A Single Source of Truth (SSoT) centralizes data, ensures consistency, and enhances customer relationships. This article provides valuable insights on creating an SSoT to streamline operations, improve customer satisfaction, and foster long-term success. Stay informed and take action now!

What is a Single Source of Truth?

A Single Source of Truth (SSoT) is a comprehensive data store or warehouse that integrates information from various systems. It is the primary and most reliable source, widely accepted and used as the ultimate reference point within an organization. By serving as the authoritative reference point, an SSoT aims to promote alignment, streamline operations, and enable better insights and outcomes for the organization.

Single Source of Truth is a concept that eliminates data fragmentation, ensures data consistency and accuracy, and empowers efficient decision-making across teams and departments.

Workplace SSOT: Why should you have one?

An SSoT acts as a central hub for data, consolidating information from various sources and ensuring everyone has access to accurate data. In their survey, Experian found that 88% of companies believe that having a single source of truth for customer data improves overall data accuracy and reliability. It facilitates informed decision-making, promotes collaboration, and provides teams with reliable information.

SaaS helpdesk and customer support platforms benefit from implementing a Workplace SSOT as it enables efficient management of customer support tickets, customer data, and knowledge bases. Support teams can access relevant customer information, streamline workflows, and deliver personalized and consistent customer service.

Benefits of SSOT

A Single Source of Truth (SSoT) implementation in the workplace brings the advantage of enhanced data accuracy and reliability. Through centralized and standardized data management, organizations can optimize workflows, facilitate informed decision-making, and foster seamless collaboration among teams. Other benefits are:

Breaks down data silos

A data silo refers to a situation in which a specific department within an organization possesses and manages data that is not readily accessible or shared with other groups within the same organization. It creates barriers and limitations for other teams to access and utilize the data efficiently. Hence, it leads to limited collaboration and a fragmented view of the organization’s data.

For example, a Saas company’s marketing and sales departments use separate systems to manage customer data and track sales. The lack of integration creates a data silo, hindering collaboration and preventing a complete view of customer behavior. To break down the data silos, Single Source of Truth integrates the CRM and sales systems, creating a shared database.

It allows marketing and sales to access real-time data, collaborate effectively, make data-driven decisions, and gain a comprehensive view of customer behavior. The SSOT optimizes business processes and fosters collaboration.

Reduces Duplication of Data

Data duplication in SaaS businesses can cause inefficiencies and confusion due to manual entry errors, integration challenges, migration issues, and poor data management.

A Single Source of Truth (SSoT) approach prevents data duplication in SaaS businesses. SSoT employs data validation and de-duplication algorithms to identify and remove duplicate records. For example, in an e-commerce platform, SSoT validates customer information, and merges duplicate entries to maintain accurate data.

On platforms like Monday.com, SSoT enforces predefined fields and validation rules for project details, reducing duplicate entries. In financial databases, strict access controls and audits are implemented to prevent duplicates and ensure data integrity. Automated data integration in e-commerce websites synchronizes product details, minimizing Duplication and manual updates for consistent information across systems.

Achieves greater productivity

SSoT centralizes data sources, eliminating the need for time-consuming reconciliation efforts and ensuring consistent and reliable information throughout the organization. As a result, employees can redirect their efforts towards more productive tasks, leading to enhanced overall productivity and better organizational outcomes.

SSoT provides additional advantages. It fosters data consistency as a reliable and up-to-date repository, enabling real-time updates and seamless user collaboration. This streamlined workflow promotes efficient reporting and analytics, resulting in greater productivity, improved project outcomes, and heightened customer satisfaction.

Promotes transparency

SSoT enhances transparency in SaaS businesses by providing a unified and consistent data view. It ensures accurate and consistent customer information across departments, promoting collaboration and a unified customer experience. SSoT enables data traceability, i.e., tracking the journey of customer data from initial acquisition through various touchpoints, such as sales interactions, customer support tickets, and marketing campaigns.

It also controls access and permissions and enhances collaboration and communication. These transparency benefits foster an open and accountable data environment, improving operations in SaaS businesses.

Empowers Users with Trusted Information

SSoT is a central hub for dependable information, resolving common user challenges. It eliminates data inconsistencies by offering a unified view, streamlines data access, and enhances data quality through governance. It supports effective collaboration. Consequently, it enables users to make knowledgeable choices and accomplish their objectives with enhanced effectiveness. For example, SSoT enabled real-time insights, which is crucial in Amazon’s dynamic e-commerce environment. Teams had immediate access to up-to-date information on product availability and shipping status. It empowered them to adapt strategies and respond to customer needs swiftly.

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Steps to create SSOT

A step-by-step approach to SSoT is essential in breaking data silos, streamlining operations, and facilitating informed decision-making. By adhering to this framework, businesses can emphasize critical areas that enhance efficiency and boost productivity. The first step is:

1. Identify the data sources

Identifying data sources is valuable for understanding and documenting the various systems, databases, applications, and files containing relevant business data. Creating a comprehensive list requires conducting a thorough inventory of data from both internal and external sources. The goal is to create a checklist that outlines the data types, locations, owners, and any relevant metadata associated with each source.

How do you then identify data sources?

• Determine the specific data needed and the reasons behind it.
• Then, collaborate with teams and individuals to identify the locations of the data.
• And examine existing documents to gather information on data sources.
• Conduct data profiling for sample data analysis to gain insights into its characteristics.
• Compile a comprehensive list of potential data locations.
• Check the accuracy and reliability of the identified data sources.
• Evaluate ownership, security, and compliance aspects of the data
• Identify which data sources are essential and should be included in the SSoT.

Identifying and documenting data sources establishes the groundwork for creating a robust SSoT that integrates data from diverse systems, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and ease of access. This foundation enables businesses to enhance data management and decision-making processes.

2. Select technology and tool

After identifying data sources, the next step in creating an SSoT involves selecting suitable technology and tools to manage and integrate these sources. It includes choosing software, platforms, and systems for Knowledge sharing, data integration, storage, and management. Examples of devices include Workflow Automation, API Management, and ETL tools. Hence, the selection should align with specific business needs, existing infrastructure, and integration requirements.

Here are some common SSOT tools and technologies:

Relational Databases:

Relational database management systems (RDBMS) like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server are often used to create a centralized data repository where data can be stored, accessed, and updated securely.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems:

ERP software such as SAP, Oracle ERP, and Microsoft Dynamics centralizes data related to finance, HR, supply chain, and other business functions, serving as an SSOT for enterprise-wide data.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems:

CRM software such as Salesforce and HubSpot CRM centralize customer data and interactions, serving as an SSOT for customer information.

Knowledge Management Platforms:

Knowledge management systems like Document360 is used to centralize internal documentation and knowledge, ensuring that employees access a single source of truth for information.

Cloud Storage and Collaboration Tools:

Cloud-based tools like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox can serve as an SSOT for document storage and collaboration, especially when integrated with version control features.

3. Define a data schema

A data schema is a blueprint or framework that defines data structure, organization, and relationships within a database or data integration system. Defining a data schema after identifying data sources and selecting technologies and tools ensures a structured and consistent approach. It provides data integration, data management and accessibility within the organization.

Here are simplified tips to enhance the effectiveness of your data schema when creating an SSoT:

• Define separate tables for main entities.
• Use normalization to eliminate redundancy.
• Assign primary keys and establish relationships.
• Define constraints for data quality and integrity.
• Index frequently used columns for better query performance.
• Design for scalability.
• Document schema thoroughly.
• Involve stakeholders for insights.
• Use consistent naming conventions.
• Regularly review and update the schema

4. Design the workflow and responsibilities

Once a data schema is firmly established, establishing an organized workflow with clear responsibilities is next. It optimizes data management, ensuring consistent updates and data integrity in an SSoT. It involves sequencing steps like data entry, transformation, integration, validation, and synchronization.

And also, assigning specific individuals or teams enhances accountability and efficiency. This streamlined approach improves efficiency, accuracy, and reliability by providing explicit guidance, accountability, and quality assurance measures for SSoT data management.

5. Access Control and Security

To create a secure SSoT, organizations must implement comprehensive access control and security measures. It includes defining user roles and permissions, implementing user authentication, and employing encryption techniques for data protection. Data security measures include encryption for data protection, firewalls and intrusion detection systems for defense against threats, and regular updates to address vulnerabilities and prevent exploits.

6. Keep the data updated

Keeping the data updated is the next step in creating an SSoT. It is like maintaining an organization’s lifeblood. It’s not just a task; it preserves data integrity, drives informed decision-making, ensures compliance, and boosts operational efficiency and effectiveness.

To keep the data updated in an SSoT:

• Assign responsibility for data updates.
• Implement checks to identify and fix errors or inconsistencies.
• Establish methods for consistent data synchronization across systems.
• Track and document changes to the SSoT’s data organization.
• Regularly review and clean up outdated or erroneous information.
• Following these steps ensures accurate and up-to-date data in the SSoT.

7. Provide Training for new users

• It is essential to take the following steps when training users to ensure effective SSoT creation.
• Organizations should develop tailored training programs for different user types,
• Create user-friendly guides and conduct interactive sessions,
• Customize Training based on user roles and responsibilities,
• Provide ongoing support through help desks and FAQs, and
• Gather user feedback to improve training materials continuously.

By implementing these steps, organizations can empower users to effectively utilize the SSoT, leading to improved data management and decision-making processes.

