April 8, 2025 • 46 mins
A great knowledge base can make life easier for your customers and your support team—but where do you start? In this episode, we're joined by Mat Patterson from Help Scout to talk about building helpful, well-maintained articles that can actually eliminate repetitive support questions. Whether you’re a support team of one or leading a larger team, this episode is packed with practical advice you can put to work today!
Mentioned in this episode:
- The Supportive Podcast & Blog
- Help Scout - Creating a Customer Knowledge Base
- Help Scout - Best Customer Service Software in 2025
Support in Real Life: Tech Recommendations
Get in touch with Mat:
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
In this episode, we're joinedby Mat Patterson to talk all
about knowledge bases.
We'll cover the importance ofinvesting in your knowledge base
and some tips for developingand maintaining one over time.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
Okay, so you already know whoour guest is because I name
(00:24):
dropped him in the intro to theepisode, but I want to give him
his full introduction anyway.
So Mat is a customer servicecontent lead at Help Scout and
has spent his career startingand growing support teams.
Mat is passionate about helpingcustomer-centric people deliver
consistently excellent service.
He does this through writtencontent with Help Scout and
(00:45):
through his podcast, theSupportive.
So welcome to the show, Mat.
Mat (00:49):
Hello, thank you for having me.
Priscilla (00:50):
Yeah, thanks for coming.
A couple of weeks ago, or Iguess it was months ago at this
point, you had an episode of theSupportive that called on
support professionals to sendyou audio clips for kind of
advice for new supportprofessionals.
Oh yeah, and a couple peoplefrom the Buzzsprout team
submitted some audio and when Isubmitted mine I plugged Happy
(01:12):
to Help, which at the time I waslike this is fine, and then you
put it in the podcast.
And then I felt bad that I hadplugged my podcast in your
podcast.
So I felt like it's only rightto now have you on the show so
that you can plug your podcastand all the work you do at Help
Scout and share your insightwith all of our listeners over
here so they can get to know you, since I kind of snuck my way
into your podcast.
Mat (01:34):
Always be closing Priscilla .
Priscilla (01:37):
It wasn't with that intent, I promise.
I was like, oh, I got to putthis in, I got to remember to
tell people I'm a podcaster.
Now you know, you'd think ayear into it and I would be
saying it more naturally, but Istill feel like I have to make
sure I get it out there.
Mat (01:50):
That is one of the things you just have to do when you
make content and you eventuallyrealize nobody sees it.
It was kind of a waste of time.
Priscilla (01:58):
It's so true.
Mat (01:59):
You got to tell people.
Priscilla (02:00):
The like, self-promotion of it all is not
my favorite part of this wholething, but same you know, you
learn new things and it's good.
It puts yourself out of yourcomfort zone.
So before we get into the worldof knowledge bases and help
guides, I always like to startthe episodes off with some
positivity and just kind of likeshouting out someone who does
really remarkable work.
So, Mat, who has made your dayrecently?
(02:23):
Well, it actually relates towhat we were just saying,
because the person that I wantto call out, who made my day her
name is Jen, from Church Spring, and the thing that she did for
me, which is super nice, wasjust sent me a message saying
that she had listened to thatpodcast episode, the one you
just mentioned with a lot ofdifferent people, including
yourself, on it and just saidthat this was super helpful to
(02:43):
us and we've put it into ouronboarding so that new people in
the team will listen to this aspart of coming on board, which
is awesome.
It feels fantastic and I thinkit's just a great practice if
someone does something and youenjoy it, just to tell them,
because often people aren'tgetting a lot of feedback, and
it's so helpful.
I really appreciated that.
Yeah, that is so good and it totally relates to what
(03:06):
we were just talking about.
You're pushing this content out.
You're doing it because youlove what you're talking about
and you love helping people getbetter at what they're working
on.
And sometimes it can be kind oflonely and no one responds to
you and you're like I have noidea if anyone likes this.
And then someone responds andsays, oh my gosh, this is great
and I'm including it in ouronboarding.
That's awesome and it reallygives you that like oomph to
(03:27):
keep going and that the workyou're doing is impacting other
people, and so this is like agood reminder to anyone
listening that if someone inyour sphere is doing something
that's making your day better,tell them, let them know,
because it goes so far and itreally can have huge impacts.
I feel like some of the bestcompliments that I've received
are from people that I don'tknow who just come up and say
(03:49):
something nice and I go.
Man, you did not need to saythat, but it made my day.
Jordan (03:53):
Recently the Buzzsprout Head of Marketing, Alban.
He said that his goal for thisyear is to become, like, a
better fan of the content thathe consumes and make sure that
he's reaching out to people andletting them know that it's made
an impact, and I think that islike.
A really valuable lesson topeople is that you do pour your
heart and soul into your content.
So when someone just sayssomething as simple as like oh
(04:16):
my gosh, I love this.
I shared this with my mom andshe loved it too, that means the
world of content creators.
Priscilla (04:22):
So yeah, that's awesome.
That was a great thing to share.
Thanks for sharing it.
Okay, so I want to start alittle bit about learning more
about you, Mat, and what you'repassionate about in the world of
customer support.
So you've been doing this,serving customers and support
teams, since 2006.
Is that right?
Mat (04:37):
Yes, 2006 was when I started the job where I built
support teams for sure.
I think actually this goes backeven further because I'm old.
Priscilla (04:46):
You're wise.
Mat (04:47):
My very, very first job proper grown-up job was also in
a support team actually.
Priscilla (04:53):
Oh, I love it.
Mat (04:54):
We were providing support to accountants who were trying
to become financial planners.
Priscilla (05:00):
Okay.
Mat (05:00):
So I was on the phone talking to accountants
explaining about their computerproblems with this frankly quite
terrible software that we wereselling them.
That was helping them to learnabout financial planning.
That is a good way to learn howto communicate, because trying
to explain things over the phoneabout software programs to
accountants is tough work.
Priscilla (05:19):
In like the early 2000s yeah.
Mat (05:21):
That's kind of where I started.
Priscilla (05:23):
Yeah, how has your role in the industry changed
since then?
How have you kind of evolved?
Mat (05:29):
From that job I accidentally became a web
designer.
What this is?
How long ago it was, there werenot really any web designers.
Yeah, and we had just startedto get websites, because this is
really probably it's the late1990s.
Priscilla (05:43):
Okay, we were both alive.
Then Jordan and I were bothalive.
Then, great, you were alive.
Jordan (05:51):
I remember it.
Mat (05:53):
And I was doing this customer support work but I
heard someone sitting on thecubicle next to me saying, like
how do we even update this page?
And literally nobody in thecompany knew how to update a
webpage.
And I said I think I couldprobably do that because I did
one course in HTML in myuniversity degree and that's how
I became a web designer.
And then I did that for eightyears in a bunch of companies.
(06:13):
Wow, I was like the first webdesigner at the Australian Stock
Exchange.
They'd never had a web designerbefore.
Jordan (06:18):
Oh my gosh.
Mat (06:19):
Then I was overseas, in the UK, for bookingcom Well, what
is now bookingcom, being a webdesigner there?
And then I was at the SydneyZoo Taronga Zoo being a web
designer for them.
That's a fun place.
Priscilla (06:35):
How did you end up in customer support, like how did
you make that change?
Mat (06:36):
Yeah, so I came.
I was at the zoo, literallyinside the zoo, doing my very
short term job there, and I sawan ad for Campaign Monitor,
which was a company that I hadused because, I was a freelance
web designer as well and some ofmy clients used Campaign
Monitor to send their emailnewsletters.
And I saw them advertising fora support person and I thought,
(06:56):
oh, this is bad timing becauseI'd only started the zoo three
months ago or something.
And I thought, oh, I wonder ifthat company seems cool because
the product is cool.
And then I just basically sentthem an email going like, why
are you advertising this nowwhen I've just got another job?
And they said, well, why don'tyou just come and talk to us
anyway?
And then it turned out it wasliterally like 10 minutes from
where I lived and it was threepeople, the company, and, yeah,
(07:20):
I went and had a chat to themand they convinced me to come
over and be the first supportperson.
And it was a great combinationof their customers were web
designers, so I knew who theywere.
I understood how to talk tothose people.
I was able to make thattransition into being the first
support person pretty easily.
Priscilla (07:35):
So what are you doing now?
So it's clearly been a lot oftime you've moved since then.
You're now with Help Scout, sowhat are you doing now at Help
Scout?
Mat (07:42):
Yeah, You're now with Help Scout.
So what are you doing now atHelp Scout?
Yeah, so at Help Scout I'm notdoing customer support directly.
I'm trying to help educate allof our customers, who are
obviously helping theircustomers.
So Help Scout has always made abig investment in that sort of
learning content, about talkingabout what does it mean to
provide good customer service?
What does it look like?
How do you set up the systemsand the processes that deliver
(08:03):
that support more easily?
How do you integrate all thetools, all of that sort of stuff
?
So at Help Scout, my job isfinding lots of different ways
and lots of different channelsto talk about good online
support, how we can do it,what's changing in the industry,
all of that sort of thing.
And so here, obviously, I makea podcast, I write a newsletter,
I do talks at conferences, Imake videos, every form of
(08:25):
content you can think ofInterpretive dance.
Priscilla (08:28):
Oh, wow, I've never seen that I was going to say my
support team, the Buzzsproutteam.
Last summer, we all gatheredfor an in-person meetup and we
watched one of the webinars thatyou put on about analytical
reading and it was such a greatresource for us as a team.
If you are listening to this,go watch that webinar.
(08:48):
You could probably find it onHelp Scout's blog.
It was so fantastic, Gave us alot of great insight into how to
read emails, not just, you know, read them to fully understand
them and what people are asking.
It was a really fantasticwebinar.
So, for anyone who's notfamiliar with Help Scout and I
think most people probably are,but for anyone who's not, can
you give us a quick rundown ofwhat Help Scout is?
Mat (09:13):
It's a customer support platform, right.
It helps you help yourcustomers and it does that by
giving you a help desk and aknowledge base and a little chat
knowledge base support widgetthat we call Beacon, in case
you're looking for it, and theyall work together.
So, basically, so that you canspend more time helping your
customers and less time faffingabout with all the different
tools and systems.
You've probably seen thingsthat do much of that.
Maybe the thing that'scurrently the most different on
(09:33):
the number of customers you'rehelping and everyone can be in
there and you can have everybodyclose to the customers, because
there is no additional cost toyou to just let everybody log in
and see what the customers aretalking about and how they speak
(09:55):
about things.
But I know you use HelpScout,so maybe you can tell us how you
do it.
Priscilla (09:59):
Yeah, I love HelpScout.
We've been using them since2018, 2019.
It's been a really cool tool touse and it shaped a lot of the
way that we think about customerservice.
When you're in there, just theway you're so intentional about
how you name different things orcalling tickets conversations
Like they're not tickets in HelpScout, they're conversations
(10:21):
and it's this reminder that, hey, this is a relational thing
you're doing.
This is not a transactionalrelationship here.
This is actually like aconversation with a real person,
and I do really love the waythat you guys approach like
online support in that way Oneof the coolest things about Help
Scout recently that I reallylove.
I think maybe you updated thissometime last year.
(10:41):
If you want to link text, allyou have to do is copy the URL
that you want to link and thenhighlight the text that you're
going to link that URL to andthen paste it, and then it
automatically creates a linkedtext to that URL, what I will
not tell you.
It saves so much time.
Yeah, it saves like four clicks, which you really don't think
(11:04):
is that many clicks, untilyou're answering 120 emails a
day, oh yeah, and linking thingsright and left.
So good, I love it so much.
Ok, before we jump intoknowledge bases, one last
question for you what is yourfavorite thing about customer
support, like, what is it thatmakes you passionate about it?
