Don't Wait Until It's Too Late: Top 5 Metrics that Signal the Need for a Knowledge Base

As a support leader, you likely monitor several KPIs or metrics on a daily basis to assess your team's performance. 

These KPIs not only communicate the level of service your customers are receiving to your executive team, but also provide insights into areas that require improvement to enhance the customer experience.

Typically, these metrics prompt leaders to hire more support staff or allocate resources to expedite response times. 

However, building a robust knowledge base is another solution that can significantly benefit your support team by providing them with quick access to information to respond to customers more efficiently. 

This article outlines the top five indicators that suggest it's time to build a knowledge base, helping you to recognize when it's appropriate to implement this solution.

Let's begin.

Metric 1: Volume of support tickets

The first metric on this list that is important to look out, when considering whether it is time to build out a knowledge base, is a high volume of incoming support tickets.

A high volume of support tickets could mean a number of things, however it can be indicative of two key things that would necessitate the creation of a knowledge base.

The first reason for a high volume of support tickets could be that customers are not able to find the information they are looking for elsewhere, and so their only option is to write into your support team in order to get the answers they are looking for.

This would obviously be a key indicator that now would be the time to create a knowledge base so that customers can self help themselves and not feel the need to write into the queue.

A good tip or strategy, is to catalog these incoming requests, so that you are able to identify the common tickets that are coming into the que, and these can form your early knowledge base documents and hopefully alleviate the volume of tickets that are coming in.

The other reason to look at when it comes to the volume of support tickets is your agent/ticket ratio.

Often when the volume of support tickets rise, it can mean stress for your support agents as they dont have the capacity to deal with this sudden influx of support tickets.

This again would be another reason to create a knowledge base as it would take away this stress on agents, and instead have a centralized place that customers can go, and not write into the queue.

Metric 2: First contact resolution rate

Most customer support teams prioritize first contact resolution or first response time as the key metrics for providing excellent customer support. 

As a result, a high first response time can be concerning for many support organizations and a strong indication that a knowledge base is necessary. 

A high first resolution time suggests that support representatives are searching for information across multiple sources to address customer tickets. 

To streamline this process, consolidating information into a central knowledge base can provide representatives with easy access to information, ultimately improving response times. 

Encouraging a culture of knowledge curation can also help to ensure that when support representatives solve difficult tickets, they document their responses in the knowledge base. 

Tools like Jiffy can make this process even easier by enabling representatives to create knowledge base documentation without leaving the queue. 

Jiffy's automatic cataloging and documentation features remove the burden from support representatives, improving their efficiency and reducing response times.

Metric 3: Customer retention rate

In today's economy, retaining customers is equally crucial as acquiring new ones.

As a result, most customer support teams prioritize overall customer retention rate as a core metric. 

A decline in retention rate could indicate various factors, but as a team, it's important to identify ways to address the issue and improve retention rate.

One potential solution is to improve the way support is provided to customers.

A recent study revealed that 67% of customers prefer self-service options over speaking to customer service representatives without a knowledge base, customers may become frustrated and ultimately dissatisfied, increasing the risk of churning. 

To enhance the customer experience, building a knowledge base can be a valuable strategy. 

If you're experiencing a decline in customer retention rate, it's also helpful to conduct off-boarding surveys to gain insights into why customers are leaving. These surveys can identify whether support-related factors, such as the lack of self-service options, are contributing to the issue.

Metric 4: Increased Average Handle Time

If your support team is taking longer to respond to each ticket, it may be time to create a knowledge base. 

Average handle time (AHT) is a metric that measures the average time it takes to resolve a support or service request, including any hold or delay time, and follow-up actions.

An increase in AHT suggests that agents lack the necessary information to handle tickets quickly. 

To improve AHT, creating a knowledge base solution may be the best approach to reduce handle time. 

A helpful tip is to identify the types of tickets that take the longest to handle and see if there are common themes in the subject matter.

From there, you can build knowledge base documents to address frequently asked questions, enabling support representatives to quickly access the necessary information to respond to tickets, reducing overall AHT.

Another approach is to use a tool like Jiffy, to make this process even more efficient, with Jiffy, our AI reads incoming subject matter of tickets, reads through previous responses (which have been converted into knowledge base documents) and serves you the relevant information so you can respond to tickets quickly and improve overall AHT.

Metric 5: Low agent utilization rate

In an ideal scenario, support representatives should utilize their time effectively to provide the best possible customer support. 

Agent utilization rate is determined by how effectively support agents are using their time. If agents spend most of their time searching for information and consulting with colleagues to resolve customer issues, it can significantly impact their utilization rate. 

Building a robust knowledge base can help consolidate all relevant information in one place, enabling agents to respond more quickly and effectively to support tickets, ultimately leading to higher agent utilization rates.

A knowledge base also enables agents to quickly respond to frequently asked questions or specific issues that require in-depth investigation.

With solutions like Jiffy, support representatives can easily access the information they need to respond to customer inquiries. 

Once an agent gathers the necessary information and responds to the customer, Jiffy automatically saves the response in the knowledge base, making it easily accessible to other agents. 

This not only improves agent utilization rates but also leads to a more efficient and effective support team.

Conclusion

In conclusion, as a support leader, monitoring key performance indicators or metrics is crucial to assessing your team's performance and identifying areas for improvement. While hiring additional support staff or reallocating resources may be the go-to solutions, building a knowledge base can be an effective alternative.

The top five indicators that suggest it's time to build a knowledge base include a high volume of support tickets, a high first response time, a decline in customer retention rate, an increased average handle time, and low agent utilization rates.

By building a robust knowledge base, consolidating information, and creating a centralized place for information discovery, support agents can provide customers with efficient and effective solutions, resulting in higher customer satisfaction rates and retention rates.

Ultimately, building a knowledge base not only benefits the support team but also improves the customer experience, leading to better retention rates and business growth.

If you're considering starting a knowledge base but are unsure of where to begin, Jiffy can be a valuable resource to explore. Our AI-powered tool empowers support agents to create support documentation in real-time, converting ticket responses to knowledge base documents automatically.

By using Jiffy, building a knowledge base solution becomes an easy and seamless process without causing disruption to your support representatives. Jiffy's flow of work feature enables agents to respond to customer inquiries without leaving the queue, ensuring that all tickets are responded to promptly and efficiently.

With Jiffy, you can create a robust knowledge base that can help improve response times, reduce average handle time, and increase agent utilization rates, all while providing a seamless and efficient experience for both support agents and customers.