Consumer expectations have dramatically shifted, with most of our lives shifting online over the past two years. People around the world are embracing digital, with everything from grocery shopping to work to education moving online. Brands that want to get ahead and drive an engaging customer experience must focus on improving self-service options like knowledge bases.
Better customer support drives satisfaction, retention, and long-term loyalty, which boosts revenue, spending, and overall operational efficiencies. In fact, 52% of customers are willing to pay up to 10% more for a better customer experience, and when that customer experience is quick and easy, the number jumps to 70%.
A modern knowledge base content solution can provide a unified approach to delivering the right content at the right time, to the right customer.
Making an existing digital experience better
At this point, companies understand they need to make their digital experiences better. Their tech stack is not meeting their needs, and they’re not up to speed with the rate that the world is changing. We’ve seen a big gap between the companies that can change quickly and those that haven't been able to change fast enough.
And customers have changed–they want, expect, and value convenience. The brands that can provide answers when and where they need them, will greatly enhance their customer experience.
As enterprises grow they often grow in silos, and the term I like to use is de-siloification. The information architecture of the website tends to reflect the organization's communication structure. You’ll find a search for products, then a separate search for content (maybe owned by marketing this time), then a completely separate help selection (on a completely different platform; customer service doesn’t have a tech team so they pay for a hosted SaaS product). You end up with a very fragmented experience, both in terms of design (everything looks just a little off) and your customer’s ability to find what they’re looking for.
Knowledge bases are useless if they’re write-only, content has to be relevant and updated; personalized, searchable, linkable--and actually linked from useful places. If product guides aren’t linked to your product pages, that’s a bad example of silos. Over 90% of customers would use a knowledge base if it was available, but 57% end up calling anyway because they couldn’t easily find the answer they were looking for.
The New World is Customer-Centric
A recent survey suggests that 89% of firms see customer experience as a key factor in driving customer loyalty and retention; I hear a lot of people talk about CX, but those that really invest in it, and make that customer centricity part of their core operating model are those that thrive and will continue to thrive in this ever changing, ever accelerating world. Being able to rapidly iterate on and improve your customer experience isn’t a competitive advantage–it’s table stakes. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.
Ignoring all the other benefits of self-serve (like happy customers, and great opportunities for SEO, etc.) the cost savings are significant. I worked on a digital transformation project for a big wholesaler that wasn’t really getting a lot of financial support to get started on this journey.“Our customers like to call in” is what they explained. We figured out the cost of a bunch of different customer interactions, then put a counter of this on a TV screen in the office. Once it got to a couple million dollars, funding started to be found.
Experience At Scale
A knowledge base is one part of the bigger CX picture. Brands that want to deliver the best experiences are looking to grow–and fast. With Contentful, digital operations are accelerated, and content and experiences can be delivered faster, allowing brands to evolve and offer features they need now and those they’d like to introduce in the future.
Digital can drive better customer experiences rather than customers finding a number on the website and calling in. Having all the knowledge base content in one place and easily distributing it to multiple locations: customer care, help centers, FAQs, learning portals, onboarding tools, etc, allows teams to be more agile, and repurpose content in different formats and in different channels. Your content is working harder for you–and delivering a more personalized, brand-consistent, and valuable experience.
Watch the full interview with Contentful to learn more about how centralized knowledge management drives valuable CX, retention and advocacy, providing reliable answers to your customers when and where they need them–ultimately boosting customer lifetime value and top-line revenue.
Want to learn more? Feel free to get in touch or check out Appnovation's Contentful development services.
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