5 Steps to a great knowledge optimization

5 STEPS TO KNOWLEDGE BASE

OPTIMIZATION

BEST PRACTICES FOR ORACLE SERVICE CLOUD

SUCCESS

WHITE PAPER

PERFICIENT WHITE PAPER

Whether you seek to provide an efficient self-service option for your customers or to enable service desk personnel to deliver first-call resolution, you need an effective knowledge base that delivers the right information instantly. Doing so not only provides your customers with great customer experience and service, but also allows you to more cost-effectively manage and scale your customer support.

5 STEPS TO KNOWLEDGE BASE OPTIMIZATION

I n a survey by Dimensional Research of more than 1000 recent users of customer service (both B2B and B2C), 69% of respondents attributed their good customer service experience to quick resolution of their problem. Ninety-five percent of respondents will share their bad experiences with others, while 87% will share good experiences1. How can you ensure that you’re meeting customer expectations? In order to resolve stakeholder issues quickly and effectively and gain customer loyalty, knowledge management must be a priority.

Optimized for customer service, a knowledge base can be a powerful tool for improving customer experience and gaining competitive advantage. Whether you seek to provide an efficient self-service option for your customers or to enable service desk personnel to deliver first-call

2 / 5 Steps To Knowledge Base Optimization


5 Steps To Knowledge Base Optimization / 3

resolution, you need an effective knowledge base that delivers the right information instantly. Doing so not only provides your customers with great customer experience and service, but also allows you to more cost effectively manage and scale your customer support. Beyond the long-established (and still accurate) warning of “garbage in, garbage out” for handling information, demands for a higher level of service mean that users need to access knowledge more quickly than ever, without error. This guide presents Perficient’s five critical steps for knowledge base optimization and building a customer experience program as part of a core strategy for growth.

STEP 1: GATHER BASELINE INFORMATIONPrior to an implementation, it is important to baseline the state of the knowledge base to ensure that changes can be tracked accurately. For our baseline, we gather personal subjective impressions of how the knowledge base is working and discuss with agents their subjective impressions about how the knowledge base has worked.

We then collect the following, more objective reports, going back one year and grouping by month if possible. If your age database settings do not save KB data for that long, go back as far as possible.

1. Number of customer portal sessions

2. Number of customer portal sessions resulting in a question being submitted

3. Number of customer portal sessions where a question was submitted and no answer was hit

4. Number of customer portal sessions where a question was submitted and at least one answer was hit

5. Number of customer portal sessions where an answer was hit and no question was submitted

6. Number of answers hit

7. Number of searches that resulted in more than 20 answers being returned

8. Number of searches that resulted in zero answers being returned

9. Bottom-hitting answers

10. Top-hitting answers

11. Gap analysis report (if more than 500 web questions per week)

12. Answer feedback report

13. Answer maintenance report

14. Question avoidance report

15. Answer summary list report

16. Answer length report

17. Answer links report

18. Answer attachments report

19. Privileged answers report (if privileged answers are used)

20. Answer types report

STEP 2: ANALYZE BASELINE INFORMATION AND PRIORITIZE SET OF CHANGESNext, we want to identify which areas of your knowledge base need to be improved and prioritize the order of those improvements. We review the results from the previously gathered reports and set up a list of changes to be made. The order of the changes varies depending on the types of issues we find. The in-depth best practices in the next section include some of our common suggestions.

STEP 3: IMPLEMENT CHANGES AND CONTENT MANAGER EDUCATIONIn step 3, we implement the necessary updates. When the need for the change is due to poor knowledge management, we educate the content managers, helping them put processes in place for maintenance of existing information and the creation of new content to avoid repetition of these issues in the future. With each of the suggested changes, we indicate the goals we have for the baseline numbers and which reports above should measure the changes.

STEP 4: MAP KNOWLEDGE FLOWIn this step, we map the flow of information throughout your organization. We define the approval and notification processes for including new content, as well as the archiving and modification of existing content.