8. Replicate SSoT across the workplace

With replication, separate versions of the SSoT in different departments will lead to data inconsistency, errors, and hindered collaboration. Replicating the SSoT ensures consistent data, seamless collaboration, real-time access, and business continuity. It provides redundancy, allowing continued operation and business continuity in case of failures or disasters.

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Single source of truth examples

Here are some examples of how companies can use SSoT:

Product Information in Software Development

A software development company preparing for a significant product release relies on a centralized SSoT for product information. This SSoT houses comprehensive documentation, including user manuals, installation guides, and API documentation. The technical writing team diligently updates the SSoT, ensuring accuracy and consistency across all documentation.

Simultaneously, the marketing team leverages the SSoT to access up-to-date product descriptions and feature highlights for their promotional efforts. By maintaining a centralized SSoT, the company ensures that all internal and external stakeholders have seamless access to reliable and current documentation. This streamlines communication, minimizes confusion, and fosters a unified understanding of the product throughout the organization.

Master Data in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Master Data is the foundational data shared across an organization, including customer, product, employee, and vendor data, that remains relatively stable over time. ERP systems are integrated software solutions that manage multiple business processes and enable information flow and coordination across departments.

In organizations using an ERP system for managing operations like manufacturing, sales, and procurement, a centralized repository of Master Data is crucial.
This repository holds essential information about products, customers, suppliers, and employees, serving as the core for various departments. For instance, the manufacturing department relies on product master data to maintain consistent production processes, the sales department uses it for personalized services, and the procurement department depends on it for informed decisions.

SSoT within the ERP system ensures real-time access to accurate data, enhancing efficiency and reducing discrepancies. It allows people in the organization to access the latest information from a single, reliable source, minimizing errors and Duplication of effort. Ultimately, this leads to more informed decision-making and streamlined operations.

Customer Information in Customer Relationship Management

In a software company’s CRM system, adopting an SSOT approach for customer information ensures data accuracy and consistency. Maintaining comprehensive and up-to-date customer details allows various departments to access a unified data source for personalized interactions and efficient support services. It leads to improved customer engagement, informed decision-making, personalized sales approaches, prompt issue resolution, and effective targeted marketing campaigns.

Regulatory compliance

A SaaS company offering a cloud-based trading platform can use an SSoT for regulatory compliance. It enhances data security with encryption and access controls, tracks trading activities with audit logs, and simplifies compliance reporting with stored documentation. SSoT allows streamlined compliance monitoring, ensuring regulatory adherence, safeguarding customer information, and maintaining market integrity. It builds trust among clients and stakeholders while mitigating risks.

Build your SSoT with Document360

Unlock the power of a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) with Document360, the ultimate solution for centralized knowledge management. Picture a dynamic team where valuable information for critical business processes is scattered and difficult to locate.

With Document360, you can consolidate all your business process documentation in one accessible place, providing seamless access for every team member.

By establishing an SSoT, Document360 restores confidence in the accuracy and availability of documentation, eliminating duplicate efforts and wasted time. Imagine a scenario where a team member needs to grasp a new process or cover for a colleague quickly. Document360 empowers them with a comprehensive repository of documented procedures, ensuring smooth transitions and uninterrupted workflow.

Discover the transformative capabilities of Document360 in unifying knowledge, fostering collaboration, and optimizing operational efficiency across your organization.

Wrapping up

The guide to creating a Single Source of Truth empowers businesses to create a centralized repository of information, ensuring that all team members have access to accurate and up-to-date knowledge. Also, it promotes consistency, eliminates confusion, and drives better decision-making. With Document360, you can get one set up quickly. Book a demo today!

An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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The post Guide to Creating a Single Source of Truth appeared first on Document360.

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Salesgear is an all-in-one sales engagement platform to simplify your outbound sales. Their productivity suite helps you achieve more in less time, providing everything you need for successful outreach in one place.

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Key Features: Accurate prospecting insights, automated follow ups, warm up email accounts for better inbox delivery, AI assistant to craft impactful emails, seamless integration with your CRM for prompt follow-ups, and 24/7 support through chat, phone & email.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Free for first 6 months – paid annually on all plans
• Offer Validity: November 01 – December 31, 2023

Get the Deal

31. Narrato

Narrato is a remarkable AI content creation and marketing workspace designed to make your content creation journey a breeze. With its extensive collection of AI and automation tools, Narrato empowers you to effortlessly and collaboratively produce outstanding content.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% off for your first year on Narrato Workspace
• Coupon Code: BFCM23NRT
• Offer Validity: November 19 – December 03, 2023

Get the Deal

32. SalesBlink

SalesBlink is an AI powered cold email outreach solution using which you can search for prospects, put your cold email sequences on autopilot, view stats and reports for opens, clicks, replies and more effortlessly.
BlinkGPT is SalesBlink’s in-house Generative AI that lets you write emails, create sales sequences and much more with just a few clicks. Integrates natively with Hubspot, Pipedrive, ZohoCRM and Slack.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off on Scale and Business Plans for next 1 year for both Yearly and Monthly Plans
• Coupon Code: BlackFriday2023

Get the Deal

33. Groupboss

Groupboss is a Facebook group automation tool that helps Facebook group owners collect unlimited leads. Using this tool any group owner can collect the answers to the Facebook group membership questions asked to the new members with a single click. It has direct integrations with popular email marketing autoresponders.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 25% discount on all the plans
• Coupon Code: MONDAY25
• Offer Validity: November 25 – December 31, 2023

Get the Deal

34. Sender

Maximize your sales with Sender. Its premade templates and drag-and-drop email builder help you create emails that are not only beautiful but also effective. The platform also boasts high email deliverability. So, besides standing out, your emails will always reach your intended recipients at the right time. On top of that, Sender offers detailed analytics to track your campaigns, popups to attract quality leads, and segmentation to group customers based on their preferences and behavior.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% Off for All paid plans
• Coupon Code:  PARTNER20
• Offer Validity:  November 01 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

35. SmartReach

SmartReach.io is a sales engagement platform that helps businesses boost their outreach and close more deals. It offers multichannel outreach, allowing users to reach out to prospects via email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, SMS, and call.

SmartReach.io also has a team-shared inbox, making it easy for sales teams to collaborate and manage their outreach campaigns. It provides AI-generated email content and replies as per the prospect’s replies. It also generates an AI subject line based on the email content.

SmartReach.io generates detailed reporting that would help with better decision-making. The Team Activity report helps you track your team’s outreach efforts, including emails, calls, tasks, and new accounts or prospects. The Deal Grid report shows the current status of accounts based on their deal value, helping you effectively identify delayed follow-ups and support team members.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% Off on All Annual Plans
• Coupon Code: SMARTREACH20BF23
• Offer Validity: November 01 – December 03, 2023

Get the Deal

36. Proofhub

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration tool that helps you organize and prioritize your otherwise chaotic work schedule to plan, execute, collaborate, and deliver projects on time. Project teams of every size from any industry can use this simple, intuitive tool.

Additionally, ProofHub provides you with effective functionalities for complete control over various aspects of your work, like task assignment, time management, instant chat, work management, file management, real-time updates, and more.

ProofHub serves as the centralized dashboard and eliminates the need for teams to switch various tools for managing work. The flat pricing plan comes as the icing on the cake, which makes it possible for you to add as many users as you want.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% off on the Ultimate Control Plan for six months
• Coupon Code:  HOLIDAY23
• Offer validity: November 01 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

37. Social Champ

Social Champ is a powerful social media management tool for individuals and businesses of all sizes. Publish and schedule posts for all your social media accounts, analyze social performance, and engage with your audience all in one window. Social Champ offers a very competitive price point when compared to the competition.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% OFF on monthly subscriptions and 50% OFF on annual subscriptions (Maximum savings of up to $600!)
• Coupon Code: BFCM23
• Offer validity: November 17 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

38. Writecream

Writecream is an AI-powered text, voice, and image generation mobile app and website. Generate anything from essays, stories, novels, product descriptions, articles, scripts, ad copy, social media posts, and more. Additionally, Writecream features AI-based neural voices that sound like humans. These can be used to generate podcasts and narrations for YouTube videos. Recently, Writecream added a one-click image generation function using DALLE-2. Use these images for social media, NFTs, blogs, etc.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% off on Writecream’s monthly and annual unlimited plans
• Coupon Code:WRITE20
• Offer validity: November 18 – December 31, 2023

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39. Linkz.ai 

Linkz.ai script allows you to keep visitors on your website & blog with live link previews. Linkz.ai automatically extracts & shows linked content, e.g. videos, presentations, articles, blog posts & 1000+ web embeds within your website.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off on all plans for 6 months
• Coupon Code: BLACKCYBER2023
• Offer Validity: November 01 – November 29, 2023

Get the Deal

40. Crocoblock

Crocoblock opens the door to a vibrant community of website developers, encompassing over 21,000 members on Facebook and nearly 24,000 subscribers on YouTube. This environment is a supportive hub, welcoming both seasoned developers and newcomers to the world of dynamic website development.

With 20 JetPlugins and a diverse range of dynamic templates, Crocoblock enables you to construct complex websites without diving into coding complexities. You’ll be able to enrich your site with dynamic content, e-commerce functionalities, and robust forms, catering to a wide array of needs, including the development of booking systems.

Beyond the tools, Crocoblock provides round-the-clock support and regular updates to ensure your toolkit remains current and relevant, empowering you to stay on the cutting edge of website design.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% discount on all subscription plans, including Lifetime subscriptions.
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

41. Storydoc

Storydoc is an AI pitch deck creator that allows businesses to effortlessly create interactive decks that significantly boost engagement.

