aspects of creating effective content in your knowledge base to enhance your self-service.
So, how do you do that? Follow our 8 step guide.
The first step to making effective self-service content is figuring out who your audience is, and what they want. Get in your customer’s head. You need to fully understand who is consuming your content, why they are, what their needs are, and what they are searching for. Is your content serving an at-home user with minimal knowledge on the product, an experienced installer, a frequent buyer who already knows the ins and outs of your company, someone within your company looking for in-depth information to circulate to the customer? Once you can understand what your audience is coming to your content for, you can learn how to provide it for them.
You can do this a few ways:
Once you have clearly defined who your buyer personas are, and what audience will be consuming your content, you are ready to start creating.
Deciding on what the best topics are to include in your knowledge base content is a critical planning strategy. You should choose to write about subjects that will drive self-service resolution most while catering to the variety of your audience's needs.
How do you do this?
When writing your content, it’s important not to assume anything. Go into any content creation with the expectation that your audience knows nothing, and therefore, you should explain everything. As a rule of thumb, your content should be easy to understand for just about anyone reading, even if they aren’t in your target audience. Your goal is to ease confusion, rather than create it, so your writing should be as comprehensible and simple as possible.
A few easy ways to do this include:
Your audience is already searching for some kind of relief to their confusion. The last thing they want is more confusion from complicated, hard-to-understand grammar. Keep your content simple and concise with basic vocabulary. Keep your sentences brief, using active voice, and cutting unnecessary adjectives or adverbs. Focus on getting to the point in as few words as possible (while still assuming nothing!).
Also remember to stay away from slang terms that will confuse the audience, unless it is fitting to your tone. Speaking of tone, make sure you adjust your tone across your content according to your specific target audience. Try to sound friendly and personable to keep people engaged, but overall, just remember your audience’s main goal when deciding your tone (I.e. If their goal is to fix a problem, they are probably frustrated, so making jokes in the content may come across as annoying).
Lastly, always carefully edit your content before publishing. A misplaced comma, incorrect spelling, or typo could create far more confusion than intended.
Another way to prevent your audience from getting confused is how you organize it. If you can make your content easy to skim, avoiding big blocks of texts, it will look less intimidating to your audience, and they will be more likely to engage with it.
Some simple ways to organize your content to be engaging:
Using links is a great way to keep your writing concise and focused on your topic. Explaining everything you could ever know about your product in one piece of content would be ridiculous, so linking externally, or internally, is a great way to provide your audience with the information they need to understand the context of your content.
Linking externally: You can choose to link to other pieces of your content that have relevant or valuable information. Or, you can choose to link to external sources that may be useful. You should be choosing content that will provide context and ease any of your audience’s confusion.
Linking internally: This is used in cases like a table of context. Even though large documents aren’t advised, sometimes they need to be used, depending on what you are achieving with your content. If that is the case, using a table of contents with internal links to specific sections is a crucial way to make the experience easier for your audience to consume the larger document.
What’s more engaging and effective than visuals? Once you’ve completed writing your content, you should go through and see how much of it you can replace with things like screenshots, images, graphics, GIFs, brief videos, etc.
Show, Don’t Tell.
The best rule of thumb to remember—use fewer words and more visuals to show your audience how to do something rather than telling. Not only does this make it easier to understand and more engaging to look at, but it also helps cut down on those big blocks of text.
Ok, you’ve got an awesome, engaging, effective piece of content now that’s perfectly catered for your target audience. What’s left? Picking the perfect title. As with everything else in this guide, the simpler the better. Choose words that exactly describe what your content is serving, avoiding unnecessary adjectives. Keep in mind what your audience will actually type in when they are searching. This will help your audience find this great content you’ve created without having to spend too much effort finding it.
Do: “Send an email”
Don’t: “A quick and easy guide on sending emails and looking like a digital boss”
Creating effective content for your self-service knowledge base isn’t just a task to be completed, but an ongoing cycle. As you create more content and fill your knowledge base, you will receive feedback from your customers on how you’re doing, what you’re doing well, what you’re lacking, and what needs to be improved. You can use this feedback to not just improve the content you create, but also improve your products and services, customer service, marketing, and business strategies as a whole. The feedback you receive on your content is a great look into how you should progress as a company. Providing your customers with this resource is not the end, but the beginning of an ever-evolving cycle of self-improvement for your company.
Now that you've created some wonderful content, help your audience find it easier by boosting your SEO through social media.
.jpg)
.jpg)