The Power of a Zendesk Knowledge Base and Customer Self-Service
The modern customer wants self-service. That’s why, over the past few years, we’ve seen companies build out robust Knowledge Bases (or Help Centers) on Zendesk and other leading customer experience platforms. Zendesk Knowledge Base solutions are team publishing libraries covering recurring topics and questions on products and services.
Another way that companies provide self-serve support options is by launching customer service chatbots. These can resolve issues without customers having to engage a live customer service agent.
In this post, we explore the benefits of using AI chatbots in parallel with the best knowledge base software platforms like Zendesk Guide, the Zendesk internal knowledge base application. We’ll discuss how this powerful combination creates a more comprehensive self-serve experience that resolves even more tickets and increases customer satisfaction (CSAT).
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Why having a knowledge base is so critical for excellent customer service
The cornerstone of good customer service is respecting customers’ time. Forrester reports that two-thirds of customers say valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good service1. Committing to creating knowledge base content is a great way that companies can provide information quickly, no matter when a person needs it.
Furthermore, people have a desire to help themselves. We’ve seen this in banking. People now often deposit checks on their phone using a customer portal instead of visiting a bank branch, or use a banking chatbot to look for a quick solution. Another common example is when travelers opt to check bags via a kiosk rather than engage with the gate agent at the airport. The same holds true for customer service: 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative2.
This do-it-yourself attitude is even more prevalent with millennials. Before sending an email or picking up the phone to call customer support, 89% of millennials use a search engine to find answers. When there’s a knowledge base available, people will access it to find the information they need. In fact, Zendesk found that 91% of people would use online knowledge base articles if they were available3.
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What is Zendesk Knowledge Base?
So now that we know why knowledge bases are important, let’s look closely at one of the most popular tools among both internal and external users. As one of the most popular agent desk platforms, Zendesk Guide, is the choice of over 150,000 companies. It offers robust product features, including:
- Customizable themes
- Rich text editor for the easy creation of articles including media like images and video
- Content history which shows a list of edits and changes
- The ability to restore deleted content so if something is deleted by accident, it can be recovered
- Content cues that combine machine learning and usage data to improve the overall health of your knowledge base
Zendesk Guide integrates seamlessly with Zendesk Support and offers an easy way for support teams to address knowledge management concerns. Therefore, they can update their internal and external knowledge bases using Zendesk products without needing IT support. Zendesk Guide has a Web Widget and a Mobile SDK, so customers can access self-help articles whether on a website or in a relevant knowledge capture app.
Why every user needs to use an AI Chatbot in parallel
As mentioned above, another way companies are helping customers help themselves, and cutting back on support tickets, is by deploying AI chatbots. In fact, 1.4 billion people are using chatbots today. As more companies using chatbots for customer service can meet customers’ demand for convenient resolutions, let’s consider how integrating an AI chatbot with Zendesk’s knowledge base provides an added safety net and improves the user experience.
Unlike first-generation bots that relied on buttons, keywords and rigid decision trees to pull up information, newer AI chatbots use Natural Language Understanding and semantics to understand context. These bots can engage more naturally in conversations with customers. Additionally, they respond to more inputs without being explicitly trained on every single way a person might phrase a question.
Even so, there will be circumstances in which the AI chatbot cannot confidently understand what a person has said. This is especially true when an AI chatbot has just been launched and is still learning from real-world scenarios.
There are also times when an AI chatbot has not ever been directly trained on a topic. In these scenarios, if an AI chatbot has been integrated with a knowledge base like Zendesk Guide, it can recommend relevant articles to a specific user segment. This can help customers resolve a wider number of tickets on their own without human agent intervention by directing people to the relevant article with the sought-after information.
Unlock Netomi’s powerful AI with an integration to the Knowledge Base from Zendesk
Netomi’s powerful self-serve option integrates Zendesk’s Knowledge Base with its most native AI chatbot. The result: an amazing customer experience and the highest resolution rate when it comes to customer service tickets.
When you use Netomi’s low-cost, Knowledge Base service, you can launch an AI chatbot on Zendesk in minutes. More than just an answer bot, this allows you to harness the rich information in your Zendesk Guide and Netomi’s advanced AI platform to accurately provide your customers with information in the exact moment-of-need.
This results in higher deflection of everyday questions from live agents, therefore reducing costs as human agents focus solely on complex tickets.
Netomi’s Knowledge Base Service uses AI to search and identify the best answers to your customer questions right within your chat window. You’ll simply connect your knowledge base via a URL into Netomi’s Knowledge Base Service to enable each user segment to access relevant articles from your knowledge base. Instantly, your knowledge base will be automated, enabling customers to find relevant information via a chat window.
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Every Zendesk Guide User Should Adopt an AI chatbot
As consumers continue to seek out self-serve options for support, companies need to integrate AI chatbots with an external or internal knowledge base. These will allow them to cover more use cases and resolve more tickets without getting human agents involved. This helps to satisfy the desire to do-it-yourself, while also eliminating even more mundane tickets from human agents.
Can we show you how you can immediately bring a powerful AI chatbot together with your Zendesk KB to delight customers? Schedule a demo today.