By transitioning from static PowerPoints or PDFs to interactive immersive presentations, businesses can bring their narratives to life and make them more memorable and more persuasive.

• Deal: 30% off all plans for new users
• Offer Validity: November 01 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

42. Vadoo.tv

Vadoo.tv allows creators and brands to host videos and make marketing easy. It stands as a sophisticated video hosting platform designed with the fundamental goal of fostering the expansion of businesses and creators through harnessing the compelling potential of videos.

Key Features: White-label, HLS encryption, Easy integration, Customizable Video Player, Domain Level security and Video Emails.

• Deal: 30% discount on the Vadootv Pro Plan annual subscription
• Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAY30
• Offer Validity: November 05 – December 12, 2023

Get the Deal

43. Flycart

Discount Rules for WooCommerce is a powerful dynamic pricing and discounts plugin that helps you create simple and complex discounts. You can offer simple discounts like Percentage discounts, Fixed discounts, Storewide discounts, Product based discounts to complex discounts like bulk discounts, Tiered Pricing discounts, bundle discounts, BOGO deals (Buy X Get X and Buy X Get Y), User-specific discounts, Cart conditions based discounts, category discounts, and more. 100,000+ active installations prove that the plugin is popular and trustworthy.
It is a user-friendly plugin with flexible features to create targeted and customized discounts to give an enjoyable shopping experience for customers and get more conversions.

• Deal: 30% discount 
• Coupon Code:  BFCM30 (Auto applied)
• Offer Validity: November 01 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

44. LogicBalls

LogicBalls is a revolutionary AI-powered copywriting platform that empowers businesses and individuals to create high-quality, engaging content with ease. With its cutting-edge technology and user-friendly interface, LogicBalls has quickly become an indispensable tool for marketing professionals, content creators, and anyone in need of compelling copy.

At the heart of LogicBalls is a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence system that understands language, context, and tone. This advanced AI can generate a wide range of content, from blog posts and social media updates to email campaigns and product descriptions. It can even produce creative and captivating storytelling that resonates with your audience. LogicBalls is designed to make your life easier and help you craft persuasive and polished content effortlessly.

• Deal: 45% discount on all annual plans
• Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAY45
• Offer Validity: November 01 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

45. Lemlist

Lemlist is the only cold outreach tool that helps you reach inboxes and get replies. Build your lead list with verified emails, write and personalize at scale, and automate cold emails and LinkedIn messages that actually get customers.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 33% Off for the Standard plan and 40% Off for the Pro plan 
• Coupon Code:BLACKFRIDAY2023LEMLIST
• Date Validity:  November 01 – December 01, 2023

Get the Deal

46. Retainful

Retainful is an all-in-one Email Marketing Automation and conversion app for WooCommerce and Shopify stores. Automate all your email marketing needs – recover abandoned carts, send thank you emails, win back inactive customers, launch refer-a-friend campaigns, and more.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% Off 
• Coupon Code: BFCM30 (Auto-applied)
• Date Validity:  November 15 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

47. Planly

Planly is a social media management tool. Here, you can schedule social media posts and view their analytics. At the same time, you can make a mini-website without any coding skills. In just one dashboard, you can schedule your posts, analyze hashtags, and find the best time to post. You can also use the AI ​​content assistant to write social media post captions.

• Deal: 50% OFF for the first-month subscription and 30% OFF for a yearly subscription
• Date Validity:  November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

48. Booknetic

Booknetic is the appropriate answer for you if you run a small business. It boasts a robust feature set and a track record of excellent support. You simply set it up and then forget about it.

This plugin accepts bookings, adds them to your calendar, builds waiting lists, sends automatic reminders to people, and even lets you to monitor the performance of multiple branches from its integrated dashboard.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% OFF for the lifetime and %30 OFF for all add-ons
• Date Validity:  November 20 – December 02, 2023

Get the Deal

49. StatusGator

StatusGator is an innovative platform designed to streamline the monitoring of cloud services and websites. It offers a centralized status page that aggregates the status of all your cloud vendors, hosted applications, services, and websites, providing a comprehensive view of your digital ecosystem. This unified status page is essential for teams, reducing the volume of support tickets and enhancing overall efficiency.

Overall, StatusGator is a powerful tool for organizations looking to maintain optimal operational uptime, ensuring that all team members are always informed about the status of their essential digital services.

Key features:
1. Status Aggregation
2. Built-in Website and Cloud Monitoring
3. Private Status Page
4. Instant Notifications
5. Vendor Reliability Analysis
6. Incident Management Integration

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% Discount on our monthly and annual Starter plans
• Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAY2023
  
• Date Validity:  November 01 – December 12, 2023

Get the Deal

50. Airbrush AI

Airbrush is a simple tool that can convert your ideas into images in seconds. Simply enter your thoughts and hit Generate! In addition to converting text to art, Airbrush can also convert images to text, describing the image content in detail. You can upscale images, make cover images for presentations and blog articles, and do more!

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Get lifetime access to Airbrush AI for a one-time price of $29!
• Date Validity:  November 18 – December 31, 2023

Get the Deal

51. SmarterQueue

SmarterQueue is the most powerful and user-friendly social media scheduling tool. With content discovery, smart scheduling, recycling, and analytics, you can grow your business and brand faster and more easily than ever before.

Key feature highlights include:
Intelligent social media scheduling and automation for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google My Business
Queues, posting plans, and content categories to power scheduling automation
AI Caption Writer, auto-generates posts for you
Evergreen recycling automatically reposts content and boosts engagement
Content variations to tailor messaging based on social network and audience
Content discovery and curation to quickly and easily share value-adding content
Powerful, but easy-to-use analytics to make it easy to replicate success
Direct Publish to Instagram feed and Reels, with Visual Grid Planner and more.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% off our full pricing for new customers: 30% off your first 6 months (when paid monthly), 40% off your first year (when paid annually)
  For this weekend only, you can choose to Pay Per Profile, for new customers who sign up during BFCM weekend. Starting from only $3.50 per profile.
• Offer validity: November 24 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

52. Cloudways by DigitalOcean

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers DigitalOcean as one of its cloud infrastructure providers. It simplifies the process of deploying and managing web applications, making it easier for users to leverage DigitalOcean’s cloud resources for their hosting needs.

Cloudways provides features like server management, scalability, and optimized performance, giving users a convenient and efficient hosting solution.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% Off for 4 months on all hosting plans + up to 40 free migrations
• Coupon Code: BFCM4040
• Date Validity:  November 13 – December 01, 2023

Get the Deal

Conclusion

As the Black Friday season unfolds, it’s essential to remember that these deals, while seemingly small drops in the bucket, can add up to significant savings for your business. Take the time to research and carefully choose the tools and resources that will truly benefit your operations. With countless offers and discounts available, don’t miss out on the opportunity to secure great deals and prevent unnecessary expenditures.

Happy Black Friday filled with smart savings and valuable investments for your business!

The post Top Black Friday and Cyber Monday SaaS Deals of 2023 appeared first on Document360.

Your concerns are rightly placed.

When customers fail to understand a product, they approach you multiple times with common questions. And once they are tired of reaching out to you for answers, they decide to take their business elsewhere.

In a nutshell, you lose customers. But this can be prevented if you have a SaaS customer education program in place.

The question is, what is SaaS customer education?

Let’s find out!

What is SaaS Customer Education?

SaaS customer education means finding engaging ways to educate your customers about your products and services. It helps a customer learn what your product is all about, why they need it, and how it can benefit their business.

Daniel Ladra, Co-founder of Playou, talks about customer education with Radim Hladiš in one of the podcasts. Here’s how he explains the term to their listeners:

“To me, customer education means explaining the essence of the product to the customer so they can understand “why”. On the other hand, it’s also imparting knowledge of how exactly the product works so that the customer can use it better.”

To add to his perspective, customer education also establishes product value and helps you spread brand awareness. Rather than achieving one, you end up gaining multiple benefits with the help of your customer education program.

Benefits of SaaS Customer Education

Here’s a list of the top five benefits that your business can attain with the help of an effective SaaS customer education program.

Eases product adoption

Those new to your product will find your SaaS customer education program quite useful. They’ll understand your product from the moment they onboard with your business. In a nutshell, this will result in seamless product adoption and lesser support queries.

Improves customer engagement

A customer knowledge base helps you boost user engagement gradually. As they browse through your product knowledge base, they get a step-by-step guide that helps them understand each functionality hassle-free. The more they get to know your product, the easier it gets for them to interact with it in the long run.

Reduces customer support cost

One of the top benefits of using knowledge base software is that it helps you reduce customer support costs. How exactly? A product knowledge base helps customers find answers to frequently asked questions. When they’ll have answers to common doubts, they would avoid reaching out to your support team for support. This will give support reps more productive time for pressing challenges faced by other customers.

Makes the onboarding process simpler

You’ve signed a contract for your product and it’s time that customers start the onboarding process. Rather than conducting hefty onboarding calls around your product and how they need to get started with its use, it would be better to introduce your customer knowledge base. Help them learn how to use the product with the help of your knowledge base. This will help both you and the customers save time and effort during the onboarding process. What’s more, they can learn about the product at their pace.

Reduces customer churn

When your customers know the product in and out, they feel confident using it every time. They would also feel confident about asking you to make changes to the product as per their needs. This is something they can’t ask a new service provider. Due to this, you’ll see more customers sticking with you for a long time rather than leaving every now and then. In short, you boost retention and avoid frequent churn.