Mat (11:21):
There's probably not one thing, there's probably lots of
things, things.
But I think that's sort of thepoint is that you get to do so
many different types of thingsthat are all called support.
Right, you answer the technicalquestions, but, especially in
small companies, you're oftendoing some sort of like business
consulting to these people whoare like I have this problem.
I think your product can helpme, and you're really helping
them figure out like, what areyou actually trying to do and
(11:42):
how might this help or not?
You're figuring out like weirdbrowser bugs.
You're coming up with new waysto explain the same thing that
you've explained a hundred times, but this person doesn't get
that explanation and you need anew way to do it.
And then you're writingdocumentation.
You're running classes.
You might be off to sit in onsales calls.
It's just lots and lots ofdifferent things you can do that
are all types of support.
Priscilla (12:09):
And every day, sort of, is a little bit different,
even though there is weirdly, alot of repetition.
It's hard to explain to someonewho's not in it that there is
this repetition of workingthrough an email queue or, you
know, answering phone calls orsomething.
There's the repetition in that,but every single email or
interaction is completelydifferent, and so there is also
this aspect of needing to beable to switch lanes really
quickly and go into differentmodes just when it comes to
problem solving or being anencourager or whatever it is
that that email requires of you.
(12:30):
So I totally agree with youthat that dimension in the work
is really enjoyable.
Mat (12:35):
There's something about it.
There's like a little dopaminehit that you get from answering
conversations that you don't getin other jobs.
That was something I found hardmoving out of direct support
into what I do now.
So don't get in other jobs.
That was something I found hardmoving out of direct support
into what I do now.
So don't get those little likeoh, I finished it and you can
see the number go down.
It's a really immediatemeasurement of progress.
That you don't get in a lot ofother jobs is to go like oh, I
(12:56):
can, if I could delete that, Icould close that, and then it
goes.
It's so satisfying.
Priscilla (13:01):
It's so satisfying Like mowing your lawn and you
can see it as you're mowing it,and there's something so
satisfying about that, whereasif you're doing some other
project where you don't see itas you're going, it's harder to
stay motivated.
I fully agree.
Those little dopamine hits areawesome.
That's why I like make sure Istay in support at some point
during the day.
I like to be in the inbox.
(13:21):
It's just it feels so good.
So today we're talking aboutknowledge bases, and knowledge
bases can sometimes be viewed asa necessary evil in the world
of support, like you have tohave these documents there, but
a lot of times they get ignoredor they become outdated over
time and they just aren'tinvested in, and so I thought it
would be a good thing for us totalk about today.
(13:41):
Mat, I know you've recentlydone some work and developed
some content about knowledgebases and some strategies for
really creating good ones, andso I thought it'd be good for us
to talk about kind of theimportance of having strong
knowledge bases and then alsosome tips and strategies for
developing them and thenmaintaining them and making sure
they stay up to date.
(14:02):
So to kick us off, can you justdefine what a knowledge base is
for anyone listening who maynot have one.
Mat (14:08):
A knowledge base is essentially it's a collection of
documentation, right?
The idea is this set ofinformation that is designed to
make it easy for your customersor the general public to find
answers to questions withouthaving to go through the actual
support team, and that mightmean it's a bunch of FAQs.
There might be process guides,there might be you know what
(14:28):
even is this product and howdoes it work.
You get videos in there, sortof like a user manual and a
how-to guide smushed together.
Yes, that's a knowledge base.
Lots of them are publiclyfacing Some of them will be
internal only Lots of differenttypes.
Priscilla (14:43):
Last year during the Elevate CX conference, I had
some support professionals giveus like advice for the podcast.
One of the questions I askedwas what would they do if they
were starting a support teamfrom scratch?
What was the first thing you do?
And I think it was AshleyHazlett who said that she would
develop an FAQ, that that wasthe first thing that she would
do, and it was funny because Ihadn't really thought about that
(15:05):
as being like step number one.
But she said that she would doit because it'd be a way for her
to train herself on the productand to really understand all
the details there, and I thoughtreally that was such a good
first step.
And so there's really so muchgood that can be found in a
really strong knowledge base,and so can you tell us a little
bit about why it's important toinvest time into a knowledge
(15:27):
base and then when you thinksupport should take that step to
actually create one?
Mat (15:32):
Well, let me ask you a question first Are you any good
at singing?
Priscilla (15:35):
I am Okay.
Jordan (15:37):
Multi-talented.
Priscilla (15:39):
I did not see that question coming.
Mat (15:41):
Yes, I've been singing my whole life, yeah, Well, you
would have been okay, because Ithink if you look at cultures,
pre-writing and cultures whichdidn't have writing, that was
how they stored their knowledge.
Right, you would have theperson who would sing the songs,
and this is how everybodylearns about the cultural
information.
It's all stored within thosesongs and it's passed down
generationally.
And I think about that becauseif that was the way it worked
(16:04):
now, my customer satisfactionrate personally would be so low
because no one would understandanything.
Priscilla (16:09):
But you're saying that I should start creating
singing documents.
Mat (16:13):
Absolutely.
It could be just Buzzsprout.
Support the musical every day.
Priscilla (16:19):
Yeah, okay, but actually Jordan, and I would
love that.
Jordan (16:22):
I was a musical theater major, so yes, okay.
Mat (16:24):
Well, you've got it sorted, You're fine.
When writing disappears,Buzzsprout will still be able to
provide great support.
Jordan (16:30):
Oh yeah, we're staying afloat.
Mat (16:31):
My customers, on the other hand, are in all sorts of
trouble.
Priscilla (16:34):
But we have writing, Luckily we have writing.
Yes, we have writing.
That's such a good thing.
Mat (16:39):
The great benefit of writing, I think, is that you
know.
You write it down once andrefer to it forever.
It's out there.
It's helping people when you'renot around.
They don't need to wait for youanymore.
So it's like a source of truthfor customers, but it's also a
source of truth for your ownteam, because you come in you
don't know something.
The knowledge base should tellyou.
(16:59):
This is what it is and this ishow it works.
It's also for your littlein-app help widgets or however
you present that information.
It's also now a source of truthfor AI tools that come in and
gobble up all your knowledgebase and then regurgitate it to
your customers like they're tinybaby birds.
And as to when should you havea knowledge base?
Well, I think Ashley alreadysaid it, but basically as soon
(17:19):
as you possibly can, you shouldstart working on it, because it
takes ages and you're alreadyusing that.
You're giving information tocustomers already, right?
You're doing it one-on-one,which is madness.
To only do it one-on-one whenyou know you're going to have to
use that information again.
If you can start collecting itinto a knowledge base, it's
easier if you do it at the start.
It only gets harder the longeryou wait before you start doing
(17:40):
it.
So even if you can't do thewhole thing, some knowledge base
is better than no knowledgebase.
Priscilla (17:53):
Yeah, even if you're just pulling the top 10
questions that you have insupport and you're writing
documents about those 10questions and posting that
somewhere to get started, yeah,it's definitely worth it, and I
like what you said about itmaking it easier on your support
team, because then they haveplaces to go to learn things,
but then also resources to sendout to customers.
I really think it can be a hugeresource, both internally and
externally, and it can also bekind of like a marketing tool
too for anyone who's coming toyour product and doesn't know.
(18:15):
I will oftentimes go into thehelp guide and see what the help
guide looks like.
Do they tell me how to leave?
If they don't tell me how tocancel my account in a help
guide, I'm probably not going tosign up for an account
somewhere because I'm going tofeel trapped in it.
So I want to get an idea forhow helpful they are in that
guide, and so I think havingthat can also be kind of like a
(18:36):
marketing tool for new customers.
Yeah, so I think it's clearthat it's important to have a
knowledge base and it'simportant to have a good, strong
set of documents for yourcustomers and for your internal
support teams as well.
But what do you include?
What actually makes it up?
What are you going to put yourtime into developing right in
the beginning?
(18:57):
So, Mat, where would you startas far as articles to write and
processes to publish?
Mat (19:02):
So you start with what you have right.
Whatever answers that youalready have, that you find
yourself reusing like oh yeah,I've explained that before Once,
you've done it more than once.
That probably should be aknowledge base, because you know
that it's going to come upagain.
Specifically, which articlesshould you write?
Well, I mean, you might have,if you're using a help desk.
You might have some reportingthat tells you like these are
the most common categories ofquestions we're answering.
(19:24):
You might be able to look at,like what are the most
frequently used, save repliesthat we're sending out to
customers.
Maybe you have that, maybe youdon't, but it's sort of almost
doesn't matter, becausewhoever's on the support team,
you just ask them like whichquestion are you sick of
answering?
That will be the one thatshould be in the knowledge base,
if it's not already in there.
That's where you start.
Absolutely, that's a great tip.
(19:52):
That's a great question to askyour team when you're trying to
figure out the next thing towrite what are you sick of
answering?
I love that.
Yeah, like they know the pain,they will know the pain, and so
they will be like if I never hadto write that same thing again,
I would be so happy, andsometimes a knowledge-based
article is the first step indealing with that pain.
And the second step is can wejust fix it so it's not a
problem anymore?
Yes, and actually the realsolution is fix the product.
No one has to answer it.
And also, we don't need aknowledge base article.
That's the ultimate win.
Priscilla (20:11):
That is such a good point.
The knowledge base is there tohelp you explain and educate and
give self-service right to yourcustomers.
But if there is an issue thatis recurring so much that you
have to rely on this article forevery single person who runs
into that using that feature,maybe the feature needs to be
analyzed.
It's not always going to besolved through education.
(20:33):
If you're seeing somethingyou're like even with this help
article, we're still gettingquestions about this then maybe
you need to look at the UI orthe feature or whatever it is
that is causing that extrafriction.
Jordan (20:45):
And we have a great episode about that that we just
did with Tom Rossi talking abouttalking to the dev and product
team about issues.
Mat (20:53):
I used to do a thing with my team called kill that
question, which sounds quiteviolent now that I say it out
loud.
Oh, I like it, though.
It would just be the supportteam getting together and saying
, like, if we could stop havingto answer these questions like
which ones would be we mosthappy about?
And we just make a list To yourpoint.
We would take this to then theproduct teams and say, like,
look, how many times we'reanswering this question.
(21:14):
Here is our.
Maybe we think this is how itcould be solved.
You probably have a better idea, but, like, this is the amount
of work that we could be savingfor our customers and for us,
and so we would just make a listand then prioritize it and send
it to them, and then they wouldsometimes take things off the
list, and it was the mostsatisfying thing in the world to
go back to there and say, oh,remember when that like, you
(21:35):
just forget those questionsimmediately.
When you don't have to answerthem anymore, they disappear out
of your life and you feel likeyou're making no progress.
But go back to the list and gooh yeah, we used to answer that
a hundred times a month.
Priscilla (21:46):
Right, and now we don't at all.
Now it's not even a question oh, it's so nice, it's so
satisfying.
So what are somecharacteristics of a really
great help, guide or knowledgebase, like what are some of the
things that you want to see inthose really strong ones?
Mat (22:00):
I want a knowledge base that is actually going to be
helpful to people, so matchingup the way people think about
that problem, the words thatthey have in their head when
they're running into the problem, and a knowledge-based article
that takes them from where theyare to where they need to be.
So you mentioned before thatHelp Scout.
You know we have this sort ofintentional naming of features
(22:21):
and things to try and send amessage about, like this is how
we think about it, which is, Ithink, very effective.
But also you can cross a linewhere it's like well, no one
understands what we're talkingabout.
I think people grasp the ideaof tickets and conversations
being the same thing, butsometimes there is like well,
I've never heard someone talkabout it in that way and so I'm
searching for this thing, andthe customer describes it.