It’s important to discuss using the incident QA process to gather new content by making the relevant answer ID or an explanation required before an agent can close an incident. If an incident can be avoided via an existing answer, the agent is required to add that answer ID to the incident before closing it. (Don’t forget to figure out why that answer was not found and used by the end user if the same question is asked in the future.) If the incident could have been avoided if there had been an answer, that gap is noted so that the answer can be created.



home page where the top-hitting answers are displayed along with announcements and the ability to submit a question via chat or web form. The phone number can be listed there as well, if absolutely necessary, though it will be better for deflection if it is not. Too often the FAQs are buried and are not obvious to the user.

3. If users are encouraged to use a web form or chat, make sure the “smart assistant” is turned on so that if there is a match in the knowledge base, their question can be deflected.

4. If customers are using phone support, invite them to use telephony to search the knowledge base while they wait.

5. Send email support submitters an auto response with smart assistant answers. It can something like: “We have received your email and will respond as soon as possible. In the meantime, based on the content of your email the following FAQs may help you. If these FAQs answer your question, you can close your support ticket <here>.” Then provide them the out-of-the-box link to close their support ticket.

6. Have a process in place to review answers for style, correctness, completeness, and grammar. This process should also prevent duplicate answers from being entered. Typically, this is done by establishing a knowledge “czar.” The czar should be someone very knowledgeable about the flow of information through your organization, about the standard terms and abbreviations used by your company (for example, email vs. e-mail), and about the content approval processes.

IMPROVE READABILITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE BASE

1. Use short summary lines: All users navigate the knowledge base via the summary lines, so you want the shortest and clearest summary lines possible. Best practice is to use statements as opposed to questions in the summary, and for those statements to be less than six words long. The length of each summary should be consistent.

Why are short summary lines important? In a knowledge base, users are trying to scan info quickly and easily. Longer summary lines are visually more difficult to read, and will thus encourage users to scan and potentially miss valuable information. Short summary lines draw users in visually.

Some incidents cannot be resolved even with an answer in the knowledge base (e.g., implementation of user password self-reset page). In this case, we note the need for a process improvement.

STEP 5: TEST FOR RESULTSAfter approximately one-to-three months, depending on how much the knowledge base is used, you should see the baseline numbers change in a positive direction. At this time we revisit the site, using the same exact reports as in Step 1. We document that our changes had a positive effect and note whether or not further changes are needed.

IN-DEPTH GUIDANCE AND BEST PRACTICES MAKE IT EASY FOR THE USER TO ACCESS THE KNOWLEDGE BASEIt’s important to make it easy for your users to access the knowledge base. There are several ways to do so, depending on how open you are to making changes to your customer portal pages, and your desire to provide fast service to your customers versus ‘forcing’ them to try to help themselves before contacting the support center.

The order of completion is also important. If the knowledge base itself has many search or content issues, you don’t want to invite users to use it, and especially don’t want to force them to use it until those issues have first been resolved.

How much are your users encouraged to search the knowledge base before they submit a question to support? This list of common practices can help you deal with the potential drawbacks associated with each step.

1. Consider whether end users are encouraged to use a web form or chat (vs. email or a phone call) to submit their questions. Email and chat are cheaper and more effective than phone calls and email. If email and phone addresses are buried in the knowledge base, an end user is more likely to search there first for other answers. Obviously, the risk is upsetting the customer by making support “difficult.”

2. One common method is to have a “Help” button prominently on the home page of the site, as well as embedded in “problem” pages and applications. The help button takes the end user to the support



After performing a search, a user should be able to scan 15 answers returned in less than 10 seconds.

2. Use the question field (if necessary): If your summaries alone seem too brief, you can use the Question field to reflect the user’s question in their own language. For example, the summary can be something like, “Cleaning Nike tennis shoes.” The question may be, “What is the best way to clean my tennis shoes? Can I put them in the washing machine?” Strictly speaking, the second question is not necessary and can be left off. If it is used, however, it should be to clarify or expand on the summary. The question is an opportunity for the knowledge base to identify those terms that are within the user vocabulary, but not necessarily in the normal content of the message. The search engine is then able to better match actual user queries with the relevant content out of the knowledge base.

