Writing Effective Help Desk Knowledge Base Articles |
In this articleWhen technical issues are being resolved by support desk agents, it is rational to keep an account of the measures for every new challenge that surfaces. The problem may be due to software bugs, defective equipment, the necessity of more education to a user, or network configuration.
Besides documenting issues and responding to frequent queries of users, it relieves agents from addressing similar problems repeatedly. A convenient way to make these records available is to keep them systematically within a knowledge base (KB). If made searchable by title, content, or keywords, knowledge bases such as PHPKB knowledge base management software are designed to aid agents as well as users in getting the answer they look for well in time. Most of the websites have a help section connected to a knowledge base. These knowledge bases can be internal, customer-facing, or both. The Significance of Writing KB Articles AppropriatelyKnowledge bases have two primary functions: information capturing and retrieval. Their efficacy depends on the accuracy and accessibility of content. Hence, it is pertinent to be focused on structure and process from the outset. Knowledge Base articles must have the essential elements to make the KB optimally effective. If the response to a complicated issue (common among users, agents, and the company) is inappropriately framed, categorized, or tagged; it will never address the issue and will remain buried in the knowledge base as something of no use. This article gives an overview and some best practice tips for writing effective help desk knowledgebase articles. Prerequisite Before PublishingMost commonly, agents create a new article when they are replying to a ticket by using the “Publish this question answer as an article in the knowledge base” option as highlighted in the screenshot below. While creating a ticket-based article (by converting ticket reply as an article) in the knowledge base, sometimes agents overlook searching for the same in the knowledge base. So, before creating a new article in the knowledge base, the agent should first search the knowledge base by important keywords to see if there is any record of fixing the problem with the same title. If no matching results are found, only then a new article should be written. If there is already an article with that solution, then it should be updated, with a note, acknowledging the author of the original entry. Elements of an Effective Knowledge Base Article1. TitleThe article title should contain particular keywords that uniquely identify the problem including application name, version, and relevant error message. 2. ProcedureThere are four important aspects to each recognized issue and the way out which must be recorded for an efficacious base record.
Response to the questions that follow can be included in the steps to provide significant details to readers:
3. Category SelectionAn appropriate category should be selected for every KB article for the information to be located by browsing as well as searching. Categories are usually pre-fed in the knowledge base (under the categories management section) and chosen from an inbuilt list on the “Create Article” screen. PHPKB knowledge base software allows for the selection of more than one category for an article. This becomes highly effective where the information belongs to more than one category in the knowledge base. 4. Keywords (Tags)The article content will contain important keywords that should be attached to an article. Think of keywords are search words. If you define a keyword and a user then searches using that keyword, this article is displayed. Use a comma to separate each keyword. Some external search engines may also use this for search engine optimization. 5. Publish Status and VersionAn article (in-progress) can be saved conveniently as a draft, and maybe automatically saved by the knowledge base application. Once an article is completed, the agent submits the article to be reviewed by a quality checker (usually an editor or knowledge expert) before publishing it to the live knowledge base. Best Practice Tips for Writing Effective Knowledge Base Articles
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Posted by: Manoj Dutta - September 8, 2020. This article has been viewed 3878 times. |
Online URL: https://www.phpkb.com/kb/article/writing-effective-help-desk-knowledge-base-articles-254.html |
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