(22:42):
In the way the customer thinksabout it, based on their past
experience with other tools orwhatever, they may never find
the right article in theknowledge base unless they have
the right terminology.
So the first thing is to makesure people can actually find
the right articles, because theyare written from the customer's
perspective and not from thecompany's perspective.
Priscilla (22:59):
Yeah.
Mat (22:59):
I think the knowledge bases which are super annoying are
ones which are like you'reobviously mapping this to your
internal structure of how youthink about things and it
doesn't make any sense tosomeone outside the company.
Priscilla (23:12):
Or if your marketing team is the one writing these
articles and you're like oh, butyou don't even know how our
customers are responding to this.
And yes, absolutely.
Mat (23:17):
And I can tell you like you're trying to promote the
thing, but you're also, you knowthat this is meant to be a help
guide and it's for people whoare having problems, and so
there is a tension between themarketing aspects of the
knowledge base, which are real.
It is a way of explaining topeople what you do and why it
works and why it matters.
But there is a tension betweenthat, and sometimes the product
is not perfect.
All times the product is notperfect.
(23:38):
People are going to run intoedges, they're going to get into
trouble.
We are going to have to talkabout things which are less
positive about this company inorder to explain to customers
how we do it, and socustomer-centered as opposed to
company-centered is veryimportant for a knowledge base.
Priscilla (23:56):
Yeah, I think another really important part of having
a good knowledge base is havingeasy access to the support team
.
I think there's definitelyknowledge bases that I've used
where I can't find the answer inthe articles that I'm reading
through one, but then I can'tfind an email for a support team
.
They've buried it so much thatI can't get to a team once.
I've already tried to do theself-service route, and so for
us I think every single one ofour articles at the bottom of
(24:16):
the article has the supportemail, because we want to make
sure that once you've read thearticle, if you still have any
questions at all, you can get toa person in about 10 minutes,
and I think that is a sign of areally strong knowledge base,
because you're saying we'regoing to give you the
information.
We feel confident that you canget there with the information
you're giving here, but at thesame time, like you were saying,
(24:37):
we don't know what other thingsyou're coming from with other
knowledge you've gained at otherplatforms.
Mat (24:58):
And so coming to us, you might have more questions beyond
this article, and so I thinkthat's another good thing to
include in your help guides.
And if they just found that,then they would be fine, they
wouldn't have to wait for us.
You know, some people prefer tohear it from a person.
Fair enough, but there are abunch of people who, if they had
found that on their own, they'dbe happier.
You'd be happier because youdidn't have to help them.
And so figuring out a way tomake sure that they can find it,
(25:19):
that they can search it, thatit returns useful results to
them super important.
And then, when they get thatdocument, that they can read it
and scan it and find the thingthat they need in there easily
Like, it's well-designed, it'seasy to hop around and find the
right section and follow linksto a place that you want to end
up.
So accessibility superimportant.
Priscilla (25:38):
Yeah, Formatting.
People don't think about howimportant formatting is with
written content.
But just having headers thatare clear and easy to read,
using, you know, bold anditalics and font changes all of
that can help you when you'rescanning an article to go
quicker, and I don't know abouty'all.
But I do not want to read afour paragraph page with no
(26:00):
formatting in it and I'm notgoing to sit there and read it,
I'm going to stop and then I'mimmediately going to try to
email whoever I can emailbecause I don't want to read
this long document.
But if it's formatted, if it'sstep-by-step points with bold
and italics and highlightedthings, it's so much easier to
consume that I was at asupport-driven conference years
ago when I first ended up in atalk about the importance of
(26:23):
formatting in knowledge basesand it just was such a simple
thing that I had never heardarticulated.
But it really is so true.
So if you're writing aknowledge base, be really aware
of that, that that formatting isreally going to impact how
people consume that informationand how likely they are to read
everything that you're writing.
The same for your emails too.
(26:43):
When you're in an inbox andyou're emailing customers, Make
sure you're not just sendingthem blocks of text, because
they're not going to readthrough all of that.
Mat (26:51):
Yes, conciseness, clarity.
If you're a good writer, you'llwrite things differently.
For an email where you'retalking to a specific person and
you have context about who theyare, yep, for a knowledge base
will be different.
Writing it in a chat responsewill be different.
That's why you get a hire forpeople who can write in a lot of
these cases.
Priscilla (27:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
How big should a knowledge basebe?
Is there a time when aknowledge base is too big?
Mat (27:15):
It should be seven pages long.
Priscilla (27:17):
All right, there we go.
Mat (27:18):
Next question no, of course there isn't.
There isn't a limit, right?
I don't think you could get toobig.
It's just what is useful andhelpful for this particular
company and its customers andthe products and the services
that they're supporting.
Right, all of these things willdetermine, like, what is an
appropriate amount of knowledgebase for this situation that
(27:39):
we're in.
Like, do you know how manypages are in the Buzzsprout
knowledge base?
Have you got any idea?
Priscilla (27:44):
Gosh, I know we have a lot.
I want to say we have like 97last time I counted, but we
probably have a couple moresince then.
But we have it all organized indifferent chapters type of a
thing.
But I think what you weresaying is important, that it's
not so much about the size, it'sabout what's important to have
in there, and when somethingbecomes outdated you take it out
, you don't leave it in there.
Mat (28:06):
Yeah, the number does not matter, right, it's only.
Is the content in thereaccurate?
Is it not duplicated acrossdifferent places?
Is it up to date with thecurrent state of things?
Priscilla (28:22):
And do you?
Mat (28:22):
have the capacity to manage that many articles, because
even if you start with a greatnumber and it's all accurate,
but you cannot possibly maintainthat many different articles,
eventually it gets terrible andthen they're just in your way
and your AI is now going to sendpeople the wrong information
forevermore because it's in theknowledge base.
It is tricky.
There's also an interestingdiscussion that we had about
like, what about an individualarticle?
How long should that be?
(28:42):
Should it be short?
Should it be long?
Do you try and cover everypossible scenario within one
document?
Do you split those up into lotsof different ones and make
people jump around?
I don't think there is a singlecorrect answer.
I think that's a discussionwe're constantly having and I
think, as we have these AI toolsingesting stuff, those also
might provide some pressure onthe way that we structure
documents.
In the same way that searchengines kind of change the way
(29:04):
people made webpages in general,AI tools are going to do the
same thing to knowledge bases.
Priscilla (29:09):
Yep, it's a case-by-case basis, at least for
us, when it comes to how muchinformation do we include in one
document, or do we split itinto two?
And it always comes back to howis the customer going to read
this and how are they going towant to see this information?
Do they need to always haveboth sides of these answers at
one time?
If so, they should probably endup in the same document, but if
(29:29):
it's an either or situation,then two documents may make it
easier to consume.
So it is kind of like that Takeit case by case and figure out
what needs to be there, and ifit doesn't need to be there,
then it can go in anotherdocument or doesn't need to end
up on the base at all.
Mat (29:43):
Yeah, you also need to think about how are they seeing
this?
Because if they're reading iton a big window and they've got
the whole browser windowdedicated to this document, it
can be longer but look lessscary.
But if they're getting it in atiny chat tool and it's like 25
pixels wide, that thing's goingto scroll for 27 years.
You want a shorter piece then.
Or if they're doing it in appand they're in the middle of a
(30:04):
process and they just need oneparagraph really that explains
what's going on right now inthis particular spot.
You might need to split thingsup more.
Priscilla (30:12):
Or make a video or something that's going to allow
it to be a little bit easier toconsume, like on a mobile
version, or something like that.
Jordan (30:18):
Yeah.
Priscilla (30:18):
Mm-hmm.
So some knowledge bases arebuilt, like into the website.
I know for Buzzsprout ours isbuilt by our design team and our
developers and it's built intothe site, but that is not the
only way to create a knowledgebase.
So can you tell us a little bitabout, like, third party
services?
I know that Help Scout has aknowledge base aspect to it
(30:38):
where you can build it throughHelp Scout.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that, because I'm not
super familiar with that option.
Mat (30:43):
Yeah, absolutely so.
There are a million tools forthis.
If you do use a help desk,often the help desk will have
one, like Help Scout does.
It's called Docs, a verygeneric piece of naming, but
everyone understands what itmeans, don't they?
Jordan (30:57):
Help.
Mat (30:57):
Scout's Docs.
So the nice benefit of havingthose is that they can integrate
right into your support tools.
You can really easily referenceoh here is a doc about this
particular issue and you can tiethose things together quite
nicely.
If you have one of those, youmight want to look at that, see
if it is a good fit for you.
But you might want to have morecontrol over it.
(31:18):
Obviously, if you're usingsomeone else's product, it might
specify the way you can lay outpages and that sort of thing.
You have lots of choices.
There are standalone productslike a Knowledge Owl or
helpdocsio or HelpJuice I'venever heard of HelpJuice.
No, shade HelpJuice, but thatis a bit gross.
Priscilla (31:37):
The naming is interesting.
Mat (31:40):
But the tool that you choose, obviously it matters
because things might resonatewith you or the person who's
mostly managing your docs.
Maybe they find something thatworks really well with them.
Jordan (31:49):
Yeah.
Mat (31:49):
But ultimately it doesn't matter that much, does it,
Because all you're doing isproducing a document when you
have a tool that helps you moreeasily keep things up to date
and link things together andmake it accessible in the way
that you want, to choose thattool.
Priscilla (32:01):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
It more in the way that youwant to choose that tool.
Yeah, I think that's a goodpoint.
It's the ease of updating it,it's the ease of staying on top
of it and creating it.
That's what's helpful.
But the content inside of thedocument is really what's going
to make or break your help guideor your knowledge base.
And so if that's easier to doby building it in-house, that's
one thing.
If it's another thing to use aplatform like Help Scout and
(32:21):
build it into your emailsoftware, that's Use a platform
like Help Scout and build itinto your email software.
That's another great way to doit.
But really the content iswhat's important.
Mat (32:28):
Customers do not care what tool you use to make your doc no
, or where it lives yeah, itdoesn't matter to them.
Priscilla (32:35):
Yeah, you know, we've all used knowledge bases.
Where you just can't find theinformation you need, or you
find an article that's relatedto the question you have and the
information is outdated, it isnot up to date with what the
page that you're looking at Iknow for our customers, you know
, one of the things that peoplehave a lot of questions about is
how to submit your podcast toApple Podcasts.
Apple Podcasts changes thatprocess often and our help guide
(32:59):
has to stay up to date withwhat Apple's process is all the
time, and so people will writein and say now there's, this
button is not purple anymore.
I'll be like you're right, it'sblue now.
And we have to make sure thatwe're staying up on top of it,
because even a color change likethat can be confusing for
someone, because they're lookingfor a blue button even though
it says the same name.
It's a purple button now, orwhatever the colors are.
(33:21):
So it's so important to stay upon top of that and make sure
you're maintaining thatknowledge base, or else all the
work you put into creating it isfor nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Mat (33:31):
The wrong information.
You find the wrong informationis actually worse than no
information at all, because itcan send people down the wrong
path and then they feel evengrumpier than before they
started.
Priscilla (33:41):
And they question your ability to be experts on
the thing you're talking abouttoo, because they're like well,
you don't know how submitting toApple works either, so how am I
supposed to trust you with this?
So what are some pitfalls thatyou see people run into when
they're developing theseknowledge bases and maintaining
them over time?
Mat (33:57):
I think we've covered a few of those.
I think you know, if it's toohard for the people to find, if
the search doesn't work, likeeven if the right article's in
there and I search for it and Ican't find it, then what was the
point?
The individual articles arelike difficult to scan or
they're confusing.
But I think the big one andwe've talked about it a few
times already is that documentsthat are just not well
(34:18):
maintained.