3. Use terms consistently. Use terms consistently throughout the knowledge base. For example, if a term such as “email” is used without a hyphen in one answer, it should be consistent throughout all answers.

4. Use language your customers use. You can use the search terms report to see what words your customers use. If these words are not already in your summary, you can add them to the keywords for an answer. If they are widely used, then you can add them to the alias list.

5. Keep the answer less than one screen. The answer field is the solution to the question being asked. Try to keep this field relatively succinct, but at the same time make it complete. Consider identifying when you have summary content versus detailed content on the same topic and break that information into separate answers using answer links. Often there are multiple degrees of expertise in the user base, each expecting a differing level of information. If you have this type of related content, consider using the Manually Related Answers section under the Answer Relationships tab to build in the relationships between these answers.

6. Consider privileged answers. If users log into the knowledge base, you can use privileged answers to give them information that is relevant to their profile. For example, if you know your user logs in and users Version 8, then you can exclude answers for other versions and only feed them answers relative to Version 8.

You have the ability to create answer content that is relevant to specific sub-groups of your customers, such as Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers. If you have made use of the access-level functionality, be sure to consider how they may affect all of the tuning steps. For example, when using the Keyword Searches report to review the number of Answers returned for a search, the number returned for the reported search query is based on the last person



search on “Bill” for your “Billing Statement” answers, make sure you don’t also have “Legislative Bill” in your knowledge base before you add the alias that says “bill = statement.”

11. Display 12-15 answers per page. If the knowledge base returns few results – 10, for example – the end user may skim the answers, think they have not found what they have searched for, and exit the page looking for alternative ways to get their question answered. Very few people will ever browse past the first page of results. If the user has to scroll, try to make the header smaller and clean out extra text at the top.

12. Keep text to one line per answer. Remove the three lines of text and the “date updated” from the summary list (you can show date updated in the answer detail).

13. Are you a creator or publisher of content? If you have answers that refer to pages outside of the RightNow system, you can create an answer that is nothing more than a direct link to that web content. Content is indexed for searching by the RightNow system, and when a user selects one of these URL answers they are brought directly to the referenced page. If that content changes on the web page, it automatically changes in the answer.

14. Consider knowledge syndication. Syndication is a way to expose your knowledge base answer content anywhere on your site. With this functionality you can place your answer content onto any page on your site. Knowledge syndication is a small portion of JavaScript that you place on your web page.

to do the search. If that person was in the Bronze tier, the report would potentially show fewer results than the same search conducted by someone in the Gold tier.

7. Use the answer review configuration setting with dates to keep your answers up to date. This should be used in conjunction with a regularly scheduled answer review report.

8. Use answer feedback: It is a good idea to enable answer feedback and review the user feedback on your answer content. These comments are a valuable tool for keeping your answers current and relevant.

9. Use the Gap Analysis report. If you have enough incidents submitted each week to make it relevant (500 or more), the Gap Analysis report is useful for monitoring any information that may be missing from your answers. It does this by identifying incidents on similar topics and determining how closely those incidents match your existing answers. The report then prioritizes the identified gap by comparing the size of the incident group against the distance from the nearest answer. Since there is some automatic process to the grouping of incidents, it is important for the same person to review the Gap Analysis report so they can learn the way that report behaves on your site.

10. Make sure consistent terms are being used in your answers so you don’t need to create too many conflicting aliases. When considering aliases, make sure the terms are always used in an interchangeable fashion. For example, if people



5. Have a process in place to archive old, unused answers. To make it easier for users to browse to content quickly, it is important to make sure that only the most relevant information is kept in the knowledge base at all times.

