The benefits of using a knowledge base for your CRM

Once you start tackling it, you will see that there are many ways in which you can manage your customer relations. You can rely on customer behavior to give you input into how to orient your web presence. You can gather declared data and get valuable info directly from customers. It is even viable to copy your competitors and correct any mistakes that you believe they are making. But, one of the tried and true ways of handling CRM is by using your knowledge base. But, what does this actually mean, and are there really benefits of using a knowledge base for your CRM? Well, that is what MoversTech CRM is here to help you find out.

What is a knowledge base?

The knowledge base of a website is all the available information that we website owner feels customers will find useful. These are your how-to articles, FAQ sections, tutorial videos, written guides, and pretty much anything else that helps inform customers. Any content you put on your website, that is in any way informative, is essentially a part of your knowledge base. Therefore, the more intuitive, informative, and discoverable your knowledge base is, the better you will inform your customers.

Top benefits of using a knowledge base for your CRM

So, with this in mind, what are the benefits of utilizing a knowledge base for your CRM? Well, to understand that, you first need to consider what your CRM is all about. In essence, the whole point of a CRM system is to help customers do business with you. Whether it is by explaining things to them, answering their question, or responding to their requests. A good CRM system helps your customers understand your company, and motivates them to do business with you.

With that in mind, it should be fairly obvious that a knowledge base can play a big role in how your customers respond to your company.

Benefits for customers

In most cases, your customers are not completely sure of what your company can do for them. Sure, it might seem that your website is fairly self-explanatory and intuitive to use. But that is only because you are the person who created it (or at least took part in its creation). Customers, as a rule, are confused, easily distracted, and prone to mistakes. This is, essentially, why basing your CRM on the knowledge base is a must.

With a decent knowledge base on your website, your customers should be able to learn about your company with relative ease. The more you develop your knowledge base, the easier it will be for your customers to understand what your line of business can do for them. This, in turn, incentivizes them to continue doing business with your company. Furthermore, if they have any urgent questions, they don’t have to rely on the responsiveness of your CR team. Instead, they can find the information they need, and be satisfied with doing so.

Benefits for the company owner

One of the things you quickly learn as a company owner is that customer relations management isn’t cheap. Even a relatively modest CR team needs training, proper software, and regular pay. Therefore, it is always in your best interest to automate as much CR as possible. Luckily, having a good knowledge base is the core of decent automation. The better your knowledge base is, the more you can rely on it to solve difficult customers issues and provide valuable information. Every FAQ question answered lessens the work for your customer service agents. And the less work your agents have, the less of them you need to hire. Overall, while developing a good knowledge base is a long-term investment, it is definitely one you should pursue.

Benefits for the customer service agents

Last, but definitely not least, customer service agents experience tremendous benefits when they can base their work on a knowledge base. While otherwise, they would have to take customers step by step, now they can simply point to a premade guide. As all agents will tell you, questions posed by customers are quite repetitive. Most of them experience similar, if not the same issues over and over again. Therefore, having a FAQ page can save your agents a ton of time.

Ideally, your agents will only deal with issues that are unforeseen and overall rare. Issues that are too specific to create a tutorial for or write a guide about. The one thing they don’t want, and that hurts everyone, is when they need to solve the same issue time and time again. If they are free from that, they can have the necessary freedom to organize their time better.

Final thoughts

Using a knowledge base for your CRM is hardly a new concept. Companies have, for some time now, recognized how useful it is to have a well-crafted, properly optimized knowledge base. So, the main trouble isn’t using one. It’s creating one. Unforunteally, we cannot go over the whole process here, as that would take us an entire article. But know that you need to make a long-term plan on how your knowledge base will develop and in what order will you fill it out.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your knowledge base is not a static entity. It is something that you need to update, optimize and develop in order to stay relevant. This is mostly done in accordance with agents, as they have the best idea of what the customers need. You, of course, should include future plans in your knowledge base, as it is much better to be prepared for the issues ahead. But, the good thing is that the more you use your base, and the more you learn about your customers, the easier it becomes to maintain one.