It's a nightmare because yourcustomer has that experience of
like, oh yes, a help doc.
It's about the specific problemthat I just typed in.
It's got the answer, and thenyou go there and it doesn't make
sense.
It doesn't like to point.
The screenshot doesn't matchanymore.
On that, there are now sometools which will help you with
updating screenshots.
I personally had the experienceof owning the knowledge base at
(34:39):
Campaign Monitor and theneither the product changes and
they're like oh yeah, we'vedecided to change the name of
some button somewhere and now athousand screenshots have to be
updated, which is always no fun.
Priscilla (34:51):
That literally happened to us this morning.
That literally happened to thismorning.
Mat (34:56):
Yeah, or even I did one where it was like the design of
the knowledge base itselfchanged and my screenshots
didn't fit in anymore and I hadto literally retake 200
screenshots.
Jordan (35:07):
Yeah.
Mat (35:07):
So I guess maybe we talk about, like, the reasons that
things don't get maintained.
Should we talk about that?
Yeah, I think there's a fewthings right.
It's just hard because you needto know the answer for a start.
Like someone needs tounderstand that this is actually
wrong.
So it requires somebody with abit of expertise is actually
wrong, so it requires somebodywith a bit of expertise.
Even like a technical writerwho's not in the support team
(35:27):
may not have the level ofknowledge about how customers
think about that thing and thephrasing that they use to make
that page work for them, even ifthey understand the product
side really well.
So there's like the difficultyof finding someone who can
actually do it.
Especially if it's been leftfor a while.
It can be just a massive jobfor someone to go in and start
fixing stuff up and it feels abit overwhelming.
(35:48):
Sometimes you don't even knowwhat's in the knowledge base
because, like it was four peopleago that this thing was set up
and like who knew that half ofthose pages were even there and
they refer to features thatdon't exist anymore or to
payment plans that you can nolonger apply to all of that sort
of stuff.
Like it's just invisibleproblems.
There's always something urgentto do in support, Like there's
always there's a customerwaiting right While you're
(36:08):
taking time to write thisdocument.
You are making someone elsewait a lot of the time, and
that's emotionally difficult forsupport as well as annoying for
the customer.
And sometimes it's just thetools that you're using don't
make it easy to maintain it, andit's like it's such a big
effort to update a document thatit doesn't ever feel like it's
worthwhile, and I guess the lastone would be it's nobody's job,
Like nobody is the owner of itand therefore it never gets done
(36:30):
.
Priscilla (36:30):
It doesn't happen.
I think that making it easy issuch a good tip for people.
You know, if you're in theprocess of going okay, we got to
stay on top of this.
How are we going to do it?
Make it easy to make theseupdates, because then you're not
having to jump through hoops,you're not having to go and get
things you know run by fourdifferent people, get their
buyout and then go in and updatethe article.
If it is a streamlined processand, like you said, if someone
(36:52):
owns it and it's theirresponsibility to kind of stay
on top of that, and of course,they pull in people that can
help write articles or makeupdates.
They don't have to be the onlyone who touches it, but that
they own it and they can makethose executive calls when it
comes to making updates.
I think that's such a big thing.
I want to say three or fouryears ago we kind of did an
overhaul of our help guide andat the time it was much smaller
(37:15):
and even that it was such aproject to go through every
article and get rid of ones thatwere outdated and update
current ones and get everything.
It really is an undertaking andsince then, staying on top of
it, and having someone who ownsit has changed things so much
because we don't have to dothese giant overhauls anymore
(37:36):
and when we see an edit thatneeds to be made, we can make it
quickly and we can beintentional about going and
looking through older articlesthat haven't been updated
recently and making sure thatthose are fresh and in our tone,
and so I think having someoneown it is such a good strategy.
Jordan (37:52):
Well, that makes it easier for people in other
departments too.
So, for example, if I stumbleupon something while I'm
interacting with someone over onthe marketing team, I know that
I can send a message to theperson who's in charge and say,
hey, I caught this little thing,and then they can go fix it.
If you have somebody that likethat's their thing.
It's so much easier for theother departments to support the
(38:13):
support team in that way.
Priscilla (38:15):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
I also think it's important, ifyou're the person who it's your
role to stay on top of the helpguide.
This was me the other day andyou get a ping from Jordan that
says, hey, this is not correctanymore.
Being able to take thatfeedback and make the change
without feeling some sense of ohmy gosh, I've screwed up
because I didn't update thisfast enough.
(38:36):
You know, I think sometimesthings change so fast and so you
have to be OK with getting itfrom other people from outside
of it and knowing that this isnot a personal anything on you.
Things change all the time andsometimes you just got to go and
make the update and move onfrom it, because it's easy to
fall into this like place of Ihave to be the one who finds and
(38:57):
updates things.
No one else can see it.
If someone else finds it, thenthat means I've done my job
wrong, and that can be adangerous place to be if you
want to allow people to havefeedback and support you.
Mat (39:08):
Like Jordan was saying, yeah, I think it's important to
realize, especially when youhave a large knowledge base, you
probably can't be 100% up todate all the time, because it is
going to be a process but youalso, if you're in charge of it,
you also are probably aware of,like, these are the ones that
we cannot let get out of datebecause it will be a disaster.
And these are the ones where,like, no one's really looking at
this.
Once a month maybe someoneuploads that page.
(39:31):
It's useful to have therebecause we refer to it, but if
it has to wait until after we dothis other stuff, that's going
to be okay.
That's why it takes an ownerwho understands, like, what is
in here, what's the relativeimportance of them, which ones
do?
I absolutely make sure that ifthey're working on that part of
the product, I need to knowearly so that we can be ready
because the support team willpay.
Otherwise when you releasesomething and then the document
doesn't make sense anymore.
Priscilla (39:53):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I had someone write in theother day who said now this
screenshot is showing this andthis is no longer what it says.
And I'm like, huh, you're right, it doesn't say that.
I didn't know that.
It doesn't say that anymore.
I wonder when that changed andwhen we didn't hear about it.
So I think that that's you know, that's a really important you
know you want to make sure thatthe person who is owning the
(40:14):
knowledge base, that they're theones who really understand what
is where and what's importantand where people are going and
where they're, what are the mostimportant articles, so that
those are the ones that canreally be paid very close
attention to.
All right, so if you have onepiece of advice that you can
give someone who's going tostart building their knowledge
base tomorrow so this is thefirst time they're hearing about
knowledge bases, they're asupport team of one and tomorrow
(40:37):
they're going to start what isyour tip to them?
Mat (40:40):
So, assuming you've taken our earlier advice about like
where do you start, Like whichdocuments do you start?
with I think fine, take that asread.
I think the thing that you dofirst is to figure out the
process of like how is somebodygoing to tell me when the
knowledge base needs updating?
Because, to your point earlier,any friction that's in that
process just makes the wholething much more likely to become
(41:01):
outdated and painful.
So you're going to giveespecially the support team,
just give them a way that theycan really easily tell you this
thing needs updating or here isa new article that we need.
So maybe you do that in yourhelp desk.
Like a really simple way wouldbe just here's a tag.
If you put this tag on aconversation, I have a filter
that will just show me like,okay, everything that people are
(41:22):
tagged as like needsdocumentation, and then I can
just see that list right.
Or I talked to someone fromSurvey Gizmo years and years ago
.
They had like built some sortof browser extension, I think,
where they could just press abutton and then, with a little
support, they could press abutton.
It would say, like here's ananswer, I've already written it
should be a document, and itwould just send that over to the
(41:42):
documentation person.
Oh, that's great, because youget the question, you get the
answer that's been written forthis particular customer and
then all you need to do reallyis like well, how do I make this
kind of more general?
That would apply to allcustomers and they've got 80% of
the work done for them.
Jordan (41:56):
That's cool yeah.
Mat (41:57):
So whatever you can do to reduce the friction between
person noticing that somethingneeds documenting or needs
improving and a person whose jobit is to do that having that
information.
So reduce that, make it asshort as possible.
That will just make the wholething run more smoothly.
Priscilla (42:12):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
You know, I think it's clearthat knowledge bases can feel
like this huge undertaking, butthat they're so worth the time.
They're so worth the time todevelop, to maintain, to create
processes around maintainingthem so that they can stay up to
date and they can be an aid foryour customers and for your
support team, and it's worthputting the time into that.
I know, you know, sometimes itcan feel like, oh my gosh, like
(42:34):
you were saying earlier, I'mleaving people in the queue to
go and write articles, but thereality is those articles are
going to help the next peoplethat may come to your queue and
hopefully will help them not endup in the queue, and so it's
worth the time to devote aperson to that, or to devote a
couple hours of your day to that, to get out of the queue, to
write an article every now andthen, or to partner with a
(42:55):
company or a software that canhelp you write those.
It's worth taking the time tofigure that out.
And so thank you, Mat, forcoming on and talking to us
about help guides and knowledgebases.
It's really been a greatconversation.
Mat (43:06):
Thank you so much.
It's good fun to talk aboutknowledge bases anytime.
Priscilla (43:13):
So it's time for Support in Real Life, our
segment where we discuss reallife support experiences.
Jordan usually brings ussomething from the real world.
What do you have for us today,Jordan?
Jordan (43:23):
We have a message from Sally saying I'm starting a
customer success department atmy company and I'm curious to
know what tools or tech stack dopeople find most useful?
I know every company isdifferent and there are many
tools out there, but I'm justcurious to know how do you value
the most to help you with?
Priscilla (43:42):
your job.
So, Mat, do you have any toolsthat you use daily?
Mat (43:47):
You might've heard of Help Scout.
That's one that I do recommend.
Yeah, a help desk.
Obviously it is a prettycrucial tool.
I mean a lot of people.
To be fair, a lot of companiescan start with just a shared
Gmail inbox Totally fine, Ithink, if that works for you,
especially if it's just oneperson, you're responsible for
everything Absolutely, that cantotally work fine.
(44:08):
As soon as it gets a little bitmore complicated, you have
multiple people trying to keeptrack of who needs what and
who's already answered this.
That's when you want to look ata tool.
I have written an article Ithink it's still there.
I'll dig this up for you aswell about, basically, how do
you choose which help desk isthe most appropriate for your
given situation?
It might be help scout, itmight not be.
It really depends on whatyou're trying to do, what sort
(44:28):
of company you have one of thetools that I love is clean shot.
Priscilla (44:33):
It is a screenshot tool that we use and it really
makes taking screenshots andmaking them really effective so
easy.
And then you don't end up withall of these screenshots all
over your desktop that are justclogging things up, but it gives
you the ability to take a quickscreenshot, to edit it at
arrows, to blur out information.
(44:54):
You can do so much with themand then you copy and paste it
into the email and then it doesnot live on your computer
forever, which is reallywonderful.
So if you're doing emailsupport specifically, some kind
of tool like CleanShot to doscreenshots is a really really
big game changer 100% and hasmade our support so much better.
Mat (45:16):
It's not support specific, but Obsidian is a kind of
connected text document managerso you can link all your sort of
like a personal wiki if you'reold, but I love that for just
keeping track of everything.
So in support there's a bunchof stuff that I want to keep.
It's just for me like oh, Ilearned this thing about how
Help Scout works and I just wantto keep track of it and it's
(45:36):
just a bit of plain text butthey're all linked together and
easily searchable.
Obsidian Pretty good and for meand my content work.
I also use it to keep track ofjust ideas, things that I think
about.
And there is a video on theHelp Scout blog somewhere about
how I write an article in whichI talk a little bit about
Obsidian in there too.
Priscilla (45:56):
Oh, I love it.
Thank you so much for joiningus today, Mat, and sharing your
wisdom with all of our listeners.
We really appreciate it, asalways, if you liked this
episode, please share it withsomeone who works in customer
support, or leave a review onApple Podcasts.