These benefits have surely caught your attention and motivated you to start your customer education program. But we firmly believe that this motivation isn’t enough to help you kickstart your program.

Also Read: 9 Proven Ways to Reduce Customer Churn

How to Launch a Customer Education Program?

Considering that you wish to launch your customer education program, we’ve listed basic yet essential measures that will help you get started. Let’s explore them without further delay!

1. Encourage cross-team collaboration

From developers to product analysts, they’ve all worked with the product closely since the day it was launched, or at least for a few years. Basically, they know the ins and outs of the product and how it works. When you decide to create a customer education program, ensure your marketing collaborates with such crucial touchpoints to build the best training resources for the customers.

For example, when we built our knowledge base for customers, we decided that not just one team will be responsible for contributing ideas for new articles and edits.

As you see in the image above, multiple individuals work on the same piece. Some are responsible for editing the article while others correct the facts about the product. This has helped us build a knowledge base that helps our customers find the right information in the right article.

From our founder to technical experts on the product, everyone contributes to this knowledge base. Therefore, making it a relevant educational source for customers to refer to in case they get stuck with a functionality.

2. Identify buyer personas

Your customer education program shouldn’t be focused on existing customers only. It should target all buyer personas to ensure you catch their attention at the right time at different stages of the pre-sales funnel.

Here’s how your education program will catch the attention of different buyer personas if it accomplishes to do the following:

• • • It should bring in the right traffic. Part of your education program resources should be designed to help you bring in the right traffic for your business. These resources can be inclusive of videos, webinars, SEO-optimized knowledge repositories, and more.
    • It should work like lead magnets. Buyers who are interested in your product will likely look for more information on how your brand has helped other businesses accelerate their growth. Materials such as case studies can help you educate buyers on that subject. Just make sure you use such resources as lead magnets to capture the right MQLs for your business.
    • This customer education program should also help you engage and convert buyers into customers. For example, you can use engaging yet educational content like webinars to help buyers understand your product or the brand more closely. They can also review your product via live events where you can talk about how the product can target their pain points and challenges efficiently. Such efforts will help you convert that buyer into a customer in no time.

The whole idea of identifying buyer personas on the basis of their location and interests is crucial. However, that needs to be done at each stage of the sales funnel. Only then, will you target the right buyers and pitch your program correctly.

3. Spot customer education opportunities

What all platforms would be best suited to create educational content for your customers?

There are myriad ways to create educational content for SaaS customers. You can use:

• • • Blogs
    • eBooks
    • Guides
    • Whitepapers
    • Knowledge base
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
    • Webinars
    • Live events

Oh, the list goes on. In a nutshell, you have multiple options when it comes to creating and executing customer education content. However, it would be crucial to identify the right customer education opportunities that help you introduce these resources hassle-free.

For example, when your customers reach out with common questions like how a certain feature works, simply guide them to your knowledge base. They can find answers to commonly asked questions efficiently. Similarly, if customers would like to get a better understanding of how your product can be implemented for different teams or scenarios, share your ebooks, blogs, or even video links. These will help them learn how your product works for different teams hassle-free.

These subtle yet efficient ways will help you engage and retain customers to the brand successfully.

4. Segment the users and provide personalized education

Did you know that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that provides a tailored experience?

From support calls to educational material, customers will highly appreciate your efforts if you are personalizing the experience at every stage of their journey with the brand. But to do that, you need to ensure that users are divided into different segments. These segments can be based on their:

• • • Interests related to the product
    • Number of users using your product from one organization
    • Roles and responsibilities are taken by each user under one client
    • Subscription cycle

And this list goes on.

There are multiple factors that should be considered while dividing users into different segments. Dividing them into segments will help you create a personalized customer education program that helps them stay engaged with your product and avoid leaving you for your competitors.

For example, let’s say you’ve segmented users on the basis of their subscription cycle. Now, users who have to renew their subscription to your product might leave you or decide to stay around. But why leave yourself hanging when you can make them all stay?

You can create a special SaaS customer education program that targets such users. Add in a combination of resources like podcasts, videos, and webinars to further educate them. These will help them understand how your product can enhance various factors that lead to company growth post-prolonged use of the product.

Result? This effort will help retain and add more loyal customers for your brand.

5. Set up a customer knowledge base

Building a customer knowledge base is an integral part of a customer education program.

You may ask, why?

We, at Document360, firmly believe that a customer knowledge base can help you achieve multiple benefits once added to the education program. Some of the benefits are:

• • • It will help you answer questions about the product, therefore helping you save the time of your support reps and customers simultaneously.
    • It helps you offer detailed insights on your product. It dives deeper when it comes to understanding each functionality and how it should be used regularly.
    • It helps you display various use cases in which the product can prove useful to the customers, therefore encouraging them to interact with your product frequently.
    • It helps you improve the onboarding experience for new users. They can avoid being on the onboarding call for long and learn the product works at their pace.

Benefits such as these emphasize the use of a knowledge base and building a customer repository that can target users in different scenarios. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you set up your customer knowledge base soon!

Interested in Document360 Knowledge base? Schedule a demo with one of our experts

Book A Demo

6. Analyze the result of the program

Is your SaaS education program really meeting the expectations of your customers and you?

How do you measure the performance of your program to see if it’s bringing desired results?

• • • To know if your customer education program is working out for users and the brand, check the following.
    • Track the frequent visits to your knowledge base to see how many times they try to find answers about your product.
    • Track the keywords they use in your knowledge base to find feature-related articles
    • Monitor how many webinars and live events do customers attend to understand if they’d like to know more about your product from the brand’s perspective
    • Monitor the frequent visits to blogs and ebook downloads to learn if they try to seek tips on how to enhance the performance of your product

These measures will give you an idea of whether users find educational content useful or not. Based on their activity, you can make changes to the resources under the program that benefits the users in the future.

Best Practice for Customer Education

With a list of measures, we’ve understood what can be done to launch a customer education program successfully. Now, let’s explore a few customer education best practices that will help you design your program from the user’s point of view.

1. Offer a free trial

Don’t miss out on a free trial.

A free trial ensures you establish an initial degree of client fulfillment. This can help potential customers who are hesitant to attempt something new gain trust and confidence. This also allows them to make a more informed decision about whether the product or service is appropriate for them.

According to research, a product has 200 trial users out of which 40 users convert to a paid account. In fact, B2B companies that utilized free trials saw an average of 66 percent conversions among users. From a conversion point of view, do not forget to add a free trial.

2. Provide an onboarding checklist

Your educational program must include a checklist as well. It will help new users be ready to onboard with your product. This checklist will act like a roadmap, therefore improving their onboarding experience effectively.

3. Use the interactive walkthrough

Never miss out on interactive walkthroughs. A lot of new users find these beneficial as they start exploring the product. The in-app guidance or tooltips allow them to learn how to go about the product during the initial days.

4. Provide tutorial videos

You can also create tutorial videos that offer step-by-step guidance on how to use a product. Even research suggests that users are 3X more likely to prefer watching a tutorial video than reading a product’s instructions. So, don’t miss out on that too!

5. Showcase customer case studies

Let new users learn what existing customers think about your product and the brand. One of Hubspot’s reports suggests that 13% of marketers name case studies as one of the primary forms of media used within their content strategy. It helps them promote the brand and how the product was received by customers. Case studies have also helped them bring in customers.

Customer Education Examples from SaaS Companies

After exploring a bunch of measures and best practices, it is time to see how a few businesses have built their customer education program. The following examples from SaaS companies will give you an idea of how to start your program the right way.

Ahrefs

Want your customers to master your product like a pro? See what Ahrefs has done. They’ve created their academy for their users to not just help them learn their product but also master it with flying colors.

Their academy includes courses around using the product and getting its certification. It’s like users get to learn the product and show it as a skill in their resumes. Besides the academy, they also offer a help center that helps their users learn how they can use each feature at length. And if that wasn’t sufficient, the service provider also created a tech blog and SEO guide that their users can access to learn more about the product.

Hubspot

From offering a certification course in how to use Hubspot from scratch to building templates that help users get started, this service provider does it all. Besides creating courses in fields like marketing and sales, Hubspot also emphasizes how its users use their products.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Hubspot is also known for conducting product webinars, writing educational blog content, podcasts, and more that help them educate their product users in the right direction. Such efforts have helped them set a benchmark in the customer education sector.

Khan Academy

How can we leave out one of the biggest names, Khan Academy, from the list?

This non-profit academy has created an indispensable platform for students who are looking for support in subjects like math, science, and humanities. Their platform is pretty easy to use as they have separate logins for learners, teachers, and parents. What’s more, they’ve created an AI guide for their users to learn how this feature can separately help them resolve their problems. They’ve also built a help center that helps their users understand how they can find relevant information about a course in no time.

Code Academy

If you have already signed up with Code Academy, chances are that you must have a range of their resources as well. They are known for creating an open-source help center that helps coders find code syntax and other useful material for their work. They can even contribute their work to help others in the same repository. To add more, they’ve created useful cheat sheets, videos, articles, and even code challenges that help their users find helpful content to solve their pressing code problems.

Build an Engaging SaaS Education Program Successfully!

You want your customers to master the product you’ve built. But to do that, you have got to introduce relevant educational material that helps them understand your product without approaching your support team for help.

