Empower your support desk with Knowledge Base articles: Introduction
A Knowledge Base, sometimes abbreviated to ‘KB’, is a core tenant of a successful service desk operation. This is a quick guide on the basics of Knowledge Base functionality, and how to integrate it’s features into your support desk team.
What is a Knowledge Base?
A knowledge base is a self-service online library of information. In the case of service desk teams, a knowledge base is a rich source of technical knowledge, stored in an easily accessible online location.
A knowledge base can be utilised in two different ways. A KB can be publicly facing, with articles readily available for your end-users to access. The purpose of this is that it allows you end-users to essentially identify and solve their own support tickets. This sometimes means that a KB can be considered a part of your 1st line support, allowing agents to focus on more complex issues at 2nd line support and beyond.
Alternatively, a KB can be for internal use only. In this instance, a KB can be used as a knowledge source for your agents as they solve support queries. This is particularly useful if knowledge leaders within your team are not available to manually assist fellow team members. A KB in this scenario can facilitate standardisation of support ticket responses and save your team time.
Why your support desk team needs a Knowledge Base
1.Store information and data in one central location
An easily accessible, online central location of information can save you team time. In practice, instead of having to ask more experienced agents questions on how to solve specific issues, agents can refer to the KB and learn solutions themselves. This is particularly relevant if there are certain issues that regularly appear on your support desk.
2.Standardise support responses
An accurate, helpful KB can reduce the variation in your support responses by providing standardised answers to common support issues. This means that frequently raised issues can be addressed swiftly and accurately, and ensures the end-user experience is uniform.
3.Supplement 1st line support
If publicly available, your KB can supplement or even replace your front line support agents. This offers the opportunity to save on human resources, and devote your agents time to more important and complex support issues on higher levels of support.
Empower your service desk with Knowledge Base articles: Conclusion
Incorporating knowledge base functionality into your support desk team can help reduce the amount of time agents spend on tickets. This can be by assisting end-users in solving their own support issues via a self service knowledge repository, or by providing ready to go standard support resolutions for your agents to access.
How NetHelpDesk can help with ITIL Knowledge Management
Improving the culture of sharing information in your business will no longer be challenging with the knowledge management features in NetHelpDesk.
Allow your teams to share information in private knowledge base groups, that are initially for their eyes only. Before they create tickets, NetHelpDesk can show them entries that may help them. When they complete tickets, prompts can ask whether they would like to add an entry straight from the ticket, using summary, details and resolution as a template. If they feel their entries can benefit their end-users, they can choose submit certain articles for their self service needs as suggested earlier in this article.
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