We love to hear from you.
Like we talked about at thebeginning of the episode, it
really makes us feel so good tohear back from people who are
enjoying the content we'remaking.
(46:16):
Thank you all for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
In this episode, we're joinedby Mat Patterson to talk all
about knowledge bases.
We'll cover the importance ofinvesting in your knowledge base
and some tips for developingand maintaining one over time.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
Okay, so you already know whoour guest is because I name
(00:24):
dropped him in the intro to theepisode, but I want to give him
his full introduction anyway.
So Mat is a customer servicecontent lead at Help Scout and
has spent his career startingand growing support teams.
Mat is passionate about helpingcustomer-centric people deliver
consistently excellent service.
He does this through writtencontent with Help Scout and
(00:45):
through his podcast, theSupportive.
So welcome to the show, Mat.
Mat (00:49):
Hello, thank you for having me.
Priscilla (00:50):
Yeah, thanks for coming.
A couple of weeks ago, or Iguess it was months ago at this
point, you had an episode of theSupportive that called on
support professionals to sendyou audio clips for kind of
advice for new supportprofessionals.
Oh yeah, and a couple peoplefrom the Buzzsprout team
submitted some audio and when Isubmitted mine I plugged Happy
(01:12):
to Help, which at the time I waslike this is fine, and then you
put it in the podcast.
And then I felt bad that I hadplugged my podcast in your
podcast.
So I felt like it's only rightto now have you on the show so
that you can plug your podcastand all the work you do at Help
Scout and share your insightwith all of our listeners over
here so they can get to know you, since I kind of snuck my way
into your podcast.
Mat (01:34):
Always be closing Priscilla .
Priscilla (01:37):
It wasn't with that intent, I promise.
I was like, oh, I got to putthis in, I got to remember to
tell people I'm a podcaster.
Now you know, you'd think ayear into it and I would be
saying it more naturally, but Istill feel like I have to make
sure I get it out there.
Mat (01:50):
That is one of the things you just have to do when you
make content and you eventuallyrealize nobody sees it.
It was kind of a waste of time.
Priscilla (01:58):
It's so true.
Mat (01:59):
You got to tell people.
Priscilla (02:00):
The like, self-promotion of it all is not
my favorite part of this wholething, but same you know, you
learn new things and it's good.
It puts yourself out of yourcomfort zone.
So before we get into the worldof knowledge bases and help
guides, I always like to startthe episodes off with some
positivity and just kind of likeshouting out someone who does
really remarkable work.
So, Mat, who has made your dayrecently?
(02:23):
Well, it actually relates towhat we were just saying,
because the person that I wantto call out, who made my day her
name is Jen, from Church Spring, and the thing that she did for
me, which is super nice, wasjust sent me a message saying
that she had listened to thatpodcast episode, the one you
just mentioned with a lot ofdifferent people, including
yourself, on it and just saidthat this was super helpful to
(02:43):
us and we've put it into ouronboarding so that new people in
the team will listen to this aspart of coming on board, which
is awesome.
It feels fantastic and I thinkit's just a great practice if
someone does something and youenjoy it, just to tell them,
because often people aren'tgetting a lot of feedback, and
it's so helpful.
I really appreciated that.
Yeah, that is so good and it totally relates to what
(03:06):
we were just talking about.
You're pushing this content out.
You're doing it because youlove what you're talking about
and you love helping people getbetter at what they're working
on.
And sometimes it can be kind oflonely and no one responds to
you and you're like I have noidea if anyone likes this.
And then someone responds andsays, oh my gosh, this is great
and I'm including it in ouronboarding.
That's awesome and it reallygives you that like oomph to
(03:27):
keep going and that the workyou're doing is impacting other
people, and so this is like agood reminder to anyone
listening that if someone inyour sphere is doing something
that's making your day better,tell them, let them know,
because it goes so far and itreally can have huge impacts.
I feel like some of the bestcompliments that I've received
are from people that I don'tknow who just come up and say
(03:49):
something nice and I go.
Man, you did not need to saythat, but it made my day.
Jordan (03:53):
Recently the Buzzsprout Head of Marketing, Alban.
He said that his goal for thisyear is to become, like, a
better fan of the content thathe consumes and make sure that
he's reaching out to people andletting them know that it's made
an impact, and I think that islike.
A really valuable lesson topeople is that you do pour your
heart and soul into your content.
So when someone just sayssomething as simple as like oh
(04:16):
my gosh, I love this.
I shared this with my mom andshe loved it too, that means the
world of content creators.
Priscilla (04:22):
So yeah, that's awesome.
That was a great thing to share.
Thanks for sharing it.
Okay, so I want to start alittle bit about learning more
about you, Mat, and what you'repassionate about in the world of
customer support.
So you've been doing this,serving customers and support
teams, since 2006.
Is that right?
Mat (04:37):
Yes, 2006 was when I started the job where I built
support teams for sure.
I think actually this goes backeven further because I'm old.
Priscilla (04:46):
You're wise.
Mat (04:47):
My very, very first job proper grown-up job was also in
a support team actually.
Priscilla (04:53):
Oh, I love it.
Mat (04:54):
We were providing support to accountants who were trying
to become financial planners.
Priscilla (05:00):
Okay.
Mat (05:00):
So I was on the phone talking to accountants
explaining about their computerproblems with this frankly quite
terrible software that we wereselling them.
That was helping them to learnabout financial planning.
That is a good way to learn howto communicate, because trying
to explain things over the phoneabout software programs to
accountants is tough work.
Priscilla (05:19):
In like the early 2000s yeah.
Mat (05:21):
That's kind of where I started.
Priscilla (05:23):
Yeah, how has your role in the industry changed
since then?
How have you kind of evolved?
Mat (05:29):
From that job I accidentally became a web
designer.
What this is?
How long ago it was, there werenot really any web designers.
Yeah, and we had just startedto get websites, because this is
really probably it's the late1990s.
Priscilla (05:43):
Okay, we were both alive.
Then Jordan and I were bothalive.
Then, great, you were alive.
Jordan (05:51):
I remember it.
Mat (05:53):
And I was doing this customer support work but I
heard someone sitting on thecubicle next to me saying, like
how do we even update this page?
And literally nobody in thecompany knew how to update a
webpage.
And I said I think I couldprobably do that because I did
one course in HTML in myuniversity degree and that's how
I became a web designer.
And then I did that for eightyears in a bunch of companies.
(06:13):
Wow, I was like the first webdesigner at the Australian Stock
Exchange.
They'd never had a web designerbefore.
Jordan (06:18):
Oh my gosh.
Mat (06:19):
Then I was overseas, in the UK, for bookingcom Well, what
is now bookingcom, being a webdesigner there?
And then I was at the SydneyZoo Taronga Zoo being a web
designer for them.
That's a fun place.
Priscilla (06:35):
How did you end up in customer support, like how did
you make that change?
Mat (06:36):
Yeah, so I came.
I was at the zoo, literallyinside the zoo, doing my very
short term job there, and I sawan ad for Campaign Monitor,
which was a company that I hadused because, I was a freelance
web designer as well and some ofmy clients used Campaign
Monitor to send their emailnewsletters.
And I saw them advertising fora support person and I thought,
(06:56):
oh, this is bad timing becauseI'd only started the zoo three
months ago or something.
And I thought, oh, I wonder ifthat company seems cool because
the product is cool.
And then I just basically sentthem an email going like, why
are you advertising this nowwhen I've just got another job?
And they said, well, why don'tyou just come and talk to us
anyway?
And then it turned out it wasliterally like 10 minutes from
where I lived and it was threepeople, the company, and, yeah,
(07:20):
I went and had a chat to themand they convinced me to come
over and be the first supportperson.
And it was a great combinationof their customers were web
designers, so I knew who theywere.
I understood how to talk tothose people.
I was able to make thattransition into being the first
support person pretty easily.
Priscilla (07:35):
So what are you doing now?
So it's clearly been a lot oftime you've moved since then.
You're now with Help Scout, sowhat are you doing now at Help
Scout?
Mat (07:42):
Yeah, You're now with Help Scout.
So what are you doing now atHelp Scout?
Yeah, so at Help Scout I'm notdoing customer support directly.
I'm trying to help educate allof our customers, who are
obviously helping theircustomers.
So Help Scout has always made abig investment in that sort of
learning content, about talkingabout what does it mean to
provide good customer service?
What does it look like?
How do you set up the systemsand the processes that deliver
(08:03):
that support more easily?
How do you integrate all thetools, all of that sort of stuff
?
So at Help Scout, my job isfinding lots of different ways
and lots of different channelsto talk about good online
support, how we can do it,what's changing in the industry,
all of that sort of thing.
And so here, obviously, I makea podcast, I write a newsletter,
I do talks at conferences, Imake videos, every form of
(08:25):
content you can think ofInterpretive dance.
Priscilla (08:28):
Oh, wow, I've never seen that I was going to say my
support team, the Buzzsproutteam.
Last summer, we all gatheredfor an in-person meetup and we
watched one of the webinars thatyou put on about analytical
reading and it was such a greatresource for us as a team.
If you are listening to this,go watch that webinar.
(08:48):
You could probably find it onHelp Scout's blog.
It was so fantastic, Gave us alot of great insight into how to
read emails, not just, you know, read them to fully understand
them and what people are asking.
It was a really fantasticwebinar.
So, for anyone who's notfamiliar with Help Scout and I
think most people probably are,but for anyone who's not, can
you give us a quick rundown ofwhat Help Scout is?
Mat (09:13):
It's a customer support platform, right.
It helps you help yourcustomers and it does that by
giving you a help desk and aknowledge base and a little chat
knowledge base support widgetthat we call Beacon, in case
you're looking for it, and theyall work together.
So, basically, so that you canspend more time helping your
customers and less time faffingabout with all the different
tools and systems.
You've probably seen thingsthat do much of that.
Maybe the thing that'scurrently the most different on
(09:33):
the number of customers you'rehelping and everyone can be in
there and you can have everybodyclose to the customers, because
there is no additional cost toyou to just let everybody log in
and see what the customers aretalking about and how they speak
(09:55):
about things.
But I know you use HelpScout,so maybe you can tell us how you
do it.
Priscilla (09:59):
Yeah, I love HelpScout.
We've been using them since2018, 2019.
It's been a really cool tool touse and it shaped a lot of the
way that we think about customerservice.
When you're in there, just theway you're so intentional about
how you name different things orcalling tickets conversations
Like they're not tickets in HelpScout, they're conversations
(10:21):
and it's this reminder that, hey, this is a relational thing
you're doing.
This is not a transactionalrelationship here.
This is actually like aconversation with a real person,
and I do really love the waythat you guys approach like
online support in that way Oneof the coolest things about Help
Scout recently that I reallylove.
I think maybe you updated thissometime last year.
(10:41):
If you want to link text, allyou have to do is copy the URL
that you want to link and thenhighlight the text that you're
going to link that URL to andthen paste it, and then it
automatically creates a linkedtext to that URL, what I will
not tell you.
It saves so much time.
Yeah, it saves like four clicks, which you really don't think
(11:04):
is that many clicks, untilyou're answering 120 emails a
day, oh yeah, and linking thingsright and left.
So good, I love it so much.
Ok, before we jump intoknowledge bases, one last
question for you what is yourfavorite thing about customer
support, like, what is it thatmakes you passionate about it?
Mat (11:21):
There's probably not one thing, there's probably lots of
things, things.
But I think that's sort of thepoint is that you get to do so
many different types of thingsthat are all called support.
Right, you answer the technicalquestions, but, especially in
small companies, you're oftendoing some sort of like business
consulting to these people whoare like I have this problem.
