The internet has more than 4.3 billion users today, providing a unique opportunity for e-commerce businesses to thrive across the globe. However, the success of such businesses is not as automatic as one might think. Although online transactions have gone up rapidly, the competition to position products at the top and generate steady sales is on the rise. Today, e-commerce businesses contend with the challenge of delivering customer service and developing customer loyalty. But there is a way out of this – an e-commerce business can create a knowledge base to solve these challenges.
Generally, buyers want to help themselves as they shop and will only contact support staff when they are not able to do so. According to a report by Forrester, 53% of online buyers in the US are likely to abandon an online order if they are unable to find quick responses to their questions by themselves. As such, it makes perfect sense to offer them the informational resources they need to achieve this goal. So, in what ways can a knowledge base improve your e-commerce business?
- Enhances customer satisfaction
A knowledge base enables customers to find solutions to their issues or queries fast and without having to contact support teams. By doing so, it gives them a delightful user experience that is likely to keep them coming back. Unlike calls or live chats, a knowledge base serves as an interactive support desk whose utilization gives customers a sense of accomplishment. Businesses can enhance customer experience by making their online knowledge repositories more context sensitive and user-friendly. With features such as tooltips, popups, and light boxes, you can give your information repository a whole new look while making it easy for your customers to locate the information they need.
- Aids in quick customer response
Your customers do not have the patience and time to go through numerous pages of content to find the answers they need to complete an online purchase. In most cases, all they want is a quick access to those answers. If a prospective customer has a specific question about your business, they’ll assume they can find an answer by simply searching your website using specific keywords. If you do not have a knowledge base in place, this kind of search will return a negative response. This will discourage them and most likely result in cart abandonment. On the other hand, if you have a well-resourced online repository, a search will return positive results and provide the answers your customer needs to make an informed purchase decision.
3. It helps your customer support team
Empowering your customers to solve their issues and find answers to their queries lifts a considerable load off your customer support team. This means the team can concentrate on other important customer queries that cannot be addressed through the customer support knowledge base. Having fewer customers to help also means that your customer support staff will work in an environment that is less stressful, and therefore, will be able to provide quality services to your clients.
In addition, you can continuously expand your information repository by ensuring that customer queries that are not addressed therein, but have been resolved by your support are integrated regularly. This is important because a regularly updated knowledge center will be rich in content and will be the leading ticket deflection factor for e-commerce businesses.
4. Helps reduce employee costs
E-Commerce businesses need to run around the clock. As such, an information center is useful in reducing the workload that customer support teams have to undertake. Instead of hiring staff to work in shifts 24/7, an e-commerce business that has such a center in place can work with day staff only and not worry about supporting customers during the night. More costs can be reduced during recruitment and induction of new employees. This is because knowledge centers are more cost-efficient when it comes to providing staff with the information they need to know about their company and the products or services it offers. Rather than spending time and money on training programs, incoming employees can learn from the experiences and knowledge of other staff through an internal knowledge base software.
5. Drives traffic to your e-commerce site
More people will be drawn to an information center that features valuable, well-written content. This easily translates to more traffic for your site. To achieve this, the articles you place on your knowledge bank should be generated using the specific keywords that customers use to search for information online. This ensures that your content ranks highly on search engines while increasing your chances of having prospects visit your site. Once they get the answers they are looking, your prospects are likely to spend more time on your e-commerce site and as they browse through your online store, will more likely end up making a purchase. Search engines such as Google are also likely to rank your site highly on their search results since they consider the time spent by visitors on web pages a key factor in ranking and search algorithms.
6. Streamlines internal cooperation
As your e-commerce business grows, your teams or departments will become more intertwined. And as collaboration among teams increases, communication can be difficult to maintain in some instances. At this point, having a centralized repository for your internal information will be necessary. An in-house information repository allows you to place everything your team needs to know in a single place in an organized manner. It provides a digital space for your employees to store information and share it with each other. This not only makes your company look smart, professional and up-to-date, but it also reduces confusion among employees. It also enhances synergy and reduces management costs as it allows them to work independently without having to be supervised constantly.
7. Stores company knowledge
The frequency with which people leave their jobs is on the rise and professional networking has everything to do with it. A survey conducted by LinkedIn shows that 89% of people who are building their careers got their current jobs due to good networking. In the event of job transition, employees leave the companies they work at and carry on with the knowledge and experience they have accumulated. Then it becomes a challenge for the team that is left behind to pick up the pieces. Creating an internal knowledge base for your business guarantees continuity and reduces the cost of training new staff significantly. Further, documenting business data increases the value of your business. The knowledge center can be shifted from an intangible asset into a valuable, transferable asset should you decide to sell your business.
The Bottom Line
A knowledge base is an excellent tool for businesses that want to scale their customer service program and enhance customer satisfaction. Making resources such as troubleshooting guides, how-to articles, FAQs, and any other information relating to your services or products your customers might need available empowers them to solve their issues with ease. At the same time, an online repository makes it possible for your customer support staff to work on tasks that are most important to the business and reduces staff costs, enabling your business to maximize profits.