We say, why not introduce a customer education program to help them understand your SaaS product better? It will help you engage them, resolve their queries faster, retain them to your brand, and offer more such benefits. Keeping these benefits in mind, we’ve created a list of measures and best practices that you can follow to create your SaaS customer education program hassle-free.

We hope it helps you develop yours and results in customer delight!

The post What’s Customer Education in SaaS? Best Practices & Examples appeared first on Document360.

What is a knowledge base?

You can find lists of Frequently Asked Questions on many company websites which are designed to answer popular customer questions. A knowledge base is an expansion of this idea and they contain information that goes beyond simple questions and answers.

It is a centralized repository of self-service content including tutorials on how to get set up with the product and reference material for key features.

Why SaaS companies need a knowledge base?

If your company already has an FAQ section you might think this is all the information your customers will need. You don’t see the point in investing in a brand new knowledge base, which will take time and effort to set up.
SaaS companies need to get their customers up to speed quickly, and to provide content to keep their customers engaged and around for the long-haul.

Boost customer success

A knowledge base helps your customers get to grips with your product and learn how to use it properly. Without the right self-service content, they might become frustrated and end up using your product less.

Decrease customer churn

Customers who don’t see a return on investment from your product are more likely to abandon it and cancel their subscription. A knowledge base helps keep your churn rates low by ensuring customers understand how to use your product and use it on a regular basis.

Free up your support agents

Without a self-service knowledge base, customers are likely to fire off an email to your support team, or even pick up the phone if you provide a contact number. Many customer tickets place a strain on your support staff and you might see a drop in productivity.

A knowledge base can take the place of your support team and enable customers to help themselves.

What can I keep in my knowledge base?

Let’s now take a look at the type of information that you can store in your knowledge base for better customer service.

Reference documentation

Your reference documentation contains any information related to your product and its features. You need to explain to your customers what each feature is for and how they can make the most of it.

Tutorials

You need a complete set of instructions for how to use your product. Your tutorials will take your customers step by step through how to use it and troubleshoot any errors.

Updates and release notes

When you make changes to your products you need to let your customers know. Whenever a new version of your product is rolled out you have to tell your customers what has changed.

Understand why Knowledge Base is important for your SaaS business.

Book a Demo

Top 10 SaaS knowledge base examples

Now we’ll take a look at the top 10 SaaS knowledge base examples.

1. Asana

Asana is project management software that helps teams organize, track, and manage their work.

Asana takes the unusual approach of calling their knowledge base “guide”, and they don’t include a search bar for users to research content. They funnel users into four buckets: joining a live webinar, tips on Asana, tutorials, and courses.

Asana provides many videos to walk their users through how to use their software, which is great for visual learners. They’ve invested heavily in video content and have a dedicated YouTube channel for Asana help videos.

In their section for navigating Asana, Asana offers quick links to help users skip ahead to the section they need, so they don’t have to waste time scanning the page for the right content. Asana offers a great user experience for those customers who want to learn more about Asana and how to use it.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an American marketing automation platform and email marketing service. They make software that customers can use to send automated emails to their audiences.

Unlike Asana, they offer a search bar for their users and also list popular content on their knowledge base homepage.

Mailchimp also makes it super easy to contact their support team, providing a contact form on the homepage of their knowledge base. This is a good idea when it comes to making support accessible to your customers, in case they don’t find what they need in your self-service content.

They include surveys at the bottom of every article asking their users to rate whether or not the article was helpful, and asking for qualitative feedback on how to improve their site. Mailchimp has a fantastic customer-focused knowledge base that goes the extra mile for its users.

3. Confluence

Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki developed by Australian software company Atlassian. It’s a type of software often compared with knowledge bases but it has some distinct features.

Confluence is one of a number of products made by Atlassian, and the company has opted for a shared knowledge base. Customers can browse the knowledge base by product, so in this case we would choose Confluence.

There is a prominent search bar on the homepage, allowing users to quickly search for the information they need. When you navigate to the Confluence knowledge base, you are presented with a list of popular articles and a list of new articles.

The content on Confluence’s knowledge base is quite dense but they do a good job of breaking it down and making it accessible for users. Confluence is a complex product but the documentation enables users to get up and running quickly. Their articles also include related content so users can discover more articles related to the topic at hand.

An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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4. Dropbox

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox. Dropbox is more than just secure file storage – it’s a smart workspace where teams, tools and content come together.

Dropbox has a very colorful knowledge base that immediately orients the user with a search bar and a top articles section. It’s most common that users will visit the knowledge base looking to reset their password so Dropbox provides a way to do this on the homepage.

Dropbox’s articles are very cleanly laid out and user-friendly. It contains an article rating widget at the bottom so users can tell Dropbox how helpful the content was. There is also a related articles section and a quick way to contact customer support if the content isn’t helpful for the user.

5. Wistia

Wistia is a video marketing software that companies can use to host videos designed to grow their business.

Wistia opens their knowledge base with a large full-color photo of their team, and a prominent search bar to help customers find what they’re looking for. It includes the top categories of content that customers typically search for and include a colorful icon with each section.

It also includes a top articles section that users can browse to find the most common queries. This is especially important when users are in a rush and they just want a quick answer to their questions.

Within the articles itself, Wistia has a table of contents with quick links that enable users to jump to the section they need. They make good use of white space in laying out their content so it’s easy for users to skim down to the content that’s most relevant to them.

An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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6. Slack

Slack is a business communication platform developed by American software company Slack Technologies. Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.

Slack’s knowledge base gets right to the heart of the matter – the search bar is front and center, while common troubleshooting topics are listed just below to help customers find what they need.

Customers are presented with the top-level categories of the knowledge base so they can browse content. Slack does a good job of organizing a huge number of articles, using tabs to separate out the sections and listing out the articles contained in each category.

When you navigate down to the individual article level, Slack is ready with helpful videos and a table of contents to help users understand what is contained on the page. Slack’s knowledge base is incredibly easy to use and presents articles in a visually appealing way that will help users when they’re in a tight spot with the product.

7. Spotify

Spotify is audio streaming software that connects users to millions of songs and artists through its SaaS platform.

Spotify has a very simple knowledge base that presents users with a search bar, and the top articles that users usually search for listed below.

At the category level, Spotify simply lists all the articles contained within so users can navigate to the content they need. Article titles are simple and to the point.

At the article level, Spotify presents the help content as a numbered list which will help users to easily follow the instructions. Page presentation is simple and monochrome, with no distractions. There is the option to rate the article as helpful or unhelpful, inviting feedback from users of the knowledge base.

8. Netflix

Netflix is a content streaming service that enables customers to watch TV and movies online.

Their knowledge base is presented in a very helpful way – search bar at the very top and then recommended categories that are personalized based on your account. That’s exactly what Netflix is known for: personalizing content for its users based on their past habits.

If you scroll down then you come across Netflix’s main top-level categories which list out popular articles beneath them.

The quick links are especially helpful because they take customers right to the page that helps them change their details.

Netflix’s articles are clearly laid out with numbered lists and use their brand colors. Customers will find it easy to use Netflix’s help content, and they can rate whether the article was helpful or not. The articles interlink to other helpful articles, which is a good way to encourage content discovery.

9. Salesforce

Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company. It provides customer relationship management service and also provides a complementary suite of enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.

Their knowledge base opens with a search bar, and then options for next steps. The options are browsing the documentation, taking part in interactive tutorials, or visiting the community forum.

Documentation takes you to a page that allows you to filter the help content based on different categories. There is still the option to search using the search bar in case users don’t see what they need represented here.

Down at the article level there are links to many more resources. Salesforce does a good job of presenting content in an easy-to-digest way so users can navigate the knowledge base. Salesforce has gone for comprehensiveness and the user is sure to find what they need somewhere in the documentation.

10. Help Scout

Help Scout provides an email-based customer support platform, a knowledge base tool, and an embeddable search/contact widget for customer service professionals.
Help Scout provides a very visually appealing knowledge base that is sure to calm the frustrated customer. The search bar provides suggestions for search teams, while the section below is devoted to top-level categories designed to facilitate content discovery.

At an article level, on the left-hand navigation Help, Scout keeps related articles visible so customers have a birds-eye view of the content. Help Scout arranges its Getting Started documentation into six steps, which is a great way to let users know what to expect when engaging with your content.

Final remarks

We hope you enjoyed these ten examples of market-leading SaaS knowledge bases. Remember, it’s important for your company to provide self-service support to customers in the form of a knowledge base – to increase customer success and reduce churn.

SaaS companies cannot afford to miss out on this customer support strategy in order to provide a better service to customers, and potentially attract new customers with stellar help content.

An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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The post Top 10 SaaS knowledge base examples to learn from appeared first on Document360.

As we’ve grown, our CEO Saravana Kumar has spent time sharing our growth story with podcast host Nathan Latka. The show has surpassed over 13M downloads and our profile has been viewed over 30,000 times. You can listen to the last podcast here

Every year, in addition to the podcast, Latka publishes the Latka 250 – a list of the fastest growing SaaS companies. This year, 5,091 companies applied and just 5% made the list.

We’re thrilled to share that we grew our revenue to 128.5% between Dec 2019 and Dec 2020 and look forward to expanding by another 100% more this year.

How The Rankings Work

Nathan Latka sold his SaaS company in 2015 before launching his SaaS CEO Podcast and database at GetLatka.com. Each year he gets revenue growth figures from SaaS CEO’s and confirms the revenue via email with the CEO. The rankings take December 2019 monthly recurring revenue annualized (multiply by 12) and compare to revenue 1 month ago (December 2020).