I think your product can helpme, and you're really helping
them figure out like, what areyou actually trying to do and
(11:42):
how might this help or not?
You're figuring out like weirdbrowser bugs.
You're coming up with new waysto explain the same thing that
you've explained a hundred times, but this person doesn't get
that explanation and you need anew way to do it.
And then you're writingdocumentation.
You're running classes.
You might be off to sit in onsales calls.
It's just lots and lots ofdifferent things you can do that
are all types of support.
Priscilla (12:09):
And every day, sort of, is a little bit different,
even though there is weirdly, alot of repetition.
It's hard to explain to someonewho's not in it that there is
this repetition of workingthrough an email queue or, you
know, answering phone calls orsomething.
There's the repetition in that,but every single email or
interaction is completelydifferent, and so there is also
this aspect of needing to beable to switch lanes really
quickly and go into differentmodes just when it comes to
problem solving or being anencourager or whatever it is
that that email requires of you.
(12:30):
So I totally agree with youthat that dimension in the work
is really enjoyable.
Mat (12:35):
There's something about it.
There's like a little dopaminehit that you get from answering
conversations that you don't getin other jobs.
That was something I found hardmoving out of direct support
into what I do now.
So don't get in other jobs.
That was something I found hardmoving out of direct support
into what I do now.
So don't get those little likeoh, I finished it and you can
see the number go down.
It's a really immediatemeasurement of progress.
That you don't get in a lot ofother jobs is to go like oh, I
(12:56):
can, if I could delete that, Icould close that, and then it
goes.
It's so satisfying.
Priscilla (13:01):
It's so satisfying Like mowing your lawn and you
can see it as you're mowing it,and there's something so
satisfying about that, whereasif you're doing some other
project where you don't see itas you're going, it's harder to
stay motivated.
I fully agree.
Those little dopamine hits areawesome.
That's why I like make sure Istay in support at some point
during the day.
I like to be in the inbox.
(13:21):
It's just it feels so good.
So today we're talking aboutknowledge bases, and knowledge
bases can sometimes be viewed asa necessary evil in the world
of support, like you have tohave these documents there, but
a lot of times they get ignoredor they become outdated over
time and they just aren'tinvested in, and so I thought it
would be a good thing for us totalk about today.
(13:41):
Mat, I know you've recentlydone some work and developed
some content about knowledgebases and some strategies for
really creating good ones, andso I thought it'd be good for us
to talk about kind of theimportance of having strong
knowledge bases and then alsosome tips and strategies for
developing them and thenmaintaining them and making sure
they stay up to date.
(14:02):
So to kick us off, can you justdefine what a knowledge base is
for anyone listening who maynot have one.
Mat (14:08):
A knowledge base is essentially it's a collection of
documentation, right?
The idea is this set ofinformation that is designed to
make it easy for your customersor the general public to find
answers to questions withouthaving to go through the actual
support team, and that mightmean it's a bunch of FAQs.
There might be process guides,there might be you know what
(14:28):
even is this product and howdoes it work.
You get videos in there, sortof like a user manual and a
how-to guide smushed together.
Yes, that's a knowledge base.
Lots of them are publiclyfacing Some of them will be
internal only Lots of differenttypes.
Priscilla (14:43):
Last year during the Elevate CX conference, I had
some support professionals giveus like advice for the podcast.
One of the questions I askedwas what would they do if they
were starting a support teamfrom scratch?
What was the first thing you do?
And I think it was AshleyHazlett who said that she would
develop an FAQ, that that wasthe first thing that she would
do, and it was funny because Ihadn't really thought about that
(15:05):
as being like step number one.
But she said that she would doit because it'd be a way for her
to train herself on the productand to really understand all
the details there, and I thoughtreally that was such a good
first step.
And so there's really so muchgood that can be found in a
really strong knowledge base,and so can you tell us a little
bit about why it's important toinvest time into a knowledge
(15:27):
base and then when you thinksupport should take that step to
actually create one?
Mat (15:32):
Well, let me ask you a question first Are you any good
at singing?
Priscilla (15:35):
I am Okay.
Jordan (15:37):
Multi-talented.
Priscilla (15:39):
I did not see that question coming.
Mat (15:41):
Yes, I've been singing my whole life, yeah, Well, you
would have been okay, because Ithink if you look at cultures,
pre-writing and cultures whichdidn't have writing, that was
how they stored their knowledge.
Right, you would have theperson who would sing the songs,
and this is how everybodylearns about the cultural
information.
It's all stored within thosesongs and it's passed down
generationally.
And I think about that becauseif that was the way it worked
(16:04):
now, my customer satisfactionrate personally would be so low
because no one would understandanything.
Priscilla (16:09):
But you're saying that I should start creating
singing documents.
Mat (16:13):
Absolutely.
It could be just Buzzsprout.
Support the musical every day.
Priscilla (16:19):
Yeah, okay, but actually Jordan, and I would
love that.
Jordan (16:22):
I was a musical theater major, so yes, okay.
Mat (16:24):
Well, you've got it sorted, You're fine.
When writing disappears,Buzzsprout will still be able to
provide great support.
Jordan (16:30):
Oh yeah, we're staying afloat.
Mat (16:31):
My customers, on the other hand, are in all sorts of
trouble.
Priscilla (16:34):
But we have writing, Luckily we have writing.
Yes, we have writing.
That's such a good thing.
Mat (16:39):
The great benefit of writing, I think, is that you
know.
You write it down once andrefer to it forever.
It's out there.
It's helping people when you'renot around.
They don't need to wait for youanymore.
So it's like a source of truthfor customers, but it's also a
source of truth for your ownteam, because you come in you
don't know something.
The knowledge base should tellyou.
(16:59):
This is what it is and this ishow it works.
It's also for your littlein-app help widgets or however
you present that information.
It's also now a source of truthfor AI tools that come in and
gobble up all your knowledgebase and then regurgitate it to
your customers like they're tinybaby birds.
And as to when should you havea knowledge base?
Well, I think Ashley alreadysaid it, but basically as soon
(17:19):
as you possibly can, you shouldstart working on it, because it
takes ages and you're alreadyusing that.
You're giving information tocustomers already, right?
You're doing it one-on-one,which is madness.
To only do it one-on-one whenyou know you're going to have to
use that information again.
If you can start collecting itinto a knowledge base, it's
easier if you do it at the start.
It only gets harder the longeryou wait before you start doing
(17:40):
it.
So even if you can't do thewhole thing, some knowledge base
is better than no knowledgebase.
Priscilla (17:53):
Yeah, even if you're just pulling the top 10
questions that you have insupport and you're writing
documents about those 10questions and posting that
somewhere to get started, yeah,it's definitely worth it, and I
like what you said about itmaking it easier on your support
team, because then they haveplaces to go to learn things,
but then also resources to sendout to customers.
I really think it can be a hugeresource, both internally and
externally, and it can also bekind of like a marketing tool
too for anyone who's coming toyour product and doesn't know.
(18:15):
I will oftentimes go into thehelp guide and see what the help
guide looks like.
Do they tell me how to leave?
If they don't tell me how tocancel my account in a help
guide, I'm probably not going tosign up for an account
somewhere because I'm going tofeel trapped in it.
So I want to get an idea forhow helpful they are in that
guide, and so I think havingthat can also be kind of like a
(18:36):
marketing tool for new customers.
Yeah, so I think it's clearthat it's important to have a
knowledge base and it'simportant to have a good, strong
set of documents for yourcustomers and for your internal
support teams as well.
But what do you include?
What actually makes it up?
What are you going to put yourtime into developing right in
the beginning?
(18:57):
So, Mat, where would you startas far as articles to write and
processes to publish?
Mat (19:02):
So you start with what you have right.
Whatever answers that youalready have, that you find
yourself reusing like oh yeah,I've explained that before Once,
you've done it more than once.
That probably should be aknowledge base, because you know
that it's going to come upagain.
Specifically, which articlesshould you write?
Well, I mean, you might have,if you're using a help desk.
You might have some reportingthat tells you like these are
the most common categories ofquestions we're answering.
(19:24):
You might be able to look at,like what are the most
frequently used, save repliesthat we're sending out to
customers.
Maybe you have that, maybe youdon't, but it's sort of almost
doesn't matter, becausewhoever's on the support team,
you just ask them like whichquestion are you sick of
answering?
That will be the one thatshould be in the knowledge base,
if it's not already in there.
That's where you start.
Absolutely, that's a great tip.
(19:52):
That's a great question to askyour team when you're trying to
figure out the next thing towrite what are you sick of
answering?
I love that.
Yeah, like they know the pain,they will know the pain, and so
they will be like if I never hadto write that same thing again,
I would be so happy, andsometimes a knowledge-based
article is the first step indealing with that pain.
And the second step is can wejust fix it so it's not a
problem anymore?
Yes, and actually the realsolution is fix the product.
No one has to answer it.
And also, we don't need aknowledge base article.
That's the ultimate win.
Priscilla (20:11):
That is such a good point.
The knowledge base is there tohelp you explain and educate and
give self-service right to yourcustomers.
But if there is an issue thatis recurring so much that you
have to rely on this article forevery single person who runs
into that using that feature,maybe the feature needs to be
analyzed.
It's not always going to besolved through education.
(20:33):
If you're seeing somethingyou're like even with this help
article, we're still gettingquestions about this then maybe
you need to look at the UI orthe feature or whatever it is
that is causing that extrafriction.
Jordan (20:45):
And we have a great episode about that that we just
did with Tom Rossi talking abouttalking to the dev and product
team about issues.
Mat (20:53):
I used to do a thing with my team called kill that
question, which sounds quiteviolent now that I say it out
loud.
Oh, I like it, though.
It would just be the supportteam getting together and saying
, like, if we could stop havingto answer these questions like
which ones would be we mosthappy about?
And we just make a list To yourpoint.
We would take this to then theproduct teams and say, like,
look, how many times we'reanswering this question.
(21:14):
Here is our.
Maybe we think this is how itcould be solved.
You probably have a better idea, but, like, this is the amount
of work that we could be savingfor our customers and for us,
and so we would just make a listand then prioritize it and send
it to them, and then they wouldsometimes take things off the
list, and it was the mostsatisfying thing in the world to
go back to there and say, oh,remember when that like, you
(21:35):
just forget those questionsimmediately.
When you don't have to answerthem anymore, they disappear out
of your life and you feel likeyou're making no progress.
But go back to the list and gooh yeah, we used to answer that
a hundred times a month.
Priscilla (21:46):
Right, and now we don't at all.
Now it's not even a question oh, it's so nice, it's so
satisfying.
So what are somecharacteristics of a really
great help, guide or knowledgebase, like what are some of the
things that you want to see inthose really strong ones?
Mat (22:00):
I want a knowledge base that is actually going to be
helpful to people, so matchingup the way people think about
that problem, the words thatthey have in their head when
they're running into the problem, and a knowledge-based article
that takes them from where theyare to where they need to be.
So you mentioned before thatHelp Scout.
You know we have this sort ofintentional naming of features
(22:21):
and things to try and send amessage about, like this is how
we think about it, which is, Ithink, very effective.
But also you can cross a linewhere it's like well, no one
understands what we're talkingabout.
I think people grasp the ideaof tickets and conversations
being the same thing, butsometimes there is like well,
I've never heard someone talkabout it in that way and so I'm
searching for this thing, andthe customer describes it.
(22:42):
In the way the customer thinksabout it, based on their past
experience with other tools orwhatever, they may never find
the right article in theknowledge base unless they have
the right terminology.
So the first thing is to makesure people can actually find
the right articles, because theyare written from the customer's
perspective and not from thecompany's perspective.
Priscilla (22:59):
Yeah.
