Customer interactions with a company continue throughout. From wanting to purchase your services to after the customer has received them, you have to be present to guide them.
Therefore, it’s important to keep communicating with new and old customers alike. By using a well-designed knowledge base, you can ensure high-quality services to customers. Through this, you give purchasers access to information, documents, and tools that help them understand your service or product clearly making them independent by encouraging self-service.
So, what is a free knowledge base software?
A free knowledge base software is similar to an online self-service database that is used by customers to look for information about a particular company’s products, services, or more. This KB software aids organizations in storing, sharing, and managing data and information in a structured manner and a single place. In general, knowledge base tools save company costs and other valuable resources by enabling businesses to better support their customers with limited human resources.
By using an open-source knowledge base, your business can witness a positive change in terms of growth, sales, reach, client relationships, productivity, and more. And the best part is that you don’t have to spend as much!
So, to get started, here are some promising features and advantages of a free knowledge base software:
Advantages
- Quick customer resolution- Faster resolving of a customer service issue, or problem is possible. Assisting customers at every step in an efficient manner and a simplified way is ensured.
- 24/7 Support – Customer support can be extended by the company at any time, with immediate assistance available through a free KB. Focus remains on customer priorities.
- Self-service- With the help of a knowledge base for self service, users can find answers to the company’s product or service-related questions by themselves. It divides knowledge into different portals for different users to easily access. It also enables users and customers to write their own entries to help each other out and conduct discussions in the comments.
- Comprehensive solutions- One of the biggest advantages of having a knowledge base is that it helps curate comprehensive solutions that meet every customer’s needs. From creating and managing information, pages, tags, etc. to providing templates, KB does it all. It also sends in-app notifications.
- Reliable- You can confidently depend on the knowledge base if customer service and care can be offered.
- Internal knowledge base – You can instantly gather customer feedback and share it within the company & create internal knowledge base. An information base for employees alone can be created to increase their knowledge and encourage self-service. Further, it allows scheduling or sending invitations via email.
- Organizes content- Manages separate articles within a knowledge base according to subjects, departments, products, and tags. Create and organize articles that provide effective answers to frequently asked questions. Keeps content updated and relevant through an article review process with an approval stage. Manages the security of articles by offering control over viewing, editing, or excluding them.
- Efficient search engine- One of the most important features of the KB is that it has a super-efficient search engine, one that allows you to access content easily.
- Easy set-up process- Free knowledge bases are simple and easy to set up. You can easily get started.
Limitations:
While the advantages of a free knowledge base are more than just not having to pay, like everything that comes free to us, it has limitations:
1) Limited features: When a knowledge base is free, it cannot offer all the essential features that a paid one can. For instance, you can only publish a certain number of articles. Or customization options might not be there. There may be problems like buffering, or uploading might take time. Pages or information may lag or take time to load.
2) Impact on SEO: When you upgrade from a free version to a paid version, which is inevitable, it will impact your SEO negatively. Switching knowledge base systems can take a toll on it and you may lose website traffic.
3)Requires more development time: You will have to adapt the open-source knowledge base to your business, which may not always be easily done. Moreover, you won’t have control over it as it’s open-sourced.
4) Pay in other ways: The knowledge base may be free, but you’ll still have to spend on its maintenance. In the case of hosting software, you’ll have to spend there too.
5) Developed for enterprises: Most free knowledge base software is designed for the enterprise customer, and if your brand is catering to a different target audience, you’ll have to adjust.
Now that we’ve understood the pros and cons of using a free Knowledge base software, let’s compare it with a SaaS KB.
Benefits:
- Customization options: With plenty of customization options available, you will be able to create the knowledge base of your dreams! You can change and redesign things and create a KB that’s easy on the eyes.
- Competitive advantage: A SaaS knowledge base is pre-designed and for you by another service provider. You just use it for your solutions and it is set up in minutes!
- Cost-effective: SaaS knowledge bases are cheaper than other KBs. Most of them are affordable due to the rise in the number of knowledge bases used in recent years. They are also cheaper than hosting another service provider’s KB for your business.
- Created by experts: These KBs are made by businesses dedicated to the production of this product. The people behind the design know what they are doing well and know what’s best for their buyers.
- Continuously improved: While understanding the problems faced by customers and designing important features, SaaS KBs self-update themselves at set intervals.
- Easy to learn- SaaS knowledge bases are designed in such a way that they are super easy to understand and learn, and don’t require special training.
Whether you choose a SaaS KB or a Free KB, there are benefits and drawbacks to both. The decision you make should therefore be based on which of the two works best for your business and its vision. Using either of these knowledge bases, you’ll notice a huge change in your customer relationships and internal communication. So, choose the best system for you and get started!