The companies are then split into three buckets since it’s easier to grow a $1m company 300% compared to a $10m company. The three categories are $1m-$10m, $10m-$20m, and $20m-100m.

In total, the top 250 companies do $8.5 billion in revenue, service 2.2 million customers, and have raised a total of $12 billion dollars.

You can see a digital version of the top 250 SaaS companies here and find the deeper story on our growth in the March issue of Latka Magazine.

Thanks to all of you for helping us land a spot in the Latka 250 for 2020. We look forward to another 11 years of helping you build your businesses!

Want to find out more?

Rankings: https://getlatka.com/saas-companies/fastest-growing/revenue/2020
Visit us: https://getlatka.com/companies/document360

The post Document360 Makes it to Latka 250 Fastest Growing SaaS Company List appeared first on Document360.

Recently we had such an incident, we use Office365 / Microsoft 365 as our email provider and Freshdesk as our customer support platform. All the customer support emails like support@, contact@, etc are all configured to forward incoming emails to the corresponding Freshdesk configured mailboxes.

We noticed there were no support tickets raised for almost a week. When we logged in directly to the support mailbox, we saw a bunch of emails all failed with the following message

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:
Your message wasn’t delivered because the recipient’s email provider rejected it.

The message also contained a bit more detailed description

Remote Server returned ‘550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)’

This is due to a recent security change in Office365/Microsoft365. It makes sense to control the outbound /external email as an administrator. Since it increases significant risk if someone can get access to an email address. 

How to fix this issue?

The fix is fairly straight forward.

• Login to Office 365 security and compliance portal (https://protection.office.com/antispam)
• Navigate to Threat Management > Policy (on the left-hand side)
• Click the button “Create an Outbound policy”
• Provide a friendly name (we called it “Freshdesk – allow forwarding policy”)
• Open the “Automatic forwarding” section and set “Automatic forwarding enabled” to “On – Forwarding is enabled”
• Open the “Applied to” section and click on “Add a condition”
• Choose “Sender is” and on the RHS just select all the support/contact email addresses you wanted to forward. Our configuration looks like

We used Freshdesk, however, you’ll experience the same issue with any external customer support product like ZenDesk, Intercom, Help Scout, JIRA Service Desk, Hubspot etc

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The State of Documentation in 2020

If you look around some of your competitors’ websites, you’ll notice a couple of distinct themes in design language. Websites nowadays look different than they did ten years ago, and those looked different from what came before.

What’s interesting is that although the websites of 2010 and 2000 probably had roughly similar types of content available to the visitors, the websites of 2020 almost universally have an entirely new section.

Most businesses have shifted to open content docs, so you can see the help files even if you haven’t signed up with the software. Before, you’d read help files in the software itself, or from a readme included with your installation CD (remember those?)

As unintuitive as it might seem to make help files available to everyone, it actually has a bunch of advantages.

Make a Name for Yourself Online

Chief among these is where your information is coming from. If you look at the SaaS giants of today such as Salesforce, there are whole forums of power users telling each other how to do things with Salesforce.

Your product might not be as much of a public necessity as that, but the advantage of putting your docs on a website for all to see is that you make it that much easier to trust your own company’s expertise on the topic of product support.

A company that locks off its help docs (or worse, has poor documentation in the first place) risks being taken less seriously than enthusiasts all across the Internet, who can easily slip in plugs for your competitors when talking about how to solve problems with your software.

By keeping everything in one place, you make yourself the authority, and you make others appear as though they’re just copying off the knowledge base articles available for anyone to look at.

Boost Your Search Rankings

The other reason businesses have knowledge bases full of public-facing articles is a little bit more utilitarian: it gets them a better ranking on web search results.

Search engines like content that has a lot of relevant links and a lot of similar, popular pages. Since documentation often gets linked to other documentation pages, this means your help desk articles are natural candidates for good search rankings.

This becomes even more true when you use content-rich page design, with articles containing pictures, code snippets and more. This makes your articles more engaging for searchers, and in turn it boosts the rankings of those pages.

It gets to the point, ideally, where just one keyword search for something your product can do turns up more than one page result from your own documentation right on the first page of Google.

You might be thinking, well, this is what content marketing and other interesting bits of the website are for. Why should documentation fill this role?

Check out How Document360 helped Whatfix streamline its documentation process:

Why Documentation is Critical for SaaS Companies?

Let’s face it. A lot of SaaS companies make good software, not great software.

There are so many different startups on the market right now that the core features of any one of them are liable to have been duplicated not out of any sort of corporate espionage, but just because there aren’t that many more unique features available to invent.

The real reason people use one platform over another is the service part of SaaS.
It’s extremely critical that your users be able to intuitively use the features of your website with any cultural, design, or knowledge barriers made as low as possible. If they don’t find your product easy to use, then they can turn right back around and go with someone else.

Naturally, though, nobody expects that they’ll immediately know how to use the software for the first time. Your job is to make the process of learning to use it – and solving the problems that arise – intuitive.

That’s where high-quality documentation comes in. When people see your help desk page, they should be able to make an educated guess about where the right information is for their problem, every time.

You need to have a serious search engine that shows your users where the necessary articles are, as well as an easy-to-read hierarchy of article categories that lets them understand that they can get access to related articles in seconds. It also all needs to look just like your website, so that there are no subconscious clues that they’ve found themselves in the wrong place.

And why is it that it’s so necessary to spend time and energy writing effective documentation when you could just get people to answer phone calls and support emails?

Well, it turns out that users love helping themselves more than they love getting told how to fix their problems. You need to let them feed their first impulse to click around on the site and see if there really is a self-service area that can help them, and only once that avenue is exhausted will you point them toward a contact form.

If a user can find the necessary answers on your website, then suddenly your website seems well-designed to them and they’ll be happy to return and use it more frequently in the future.

Plus, as you may have guessed, documentation is a whole lot cheaper than hiring people to answer your phones, even if you outsource it overseas. Even part-time phone support can cost over a thousand US dollars per month, while even the most expensive enterprise-level knowledge base platforms cost less than half of that.

Platforms for You to Build Your Documentation

So far we’ve mentioned knowledge bases a couple of times as platforms you might want to use, but it’s only fair to mention other product documentation software packages that work for some companies as well.

Of course, the simplest and most cost-effective solution for you (apart from having no documentation at all) is to just write up a quick user guide or answer some FAQs and put that on a static page on your site.

This is painless and free to set up, but there are a couple of glaring downsides. First of all, you only get one page to help boost your search rankings. Second, you’ll have to manually update it every time your software changes, which in SaaS could happen quite a bit.

Finally, as soon as you have more than ten or fifteen questions to answer (and most users could come up with ten or fifteen questions about just a login screen), you should really be splitting them up over multiple pages or else your users get distracted.

Then updating the pages becomes even more tedious, and with several help pages on the site the webmaster could get annoyed at the backend organization.

Another way is to use free wiki software, like some companies have done to set up an easily-editable collection of help pages.

As long as you’re comfortable hosting wiki software, this could be a decent solution for people who don’t want to get used to learning how to use another type of dedicated knowledge management platform. After all, most people have used Wikipedia and so have a good sense of what that kind of platform looks like and how it works.

However, the design of most wikis tends to be quite lacking, and it’s immediately obvious that you’re bolting a wiki solution onto your existing website instead of smoothly integrating something natural.

Wikis also tend to have pretty bad search features – take a look at Wikipedia itself to see how its search feature appears to be stuck in the early 2000s. Search is a key component of finding answers quickly, and if your customers get frustrated with your documentation platform, they might be more likely to feel turned off from your product as a whole.

This is why most people use a knowledge base (also called a help desk by some providers) as the foundation of their documentation needs.

A knowledge base is designed from the ground up not to be an all-in-one package like a Wiki is, but to do the specific job of adding and editing help articles – and to do that job well. Many integrate with CRMs or other help desk software features like instant chat or customer issue tracking, while others like Document360 focus entirely on building and maintaining help pages.

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Features to Look for in Product Documentation Software

There’s not just one perfect solution that can solve every documentation problem you have. However, there are certain key features that you’ll want to keep an eye out for and compare. If you’re considering a particular type of technical documentation software like a knowledge base, make sure it has a strong implementation of these key features.

The Page Editor

Just as you want your readers to be able to use your documentation without any trouble, you’ll also want your writers to be able to edit your pages and add new articles as quickly and easily as possible.

You want your page editor to be just like a word processor in its accessibility, but also employing some key features such as Markdown for power editors. This way, for instance, you can add all the necessary formatting you need without having to take your hands off the keyboard and onto the mouse.

Your editor should also have a good ability to add photos, videos and other content. Although your articles should generally be short (more on that later), you should definitely consider adding multimedia to help guide your users along, particularly if your user interface is heavy with text that might be confusing to a non-native speaker of English.

Inside the page editor, you should also be able to perform bulk features like editing and moving articles from one category to another. After all, sometimes you have a product update that requires a big shuffle in the way your articles are ordered – better to do that all at once if you can.

The Search Bar

As strong as those categorizations may be, a search bar is what really makes a knowledge management system shine.

Check and see what happens when you put in a basic keyword, for instance, like “open.” Does it bring up a ton of unrelated articles just because they included that word, or does it intelligently put the most general and basic pages first – since users who search for basic keywords probably aren’t at the expert level?

Also have a look at the results when you type in a purposefully misspelled word. A good search bar will implement a fuzzy search algorithm to make sure you can get the results you’re looking for even if your fingers have slipped on the keyboard.