Mat (22:59):
I think the knowledge bases which are super annoying are
ones which are like you'reobviously mapping this to your
internal structure of how youthink about things and it
doesn't make any sense tosomeone outside the company.
Priscilla (23:12):
Or if your marketing team is the one writing these
articles and you're like oh, butyou don't even know how our
customers are responding to this.
And yes, absolutely.
Mat (23:17):
And I can tell you like you're trying to promote the
thing, but you're also, you knowthat this is meant to be a help
guide and it's for people whoare having problems, and so
there is a tension between themarketing aspects of the
knowledge base, which are real.
It is a way of explaining topeople what you do and why it
works and why it matters.
But there is a tension betweenthat, and sometimes the product
is not perfect.
All times the product is notperfect.
(23:38):
People are going to run intoedges, they're going to get into
trouble.
We are going to have to talkabout things which are less
positive about this company inorder to explain to customers
how we do it, and socustomer-centered as opposed to
company-centered is veryimportant for a knowledge base.
Priscilla (23:56):
Yeah, I think another really important part of having
a good knowledge base is havingeasy access to the support team
.
I think there's definitelyknowledge bases that I've used
where I can't find the answer inthe articles that I'm reading
through one, but then I can'tfind an email for a support team
.
They've buried it so much thatI can't get to a team once.
I've already tried to do theself-service route, and so for
us I think every single one ofour articles at the bottom of
(24:16):
the article has the supportemail, because we want to make
sure that once you've read thearticle, if you still have any
questions at all, you can get toa person in about 10 minutes,
and I think that is a sign of areally strong knowledge base,
because you're saying we'regoing to give you the
information.
We feel confident that you canget there with the information
you're giving here, but at thesame time, like you were saying,
(24:37):
we don't know what other thingsyou're coming from with other
knowledge you've gained at otherplatforms.
Mat (24:58):
And so coming to us, you might have more questions beyond
this article, and so I thinkthat's another good thing to
include in your help guides.
And if they just found that,then they would be fine, they
wouldn't have to wait for us.
You know, some people prefer tohear it from a person.
Fair enough, but there are abunch of people who, if they had
found that on their own, they'dbe happier.
You'd be happier because youdidn't have to help them.
And so figuring out a way tomake sure that they can find it,
(25:19):
that they can search it, thatit returns useful results to
them super important.
And then, when they get thatdocument, that they can read it
and scan it and find the thingthat they need in there easily
Like, it's well-designed, it'seasy to hop around and find the
right section and follow linksto a place that you want to end
up.
So accessibility superimportant.
Priscilla (25:38):
Yeah, Formatting.
People don't think about howimportant formatting is with
written content.
But just having headers thatare clear and easy to read,
using, you know, bold anditalics and font changes all of
that can help you when you'rescanning an article to go
quicker, and I don't know abouty'all.
But I do not want to read afour paragraph page with no
(26:00):
formatting in it and I'm notgoing to sit there and read it,
I'm going to stop and then I'mimmediately going to try to
email whoever I can emailbecause I don't want to read
this long document.
But if it's formatted, if it'sstep-by-step points with bold
and italics and highlightedthings, it's so much easier to
consume that I was at asupport-driven conference years
ago when I first ended up in atalk about the importance of
(26:23):
formatting in knowledge basesand it just was such a simple
thing that I had never heardarticulated.
But it really is so true.
So if you're writing aknowledge base, be really aware
of that, that that formatting isreally going to impact how
people consume that informationand how likely they are to read
everything that you're writing.
The same for your emails too.
(26:43):
When you're in an inbox andyou're emailing customers, Make
sure you're not just sendingthem blocks of text, because
they're not going to readthrough all of that.
Mat (26:51):
Yes, conciseness, clarity.
If you're a good writer, you'llwrite things differently.
For an email where you'retalking to a specific person and
you have context about who theyare, yep, for a knowledge base
will be different.
Writing it in a chat responsewill be different.
That's why you get a hire forpeople who can write in a lot of
these cases.
Priscilla (27:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
How big should a knowledge basebe?
Is there a time when aknowledge base is too big?
Mat (27:15):
It should be seven pages long.
Priscilla (27:17):
All right, there we go.
Mat (27:18):
Next question no, of course there isn't.
There isn't a limit, right?
I don't think you could get toobig.
It's just what is useful andhelpful for this particular
company and its customers andthe products and the services
that they're supporting.
Right, all of these things willdetermine, like, what is an
appropriate amount of knowledgebase for this situation that
(27:39):
we're in.
Like, do you know how manypages are in the Buzzsprout
knowledge base?
Have you got any idea?
Priscilla (27:44):
Gosh, I know we have a lot.
I want to say we have like 97last time I counted, but we
probably have a couple moresince then.
But we have it all organized indifferent chapters type of a
thing.
But I think what you weresaying is important, that it's
not so much about the size, it'sabout what's important to have
in there, and when somethingbecomes outdated you take it out
, you don't leave it in there.
Mat (28:06):
Yeah, the number does not matter, right, it's only.
Is the content in thereaccurate?
Is it not duplicated acrossdifferent places?
Is it up to date with thecurrent state of things?
Priscilla (28:22):
And do you?
Mat (28:22):
have the capacity to manage that many articles, because
even if you start with a greatnumber and it's all accurate,
but you cannot possibly maintainthat many different articles,
eventually it gets terrible andthen they're just in your way
and your AI is now going to sendpeople the wrong information
forevermore because it's in theknowledge base.
It is tricky.
There's also an interestingdiscussion that we had about
like, what about an individualarticle?
How long should that be?
(28:42):
Should it be short?
Should it be long?
Do you try and cover everypossible scenario within one
document?
Do you split those up into lotsof different ones and make
people jump around?
I don't think there is a singlecorrect answer.
I think that's a discussionwe're constantly having and I
think, as we have these AI toolsingesting stuff, those also
might provide some pressure onthe way that we structure
documents.
In the same way that searchengines kind of change the way
(29:04):
people made webpages in general,AI tools are going to do the
same thing to knowledge bases.
Priscilla (29:09):
Yep, it's a case-by-case basis, at least for
us, when it comes to how muchinformation do we include in one
document, or do we split itinto two?
And it always comes back to howis the customer going to read
this and how are they going towant to see this information?
Do they need to always haveboth sides of these answers at
one time?
If so, they should probably endup in the same document, but if
(29:29):
it's an either or situation,then two documents may make it
easier to consume.
So it is kind of like that Takeit case by case and figure out
what needs to be there, and ifit doesn't need to be there,
then it can go in anotherdocument or doesn't need to end
up on the base at all.
Mat (29:43):
Yeah, you also need to think about how are they seeing
this?
Because if they're reading iton a big window and they've got
the whole browser windowdedicated to this document, it
can be longer but look lessscary.
But if they're getting it in atiny chat tool and it's like 25
pixels wide, that thing's goingto scroll for 27 years.
You want a shorter piece then.
Or if they're doing it in appand they're in the middle of a
(30:04):
process and they just need oneparagraph really that explains
what's going on right now inthis particular spot.
You might need to split thingsup more.
Priscilla (30:12):
Or make a video or something that's going to allow
it to be a little bit easier toconsume, like on a mobile
version, or something like that.
Jordan (30:18):
Yeah.
Priscilla (30:18):
Mm-hmm.
So some knowledge bases arebuilt, like into the website.
I know for Buzzsprout ours isbuilt by our design team and our
developers and it's built intothe site, but that is not the
only way to create a knowledgebase.
So can you tell us a little bitabout, like, third party
services?
I know that Help Scout has aknowledge base aspect to it
(30:38):
where you can build it throughHelp Scout.
Can you tell us a little bitabout that, because I'm not
super familiar with that option.
Mat (30:43):
Yeah, absolutely so.
There are a million tools forthis.
If you do use a help desk,often the help desk will have
one, like Help Scout does.
It's called Docs, a verygeneric piece of naming, but
everyone understands what itmeans, don't they?
Jordan (30:57):
Help.
Mat (30:57):
Scout's Docs.
So the nice benefit of havingthose is that they can integrate
right into your support tools.
You can really easily referenceoh here is a doc about this
particular issue and you can tiethose things together quite
nicely.
If you have one of those, youmight want to look at that, see
if it is a good fit for you.
But you might want to have morecontrol over it.
(31:18):
Obviously, if you're usingsomeone else's product, it might
specify the way you can lay outpages and that sort of thing.
You have lots of choices.
There are standalone productslike a Knowledge Owl or
helpdocsio or HelpJuice I'venever heard of HelpJuice.
No, shade HelpJuice, but thatis a bit gross.
Priscilla (31:37):
The naming is interesting.
Mat (31:40):
But the tool that you choose, obviously it matters
because things might resonatewith you or the person who's
mostly managing your docs.
Maybe they find something thatworks really well with them.
Jordan (31:49):
Yeah.
Mat (31:49):
But ultimately it doesn't matter that much, does it,
Because all you're doing isproducing a document when you
have a tool that helps you moreeasily keep things up to date
and link things together andmake it accessible in the way
that you want, to choose thattool.
Priscilla (32:01):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
It more in the way that youwant to choose that tool.
Yeah, I think that's a goodpoint.
It's the ease of updating it,it's the ease of staying on top
of it and creating it.
That's what's helpful.
But the content inside of thedocument is really what's going
to make or break your help guideor your knowledge base.
And so if that's easier to doby building it in-house, that's
one thing.
If it's another thing to use aplatform like Help Scout and
(32:21):
build it into your emailsoftware, that's Use a platform
like Help Scout and build itinto your email software.
That's another great way to doit.
But really the content iswhat's important.
Mat (32:28):
Customers do not care what tool you use to make your doc no
, or where it lives yeah, itdoesn't matter to them.
Priscilla (32:35):
Yeah, you know, we've all used knowledge bases.
Where you just can't find theinformation you need, or you
find an article that's relatedto the question you have and the
information is outdated, it isnot up to date with what the
page that you're looking at Iknow for our customers, you know
, one of the things that peoplehave a lot of questions about is
how to submit your podcast toApple Podcasts.
Apple Podcasts changes thatprocess often and our help guide
(32:59):
has to stay up to date withwhat Apple's process is all the
time, and so people will writein and say now there's, this
button is not purple anymore.
I'll be like you're right, it'sblue now.
And we have to make sure thatwe're staying up on top of it,
because even a color change likethat can be confusing for
someone, because they're lookingfor a blue button even though
it says the same name.
It's a purple button now, orwhatever the colors are.
(33:21):
So it's so important to stay upon top of that and make sure
you're maintaining thatknowledge base, or else all the
work you put into creating it isfor nothing.
It doesn't matter.
Mat (33:31):
The wrong information.
You find the wrong informationis actually worse than no
information at all, because itcan send people down the wrong
path and then they feel evengrumpier than before they
started.
Priscilla (33:41):
And they question your ability to be experts on
the thing you're talking abouttoo, because they're like well,
you don't know how submitting toApple works either, so how am I
supposed to trust you with this?
So what are some pitfalls thatyou see people run into when
they're developing theseknowledge bases and maintaining
them over time?
Mat (33:57):
I think we've covered a few of those.
I think you know, if it's toohard for the people to find, if
the search doesn't work, likeeven if the right article's in
there and I search for it and Ican't find it, then what was the
point?
The individual articles arelike difficult to scan or
they're confusing.
But I think the big one andwe've talked about it a few
times already is that documentsthat are just not well
(34:18):
maintained.
It's a nightmare because yourcustomer has that experience of
like, oh yes, a help doc.
It's about the specific problemthat I just typed in.
It's got the answer, and thenyou go there and it doesn't make
sense.
It doesn't like to point.
The screenshot doesn't matchanymore.
On that, there are now sometools which will help you with
updating screenshots.
