Would you use a standalone knowledge base software?
Most knowledge base software these days are integrated into other platforms such as Intercom which has live chat, email marketing and knowledge base or Drift which has email marketing and knowledge base, etc.
The issue with a lot of them is lack of focus. It’s very hard to make a great chat platform and a great knowledge base at the same time
Is using 2 different platforms for knowledge base and live chat something you would consider doing?
Why am I asking? I am working on a knowledge base software and every day, I feel like nobody is going to use a tool that does just 1 thing.
Hey Emeka, funnily enough the company I work for now has just been searching for a knowledgebase-only offering and everything on the market is a bit terrible. I had warned them this would be the case as I used to be Senior UX Designer at a helpdesk company and I know the market very well.
The issue is that there are huge advantages to be had by offering multiple customer support features - if you go knowledgebase-only the competitors will likely manage to win over your clientele by saying 'you can have live chat, knowledgebase, email ticketing and voip all for the price you're currently paying for just a knowledgebase'. Even if their knowledgebase is substandard the cost saving and other features will outweigh that...or so the argument often goes.
That said, products have to start somewhere and offering a standalone knowledgebase is a great route into the customer support market if it's really awesome. It's essentially the opposite of drift and intercom who lead with chat interfaces and then bolted on (shitty) knowledgebases cause their customer were asking for it.
Some tips on the must-haves for a standalone knowledgebase:
Incredible search functionality
High level of flexibility for things like custom CSS and HTML structure.
If it's truly standalone then it should be super easy to share articles externally.
Mobile friendly (duh)
Ability for businesses to use their own domain e.g. support.acme.com or acme.com/support, not just a nice subdomain on your service e.g. acme.helpdeskprovider.com
Hi level of flexibility in how knowledgebase owners can categories, order, structure their content.
Ability to let customers review/provide feedback on article content.
Have great api access or strong integrations.
I hope that helps, if you have any questions or want to share more info I'd be happy to provide some feedback :)
Hey Blunicorn, nice to e-meet you.
Thank you so much for the tips. I have noted it down and I am working on some of the above mentioned features already.
As a senior UX designer, would you mind taking a look at the dashboard? It's under development but I believe you can point me to the right direction, UX wise.
Please let me know how I can reach you personally. Lots thanks :)
Can you share a link here? I'll email you also
How do I contact you? There is no contact information in your bio
as said, I will email you when I get a moment
Well I’m actually working on live chat helpdesk that focus only on apps haha. I think it depends on customer. For example some company does not have a dedicated customer support so a live chat would not make much sense.
Hi @emekaonu. I'm sure you've noticed that stackoverflow have opened StackOverflow for teams https://stackoverflow.com/teams
Is that similar to what you're planning to do?
I'm sure they've done a decent job of market research before building this.
StackOverflow for teams is for internal documentation. Used by the staffs. I am working on a helpdesk software. Something similar to https://www.intercom.com/articles
I see. Well you can target smaller companies with smaller budgets, bootstrapped startups for example. Most of these companies use public slack channels for communication with customers. If your software can be easily integrated with Slack. Maybe a Slackbot that can search in the knowledge base for them. I think that would be cool and useful.
Companies with smaller budget... How much do you think I should charge?
Or, how much would you be happy to pay for such a service?
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