When it comes to layout, the search bar should be prominently placed so that users see it first. It should look good on mobile and desktop layouts. Speaking of design…

Custom Design

Although knowledge bases have their own design language of sorts (many people make heavy use of emojis, for instance), you want the ability to make your documentation look seamless on the page.

Most SaaS products rely a lot on branding and word-of-mouth to expand to more users. If your knowledge base pages, which bring users to your website and thus to your brand, look like they came from someone else’s website, then you lose the credibility that comes with having a seamless website experience.

You should be able to use whichever knowledge base provider you’d like as a “white label,” meaning that there’s no obtrusive branding poking through. Naturally, this also means customizing the layout and color scheme of your pages to match the rest of your website.

Versioning and Differences

When rapid software prototyping and release schedules are the name of the game, you want your documentation team to be ready at the trigger. 

After all, if you push out an update and there’s a problem or new feature that your documentation doesn’t address, you’re going to be looking at confused and frustrated customers at just the wrong time.

Your product documentation software should allow your writer or writers to flip back and forth between the current version of your help docs and any planned changes at a glance.

You should also be able to look at two different versions (such as one saved at 10:00 AM New York time and one saved at 12:30 Beijing time) to look at how two different editors might have tackled the same assignment.

With these features in place, you’ll be able to keep organized, and you won’t have to deal with a Google Docs-like problem of several competing versioning schemes and time zones making your team confused about which versions are current.

Analytics

Aside from a good user experience, you want to get something out of the deal as well. What can you gain from simply hosting a knowledge base?

You can get data.
Each user leaves a footprint in your logs when they visit or conduct a search, and those footprints can be aggregated over time to make it apparent to you which articles are the most popular, which articles need work and which articles have just the right amount of monthly viewers.

All of this should be available on the back end of your documentation management platform of choice. Ideally, you’ll also be able to look at the search bar usage statistics, such as how many searches you get per unique visitor and how many searches you get in the aggregate.

One particularly useful data point is the list of “dead keywords,” or searches that returned zero article results. If those are misspelled words, fine, but if those are keywords related to your product, then you know you’ve got to step up your article creation and fill in the blanks.

With this data, you can of course improve your documentation, but you can also use it as a general pointer to issues your customers may be having with your product. It’s free user experience testing and response data!

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How To Write Effective SaaS Documentation

Before we close out here, it’s important to go over three key principles that govern how you should actually structure your articles on the knowledge base.

Simple

Your documentation is not a place to show off your writing skill. Good technical writing should be invisible, because it should convey its message precisely without ever causing the reader to notice the style.

This means that your articles should all be pretty short. As a general rule, once you write an initial draft, try to reduce the word count by about ten percent.
Speed-readers and skimmers will thank you for this, as will people reading in their second or third language.

Actionable

Every article needs to effectively solve a problem or provide concrete steps for getting the user’s problem to a slightly better state.

You’d think that this would be common knowledge, but as it happens there are a lot of people out there writing documentation that’s just thinly veiled advertisement for their products, or cribbed from somewhere else without being thoroughly vetted for effectiveness.

Use clear and direct language to guide the user through what they need to do step-by-step. Some platforms let you put flowcharts or nested instructions into the article so you can tailor the experience to people using your product on various devices.

Up-to-Date

This might even be the most important principle! You should aim to have your articles be as relevant as possible in terms of how they relate to the actual usage of the software.

Good technical documentation software will let you easily see which of your articles are the oldest and give you reminders to check those out when you can. You should also make it a habit to run audits two or three times per year – more if you have a fast release cycle.

These audits should cover all of your articles in the knowledge base, and they should check for dead links, outdated information, and photos or videos that might refer to an older design of the user interface.

It may seem obsessive to pay so much attention to keeping your documentation up to date, but remember that your clients are paying you monthly with the expectation that you continually develop your software for them. It’s an unwritten part of that deal that you’ll also keep your documents held to the same standard of quality.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, we recommend Document360 for your knowledge base needs. It checks all the boxes mentioned in the features section and does it all with grace and style. It’s even been highly praised on trusted aggregator websites such as Capterra.

You can take a look at their own help desk for inspiration and a great example of how it’s done in terms of organization and writing best practices. And if it seems like something you’d want on your own website, you can get access to the full features for fourteen days with a free trial!

Your customers deserve the best software and the best service. Use a great knowledge base, and you’ll be able to offer them both without compromise.

Also Read: Introductory guide to process documentation

The post SaaS Documentation: Drive Your Business Forward appeared first on Document360.

An important part of writing support documentation is how you present it to your users.

Why? Surely only content matters.

The reason presentation matters is because a professional image helps to build trust and inspire confidence in your users. It also makes your content easier to use.

It’s possible that you have some help content already, but it’s a bit of a mismatch. Your knowledge base has grown organically over the years, and it has been drawn from different sources. That’s not a problem – but, eventually, every knowledge base needs its own style guide, so you can keep content consistent and professional.

Style guides are especially handy when you have multiple contributors to your content who may not be privy to all of your goals and decisions. You are making the implicit explicit with your style guide.

So what should you cover in your style guide?

Knowledge base style guides deal with the presentation aspects of your content: voice & tone, format, words, layout.

Many different content sources have their own style guide, but SaaS knowledge bases include some very specific types of content. It’s important to remember that there are different types of documentation you can write, ranging from: tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and references.

There are numerous things you will need to cover for a comprehensive style guide, which we’ll go over in detail in this article. Pay particular attention to the word “guide” – which means you are providing a template for writers, rather than creating a hard and fast book of law.

Here’s a timeless quote from one of the english writing greats:
“Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” —George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Section 1 – Tutorials

When creating your user documentation, one of the main content types you are likely to run into is the tutorial.

Tutorials are step-by-step guides that are focused on introducing one topic, or a small group of closely related topics. It’s learning-oriented, and allows the beginner user to get started with your software.

Think of a tutorial as like a lesson that teaches the user how to do something.

You decide what to teach your user, with the goal of getting them up and running as quickly as possible with your software. Every tutorial should produce a tangible result for your users that introduces them to the basic processes of using your software.

It should be written in a step-by-step format. Each step should be practical and result in user-visible progress – as opposed to purely theoretical learning.

Analogy: think of a driving lesson for a new driver, learning the basic functions of the car like starting the engine, changing gears, and braking.

Software example: Create your first knowledge base in Document360
Here are some basic rules for tutorial writing:

Starting off your tutorial

• Include a summary of what the article contains at the beginning of your tutorial
• Tell your user what they can expect to learn, and what they prerequisites they will need to complete the tutorial
• Focus on offering a way to get your user started with the software

Formatting your tutorial in steps

• Try to arrange the necessary steps in progressive order of difficulty, from easy to hard.
• Include only the steps your user needs to take to complete the task
  Include only concrete steps in your tutorial, and avoid abstract concepts that don’t relate to practical learning.
• Control the length of your tutorial steps – keep them concise but not abrupt.

Creating a working tutorial

• Affirm that you have created a working tutorial, including checking that it operates in different environments.
• Provide a working example for your tutorial so the user can learn by doing
• Include user-visible results throughout the tutorial that provide feedback on the task.
• Test that your tutorial is repeatable for your users

Tutorial style

• Include only the bare minimum amount of explanation needed to complete the task
• Don’t make your tutorials too long or complicated
• Don’t link to external sites during the tutorial – keep your users focused on the task at hand
• Include “next steps” or further reading at the end of your tutorial for users who want to learn more

Some examples of great tutorials are:

• Digital Ocean
• Ubuntu
• Wistia

Section 2 – How-to Guides

Next, we’ll look at how to write a how-to guide.

A how-to guide seems similar to a tutorial, but is actually aimed at solving a specific problem or issue with the software.

How-to guides are goal-oriented and presented as a series of steps, and can be seen more as a troubleshooting type of content. These articles require some pre-existing knowledge of the subject matter from the user, and are designed to achieve a specific end.

They are usually aimed at the more experienced user who wants to know how a particular aspect of your software works. The key focus here is consistency and clarity. You must adhere to typical conventions when your writers refer to elements of the UI, for example.

It’s important to remember that users are working from many different types of hardware device, browser, or operating system, so you’ll need to format your instructions to take into account all possibilities.

Analogy: Instructions for a driver on how to change a tyre
Software example: Instructions on how to upload a data list to the system

Here are some rules for writing how-to guides:

Starting off your how-to guide

• Choose a descriptive name for your guide that tells the user exactly what the guide intends to solve
• Format your how-to guide as a list of ordered steps (1, 2, 3)
  Summarise the solution at the beginning of the guide so more experienced users can skip to the important part
• Focus on the results of achieving a practical goal with your software, and solve a specific problem that has been troubling the user

Writing procedures

• Format your procedures consistently in every guide so your users can scan the content
• Restrict your procedures to fewer than seven steps to avoid information overload
• Describe the place in the UI where the action takes place before you issue an instruction
• Include actions in each step that finalise the step; for example, select “OK”
• Use generic input words that correspond with any device the user might be using; for example, avoid click or swipe in favour of open or select
• You can shorten simple sequences using right angle brackets; for example Select Accounts > Other accounts > Add new account

Style and format

• Write your guide in full sentences with proper grammar and punctuation
• Include call-outs within the body text to highlight necessary information – for example, how performing a particular action will affect the system
• Avoid explaining “conceptual information” by linking to explanations elsewhere instead
• Leave out any information that is unnecessary for completing the task

Some examples of great how-to guides are:

• Stripe
• Asana

Section 3 – Explanation

Another type of documentation you may need to use in your knowledge base is an explanation. This type of documentation may not even have its own section, but could be interspersed through the rest of your content. It provides crucial know-what for your users regarding your software.
An explanation is geared towards helping your users understand a particular topic, and providing more background and context. It can provide clarity and illumination for a certain subject, and offer a little more information than you’d expect on a “need-to-know” basis.