6. Use the keywords field or modify the answer content to adjust individual results if the order of results from searches is occasionally incorrect. However, if the order of results is consistently incorrect, consider adjusting the field biases for the various fields in an answer. Each section of the answer is broken down by its importance to the search and carries weight in the search engine to alter the final ranking. All fields have varying levels of bias depending upon their perceived importance, as well as the likelihood of word repetition in that section.

Default scores for each section:

• Product - 50

• Category - 50

• Keywords Box - 50

• Subject (summary) - 45

• Question - 30

• Answer Body - 4

• File Attachments - 4

Review how you use each of the answer fields to determine if your relative bias settings are correct for each field. When reviewing these bias settings keep in mind not just the importance of each field, but also the amount of text you have in each field. The final search score is just a simple calculation based off of the frequency of occurrence of the search term in each field multiplied by the field bias setting.

Note that if you change the bias of a field, all answers will readjust their rankings for searches where words match in that field. Thus it is a good idea to approach adjusting biases carefully and only change one bias at a time while repeatedly testing the search results after each change.

7. Use the keywords box sparingly and conservatively in answers. If a word is already in the subject (summary), question, or answer, there is no need to add it to the “Keywords” area in the answer. These three sections are already indexed by the search engine and they do not need to duplicate words in the keywords box.

15. Consider using a site map. Site map is a feature that allows internet search engines to index your content in search results. It is an excellent way to direct customers to your site since most people begin a browsing session at one of the major internet search engines.

16. Access a link checker. When editing an answer, you may access a link checker to review the current status of all the links in your answer. With this tool you can quickly identify if any links are currently inaccessible to those viewing the answer.

IMPROVE SEARCHABILITY OF THE KNOWLEDGE BASE

1. Use the missing answers report at least once per week to create new answers, if needed, or to add keywords to existing answers or synonyms for existing keywords. That way, if any search results in no answers being returned, it should raise a flag.

2. Add stop words as needed for very common words. Let’s say you are a shoe company and every answer in your knowledge base contains the word “shoes.” A search on just the word “shoes” is not relevant and should always be paired with some other word. You can make “shoes” a stop word. Then use stop words functionality to tell the user that “shoes” is a very common word (stop word) and to ask them to be more specific if they do a search just on shoes.

3. Add aliases (or synonyms). You may have a few users who use uncommon synonyms for common words. You could add those synonyms to the keywords for each answer. But rather than modifying all your answers, a better approach would be to create an alias for those uncommon terms. This will cause the answers with the common words to come up when their alias is used as a search term.

4. Use start and stop indexing, where appropriate, to get around searches on words that would otherwise be stop words. For example, again let’s say you are a shoe company and that every tenth answer in your knowledge base contains the term “tennis shoes.”

If someone searches “tennis shoes” you want only the relevant answers about tennis shoes to come up, not every single answer that contains the word “tennis.” You can create ‘use stop index terms’ around “tennis” to not include answers that contain the word “tennis” but should not come up when tennis is entered as a search term.



be undertaken after the various search tuning

exercises described above. This feature is enabled

by default, but if it is not performing as expected

there are adjustments that can be made to either

be more restrictive with the concepts, or to

eliminate the use of the concepts altogether. These

adjustments are on the System Configuration User

Interface SA_NL_MATCH_THRESHOLD setting.

Additional results can be limited to return only those

Answers that match the user selected product

(SA_SUGGEST_LIMIT_PROD_LVL) and/or the same

category (SA_SUGGEST_LIMIT_CAT_LVL).

11. Consider using topic words. The topic words

feature is an opportunity for presenting a specific

answer or web link in response to a query. This

feature allows you to identify common queries

and push relevant content to those queries, or to

introduce targeted campaigns from within your

knowledge base. Think of these query-specific

results as similar to web advertising. You identify

a specific word or set of words, and the landing

location for those words.

12. Consider using attachment-type answers,

especially for forms. You can create file attachment

answers, which are documents attached to an

answer that load directly when the answer is

selected. For example, if you have a spreadsheet

that contains all the content you wish to display,

you can simply attach it as a file attachment answer.