I personally had the experienceof owning the knowledge base at
(34:39):
Campaign Monitor and theneither the product changes and
they're like oh yeah, we'vedecided to change the name of
some button somewhere and now athousand screenshots have to be
updated, which is always no fun.
Priscilla (34:51):
That literally happened to us this morning.
That literally happened to thismorning.
Mat (34:56):
Yeah, or even I did one where it was like the design of
the knowledge base itselfchanged and my screenshots
didn't fit in anymore and I hadto literally retake 200
screenshots.
Jordan (35:07):
Yeah.
Mat (35:07):
So I guess maybe we talk about, like, the reasons that
things don't get maintained.
Should we talk about that?
Yeah, I think there's a fewthings right.
It's just hard because you needto know the answer for a start.
Like someone needs tounderstand that this is actually
wrong.
So it requires somebody with abit of expertise is actually
wrong, so it requires somebodywith a bit of expertise.
Even like a technical writerwho's not in the support team
(35:27):
may not have the level ofknowledge about how customers
think about that thing and thephrasing that they use to make
that page work for them, even ifthey understand the product
side really well.
So there's like the difficultyof finding someone who can
actually do it.
Especially if it's been leftfor a while.
It can be just a massive jobfor someone to go in and start
fixing stuff up and it feels abit overwhelming.
(35:48):
Sometimes you don't even knowwhat's in the knowledge base
because, like it was four peopleago that this thing was set up
and like who knew that half ofthose pages were even there and
they refer to features thatdon't exist anymore or to
payment plans that you can nolonger apply to all of that sort
of stuff.
Like it's just invisibleproblems.
There's always something urgentto do in support, Like there's
always there's a customerwaiting right While you're
(36:08):
taking time to write thisdocument.
You are making someone elsewait a lot of the time, and
that's emotionally difficult forsupport as well as annoying for
the customer.
And sometimes it's just thetools that you're using don't
make it easy to maintain it, andit's like it's such a big
effort to update a document thatit doesn't ever feel like it's
worthwhile, and I guess the lastone would be it's nobody's job,
Like nobody is the owner of itand therefore it never gets done
(36:30):
.
Priscilla (36:30):
It doesn't happen.
I think that making it easy issuch a good tip for people.
You know, if you're in theprocess of going okay, we got to
stay on top of this.
How are we going to do it?
Make it easy to make theseupdates, because then you're not
having to jump through hoops,you're not having to go and get
things you know run by fourdifferent people, get their
buyout and then go in and updatethe article.
If it is a streamlined processand, like you said, if someone
(36:52):
owns it and it's theirresponsibility to kind of stay
on top of that, and of course,they pull in people that can
help write articles or makeupdates.
They don't have to be the onlyone who touches it, but that
they own it and they can makethose executive calls when it
comes to making updates.
I think that's such a big thing.
I want to say three or fouryears ago we kind of did an
overhaul of our help guide andat the time it was much smaller
(37:15):
and even that it was such aproject to go through every
article and get rid of ones thatwere outdated and update
current ones and get everything.
It really is an undertaking andsince then, staying on top of
it, and having someone who ownsit has changed things so much
because we don't have to dothese giant overhauls anymore
(37:36):
and when we see an edit thatneeds to be made, we can make it
quickly and we can beintentional about going and
looking through older articlesthat haven't been updated
recently and making sure thatthose are fresh and in our tone,
and so I think having someoneown it is such a good strategy.
Jordan (37:52):
Well, that makes it easier for people in other
departments too.
So, for example, if I stumbleupon something while I'm
interacting with someone over onthe marketing team, I know that
I can send a message to theperson who's in charge and say,
hey, I caught this little thing,and then they can go fix it.
If you have somebody that likethat's their thing.
It's so much easier for theother departments to support the
(38:13):
support team in that way.
Priscilla (38:15):
Yeah, I think that's a good point.
I also think it's important, ifyou're the person who it's your
role to stay on top of the helpguide.
This was me the other day andyou get a ping from Jordan that
says, hey, this is not correctanymore.
Being able to take thatfeedback and make the change
without feeling some sense of ohmy gosh, I've screwed up
because I didn't update thisfast enough.
(38:36):
You know, I think sometimesthings change so fast and so you
have to be OK with getting itfrom other people from outside
of it and knowing that this isnot a personal anything on you.
Things change all the time andsometimes you just got to go and
make the update and move onfrom it, because it's easy to
fall into this like place of Ihave to be the one who finds and
(38:57):
updates things.
No one else can see it.
If someone else finds it, thenthat means I've done my job
wrong, and that can be adangerous place to be if you
want to allow people to havefeedback and support you.
Mat (39:08):
Like Jordan was saying, yeah, I think it's important to
realize, especially when youhave a large knowledge base, you
probably can't be 100% up todate all the time, because it is
going to be a process but youalso, if you're in charge of it,
you also are probably aware of,like, these are the ones that
we cannot let get out of datebecause it will be a disaster.
And these are the ones where,like, no one's really looking at
this.
Once a month maybe someoneuploads that page.
(39:31):
It's useful to have therebecause we refer to it, but if
it has to wait until after we dothis other stuff, that's going
to be okay.
That's why it takes an ownerwho understands, like, what is
in here, what's the relativeimportance of them, which ones
do?
I absolutely make sure that ifthey're working on that part of
the product, I need to knowearly so that we can be ready
because the support team willpay.
Otherwise when you releasesomething and then the document
doesn't make sense anymore.
Priscilla (39:53):
Absolutely, absolutely.
I had someone write in theother day who said now this
screenshot is showing this andthis is no longer what it says.
And I'm like, huh, you're right, it doesn't say that.
I didn't know that.
It doesn't say that anymore.
I wonder when that changed andwhen we didn't hear about it.
So I think that that's you know, that's a really important you
know you want to make sure thatthe person who is owning the
(40:14):
knowledge base, that they're theones who really understand what
is where and what's importantand where people are going and
where they're, what are the mostimportant articles, so that
those are the ones that canreally be paid very close
attention to.
All right, so if you have onepiece of advice that you can
give someone who's going tostart building their knowledge
base tomorrow so this is thefirst time they're hearing about
knowledge bases, they're asupport team of one and tomorrow
(40:37):
they're going to start what isyour tip to them?
Mat (40:40):
So, assuming you've taken our earlier advice about like
where do you start, Like whichdocuments do you start?
with I think fine, take that asread.
I think the thing that you dofirst is to figure out the
process of like how is somebodygoing to tell me when the
knowledge base needs updating?
Because, to your point earlier,any friction that's in that
process just makes the wholething much more likely to become
(41:01):
outdated and painful.
So you're going to giveespecially the support team,
just give them a way that theycan really easily tell you this
thing needs updating or here isa new article that we need.
So maybe you do that in yourhelp desk.
Like a really simple way wouldbe just here's a tag.
If you put this tag on aconversation, I have a filter
that will just show me like,okay, everything that people are
(41:22):
tagged as like needsdocumentation, and then I can
just see that list right.
Or I talked to someone fromSurvey Gizmo years and years ago
.
They had like built some sortof browser extension, I think,
where they could just press abutton and then, with a little
support, they could press abutton.
It would say, like here's ananswer, I've already written it
should be a document, and itwould just send that over to the
(41:42):
documentation person.
Oh, that's great, because youget the question, you get the
answer that's been written forthis particular customer and
then all you need to do reallyis like well, how do I make this
kind of more general?
That would apply to allcustomers and they've got 80% of
the work done for them.
Jordan (41:56):
That's cool yeah.
Mat (41:57):
So whatever you can do to reduce the friction between
person noticing that somethingneeds documenting or needs
improving and a person whose jobit is to do that having that
information.
So reduce that, make it asshort as possible.
That will just make the wholething run more smoothly.
Priscilla (42:12):
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
You know, I think it's clearthat knowledge bases can feel
like this huge undertaking, butthat they're so worth the time.
They're so worth the time todevelop, to maintain, to create
processes around maintainingthem so that they can stay up to
date and they can be an aid foryour customers and for your
support team, and it's worthputting the time into that.
I know, you know, sometimes itcan feel like, oh my gosh, like
(42:34):
you were saying earlier, I'mleaving people in the queue to
go and write articles, but thereality is those articles are
going to help the next peoplethat may come to your queue and
hopefully will help them not endup in the queue, and so it's
worth the time to devote aperson to that, or to devote a
couple hours of your day to that, to get out of the queue, to
write an article every now andthen, or to partner with a
(42:55):
company or a software that canhelp you write those.
It's worth taking the time tofigure that out.
And so thank you, Mat, forcoming on and talking to us
about help guides and knowledgebases.
It's really been a greatconversation.
Mat (43:06):
Thank you so much.
It's good fun to talk aboutknowledge bases anytime.
Priscilla (43:13):
So it's time for Support in Real Life, our
segment where we discuss reallife support experiences.
Jordan usually brings ussomething from the real world.
What do you have for us today,Jordan?
Jordan (43:23):
We have a message from Sally saying I'm starting a
customer success department atmy company and I'm curious to
know what tools or tech stack dopeople find most useful?
I know every company isdifferent and there are many
tools out there, but I'm justcurious to know how do you value
the most to help you with?
Priscilla (43:42):
your job.
So, Mat, do you have any toolsthat you use daily?
Mat (43:47):
You might've heard of Help Scout.
That's one that I do recommend.
Yeah, a help desk.
Obviously it is a prettycrucial tool.
I mean a lot of people.
To be fair, a lot of companiescan start with just a shared
Gmail inbox Totally fine, Ithink, if that works for you,
especially if it's just oneperson, you're responsible for
everything Absolutely, that cantotally work fine.
(44:08):
As soon as it gets a little bitmore complicated, you have
multiple people trying to keeptrack of who needs what and
who's already answered this.
That's when you want to look ata tool.
I have written an article Ithink it's still there.
I'll dig this up for you aswell about, basically, how do
you choose which help desk isthe most appropriate for your
given situation?
It might be help scout, itmight not be.
It really depends on whatyou're trying to do, what sort
(44:28):
of company you have one of thetools that I love is clean shot.
Priscilla (44:33):
It is a screenshot tool that we use and it really
makes taking screenshots andmaking them really effective so
easy.
And then you don't end up withall of these screenshots all
over your desktop that are justclogging things up, but it gives
you the ability to take a quickscreenshot, to edit it at
arrows, to blur out information.
(44:54):
You can do so much with themand then you copy and paste it
into the email and then it doesnot live on your computer
forever, which is reallywonderful.
So if you're doing emailsupport specifically, some kind
of tool like CleanShot to doscreenshots is a really really
big game changer 100% and hasmade our support so much better.
Mat (45:16):
It's not support specific, but Obsidian is a kind of
connected text document managerso you can link all your sort of
like a personal wiki if you'reold, but I love that for just
keeping track of everything.
So in support there's a bunchof stuff that I want to keep.
It's just for me like oh, Ilearned this thing about how
Help Scout works and I just wantto keep track of it and it's
(45:36):
just a bit of plain text butthey're all linked together and
easily searchable.
Obsidian Pretty good and for meand my content work.
I also use it to keep track ofjust ideas, things that I think
about.
And there is a video on theHelp Scout blog somewhere about
how I write an article in whichI talk a little bit about
Obsidian in there too.
Priscilla (45:56):
Oh, I love it.
Thank you so much for joiningus today, Mat, and sharing your
wisdom with all of our listeners.
We really appreciate it, asalways, if you liked this
episode, please share it withsomeone who works in customer
support, or leave a review onApple Podcasts.
We love to hear from you.
Like we talked about at thebeginning of the episode, it
really makes us feel so good tohear back from people who are
enjoying the content we'remaking.
(46:16):
Thank you all for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
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