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Knowledge Base Software - Today's Customer Service Solution
By Dmitry Min

A successful company takes care of its customers. Perhaps large corporations can escape unscathed from a public relations disaster but regular businesses rely on a good standing with the people who pay for their services. The relationship that a customer and a business establish is like a handshake. Contracts might not cover every imaginable scenario so a company needs to convey a sense of trust if it wants to win shares in its market. Winning this trust lies in providing strong and dependable customer service. While companies don't need a continuous whirlwind of departmental remodeling, a streamlining of customer service management can dramatically improve a company's customer relations standing and maximize ROI.

The core of any customer service portal is the company's knowledge base. Everyday a company creates knowledge - whether it is information about new products or services, a reiteration of old content that has been expanded and improved, tweets, Facebook updates, other social news - companies thrive by creating and sharing information. What makes a knowledge base distinct is that it's not common knowledge; that is, it is knowledge that is native to the business that created it. Years worth of expert knowledge has gone into developing product documentation, customer service policies, FAQ's, white papers, articles. This knowledge base is akin to an encyclopedia or a guide book to what the company was, is and aspires to be. This knowledge is vital to the customers and the employees anytime a question arises about any facet of the company.

The key to a making successful knowledge is providing easy access to the information. A company that is able to quickly connect its customers and employees with information when they need it can quickly and efficiently answer questions. It might be obvious, but having the right information at the right time leads to better decisions. The telegraph, the telephone, the internet have all attempted to make it easier to connect people with answers. Modern knowledge web-base applications are an example of such innovation.

A knowledge base application theoretically empowers customers to find answers on their own, thereby allowing faster results for them and improved efficiency for the company. Companies that rely on knowledge base software to support their employees and customers are continuously looking for ways to streamline the process and always face the same challenges: how to make the knowledge base application more efficient and intuitive while reducing costs.

Selecting knowledge base software for streamlining your customer service requires some thinking. There are dozens of applications that offer ways to simplify access to a company's knowledge. Most do not achieve the optimal simplicity that customers require and blindly follow industry standards like nested folders, keyword search, etc. - features that standardize instead of innovating. Look for an application that will solve the specific needs of your business. I recommend web-based, SaaS (Software as a Service) applications as they are able to seamlessly scale, upgrade, expand, and cater to the needs of their customer.

Check out Safeharbor Knowledge Solutions, a growing leader in SaaS knowledge management solutions and services.

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