When the user selects that answer from the search

results, the spreadsheet loads directly.

Answers can have file attachments in addition to

the standard question/answer fields. These file

attachments can also be indexed for searching,

but the searching of attachments is not enabled by

default. When adding an attachment, remember to

specify that the attachment should be indexed for

searching. A best practice is to avoid attaching files

to answers.

REFERENCES1. Customer Service And Business Results: A Survey Of

Customer Service From Mid-Size Companies, Dimensional

Research.

It is true that keywords can be added to the keywords box to give it “extra weight” and bring a certain answer to the top, but this should not be a common practice. Overusing this method can artificially overweight your answers and consistently return bad results. Similarly, it can be a difficult process to manage simple changes when keywords are replicated in many answers.

8. AND vs. OR. Web search engines such as Google use the AND search because of the near infinite number of documents they could possibly return. In these cases, the problem is getting too many search results for any given query. In comparison, search engines working with small repositories use the OR search because it is too easy to get no results by making a query that is too restrictive. The default Oracle Service Cloud search type is OR, but the results are ordered as if it were an AND search. This means that the engine will return answers even if there is not an exact match, but those at the top of the result list will match more of the search words than those lower in the list. However, if the knowledge base seems to return too many results, it is possible to change the search to a Boolean AND search via the configuration settings.

9. Consider using the system SEARCH_RESULT_LIMITING instead of AND searching. This functionality limits the number of results returned for searches by identifying when the result quality decreases in the search algorithm. This feature uses OR searching for full generality but provides the smaller result sets driving the desire to use AND searching without requiring the diligence of monitoring on the keyword searches report.

10. Use SmartAssistant. “Suggested Answers” is a very powerful feature to help reduce the number of incoming incidents. SmartAssistant reads the text of the potential incident and searches the answer knowledge base for potential literal matches using the standard search engine. It then compares the text against conceptual groupings of the answers. It uses the conceptual matches to filter the literal matches, returning those results that best match – both literally and conceptually. These results are displayed to the user to see if their question is answered before they complete the incident submission.

Because of this reliance on the search engine, adjustments to SmartAssistant should only



Fitness company saves millions and enables growth with Oracle Service Cloud

A rapidly growing fitness company had reached 16

million customers and 200,000 coaches worldwide.

With this success came the challenge of delivering

an industry-standard level of customer service

while containing costs. The firm needed to meet

stakeholder needs at every point of contact including

phone, chat, and mobile. Self-service and customer

representative enablement was crucial to their ability

to meet demand.

The self-service initiative relied on access to an

increasingly large and complex knowledge base.

They chose Oracle Service Cloud to deliver answers

directly to customers and to service desk agents.

After using OSC for knowledge base optimization,

the company was able to increase customer self-

service by 32%, and the customer service program is

able to handle 20,000 contacts per day. Over a three-

year period, the number of answer views increased

from 300,000 to 7.2 million, and the company saved

more than 12 million dollars annually. “We’re now

realizing tremendous ROI,” stated one top executive.

“Frankly, I don’t see how we could have handled the

business over the past 12-18 months without Oracle

Service Cloud.”

CLIENT SUCCESS STORY


AUTHORSHERI HASTINGS, Solution Architect, Service Cloud, Oracle Group, Perficient Sheri has worked on knowledge bases since 1992 and on RightNow/Oracle Service Cloud knowledge bases since 2002. Her clients including Nike, Nikon, BeachBody, Intuit and many others, have won industry awards and accolades for their knowledge base excellence.

ABOUT PERFICIENT Perficient is the leading digital transformation consulting firm serving Global 2000® and enterprise customers throughout North America. With unparalleled information technology, management consulting and creative capabilities, Perficient delivers vision, execution and value with outstanding digital experience, business optimization and industry solutions.

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5 Steps to a great knowledge optimization