Analogy: Article on the design history of a particular car model
Software example: Article on the design process behind the software

Some rules for writing good explanations:

• Provide as much context as you need to and explain the “why”
• Don’t instruct the user or include any technical reference
• Use this type of content to expand user understanding of the software as a whole
• Use simple language that anyone can understand

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Section 4 – Reference

A reference guide is an information-oriented technical document that describes the software, or any related aspect of the software that your user needs to know about.

It could include reference material like a glossary of terms used in your knowledge base, or API and webhooks documentation that includes the main interfaces/properties/methods for your software. You could list technical specifications for your software, current integrations, and so on.

Analogy: A handbook covering the technical specifications of that particular car model

Software example: A glossary of terms used in the Document360 knowledge base

Some rules for writing reference documentation:

• Aim for consistency in your structure, tone, and format
• Describe only the relevant technical component, and avoid instructing or explaining
• Use a straightforward and matter-of-fact tone
• Check rigorously for accuracy

Section 5 – Voice & Tone

Now we’ve covered the different types of documentation you might need, we’ll move on to the overall presentation of language.

A support knowledge base is still part of your overall company brand, and so it should be written in a consistent voice and tone. But first, what are voice and tone?

Voice and tone in writing are two separate but related concepts.

Voice is the personality of your brand, and it is:

• Consistent across different types of content
• The words you use or omit in your writing
• The common turns of phrase you employ
• The way you write a sentence
• Use of punctuation to create a particular expression

Tone is the content-specific current state of mind and emotion for your brand, and it is expressed by:

• Word choice
• Punctuation
• Emojis

Voice and tone is ultimately an expression of your brand’s personality, and will be different for every company. The MailChimp style guide is a fantastic resource for anyone looking to create their own voice and tone style guide.
Even better, we’ve compiled some real-life inspirational phrases that will help you start to build your own guide.

Microsoft’s brand voice: Above all, simple and human
Buffer’s voice is: relatable, approachable, genuine, and inclusive
MailChimp’s voice is: Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work. We prefer the subtle over the noisy, the wry over the farcical. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Splunk’s voice and tone: Splunk docs are casual and approachable, yet succinct and direct. Aim to be confident, friendly, and comprehensive, and not insensitive, saccharine, or complicated.
Rackspace voice and tone should: Build trust, inspire confidence, make things easier, develop a relationship with Rackspace users.
Voice and tone can be broken down into more concrete aspects, which you can expand on for your contributors.

For example:

• Write to the user using the second person and use the imperative mood
• Use the active voice to make the performer of the action the subject of the sentence
• Use present tense
• Write in confident language
• Make suggestions rather than give commands (“you can do X” rather than “you must do X”)
• Use helpful words and phrases that are informative, easy to understand, and clear
• Avoid laying the blame for any negative situation on the user

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Section 6 – Terminology

Every knowledge base employs its own lexicon, and your choice of terminology must be kept consistent across your help content. Terminology teaches your contributors how to correctly refer to different parts of your software, in keeping with the branding you want to represent to the outside world.

For example, don’t refer to the “widget” at the beginning of an article, only to switch to the “doohickey” later down the line. Consider creating a comprehensive glossary of terms for your writers to refer to.

For example, here is a handy visual example from the Splunk documentation explaining how writers should refer to its software:

Terminology is important to get right because you are teaching your users how to describe your software. It’s often unfamiliar ground that has the potential to confuse users who are new to your product, or who haven’t used your knowledge base much before.

A lack of clarity over terms could lead to a failure to follow instructions, and frustrated and unhappy users. If you have an obvious inclination for what a particular feature should be called, follow your instincts instead of coming up with fancy names. The more obvious the better.

Section 7 – Word Choice

Distinct from your terminology, word choice in your knowledge base refers to the more general words your contributors might choose when writing help content. As with any kind of writing, your language choice strongly influences the meaning that readers take from your writing.

Some factors to take into account in terms of word choice are:

• Use of contractions (“don’t” instead of “do not”)
• Choose the simplest words (“use” rather than “utilise”)
• Use short sentences with only one or two clauses
• Avoid ambiguous terms
• Remove jargon and go light on technical terms

Word choice is an important factor when representing your particular brand, and contributes to your brand’s tone. The overall aim is to make word choices that result in content that is easy to read and unambiguous – so your users can follow your instructions.

Sometimes technical terms are necessary to get your point across, but you should use them carefully. Always assume that your readers may not be familiar with the technical term, and when you do use one, link to a definition.

Similarly, don’t use a complicated word (such as “utilise”) when you could use a simple one (such as “use”). You can use free tools such as Hemingway to check the readability of your content.

Using contractions (“don’t” rather than “do not”) can make your content more readable, but it also makes your content much harder to translate. Therefore, content with contractions is less suitable for international audiences. The same goes if your language is too informal – it’s also harder to read for those with English as a second language.

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Section 8 – Scannable Content

A SaaS knowledge base is meant to be read online, and it should be written in a way that appeals to web users.
Web users are well-known for scanning content rather than reading, and skimming straight to the parts that are relevant to them. Therefore, you should break your content down as much as possible, and use formatting to highlight the most important parts of your content.

Here are some basic rules for creating scannable web content:

• Present the most important content at the beginning of your article (“above the fold”)
• Include a navigation element or table of contents at the beginning of long content
• You can include a short summary of the solution at the beginning of your how-to guide so more experienced users don’t have to read the whole article
• Write your content in short headings, sentences, and paragraphs
  Front-load your headings so that the most important keywords are near the beginning
• Use bold formatting to highlight key words or phrases
• Use call-outs to highlight warnings or other important chunks of information
• Use ordered or unordered lists for sequences of information; ie any kind of procedure

Asking your contributors to write in a scannable format results in better usability for your knowledge base end users.

It’s important to break up your content as much as possible into sections, and write in a topic-based format. This is so your content can be easily scanned, and also reused in other locations.

Section 9 – Standardise your Formatting

Knowledge base content should be presented consistently, and there are a number of factors you need to control in your writing. It’s the little things that contribute to the impression of your knowledge base as a professional resource, and which make your content easier to absorb.

For example, using particular styling in a uniform way, which includes:

• Fonts
• Colours
• Capitalisation (includes use of sentence case or title case)
• Emphasis (using bold)
• Italics

You also need to standardise the formatting of particular text elements:

• URLs
• Headings
• Naming UI elements
• Code snippets
• File names
• Numerals or words
• Date and time
• Abbreviations
• Product names
• Tables

Standardisation makes your content easier to read and gives it coherency. It makes your text less ambiguous, and helps users when they are searching for information within your content.

There’s no single right way to format your content. The main concern is to keep formatting consistent within your own content.

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Final remarks

You can include as many sections as you like in your style guide. What you end up with depends on the amount of information you need to include for your knowledge base.

If you don’t have much content to release, or you’re short of time, consider creating a one-page style guide that covers only the most important considerations.

At the other end of the scale, you might have a lot to share. For example, you may need to explain how to write for international audiences and how to accommodate a translation strategy. You may need to instruct your writers on how to refer to third parties, how to write content for chatbots, following accessibility guidelines, and so on. In that case, take your time, and split your style guide into as many sections as needed.

Don’t be shy about taking inspiration from some of the biggest brands on how to compile a knowledge base style guide. Keep your eye out for formatting you like the look of. Remember – you’re in good company.

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At Document360

Document360 is a SaaS platform that helps you to build a great self-service knowledge base for your customers and internal users (public or private knowledge bases).
Document360’s journey started with a vision, strategy, and team of 5. We are now a team of 15 and TWO years into our journey. We progressed from an idea to product and 100+ paying customers in less than 2 years!
Here are some quick RECAP from 2019 …

Top Posts of the year

Onboarding our 100th Customer

Last month we succeded in onboarding our 100th customer. “One can only build on success” and it creates a deeper hunger to build an even stronger base and pull yourself to even greater victory and triumph. Everyone has a different way of reflecting on their accomplishments and celebrating it. So, we asked our team, “how they wished to celebrate this moment of success?” and they came with their style which we filmed was widely viewed as the top post of the year

Creating Resonance at Conferences

This year was the year of conferences for us. We started first with local conferences and startup booths at the international conferences and moved to a bigger picture- Gold Sponsors! at SaaStock 2019, Dublin. 

Now we can say how to keep up with the race of brand impressions… it was an incredible experience and learning gained at these conferences.
Following it we receive a lot of invitations from other famous conferences as well (thanks all!). Which we will account for the upcoming years.

B2B Marketing Expo 2019- London

The B2B Marketing Expo is Europe’s leading sales event. The two-day event highlights with more than 300 exhibitors,14 Keynote speakers, around 500 seminars and least to mention the award program for Best Tech Innovations.

Saastock 2019, Dublin

SaaStock is a three-day conference and it is Europe’s top B2B SaaS event which focuses on the business of building and scaling B2B Software as a Service company. 

We planned to engage with the official hashtag before, during and after the event. We crafted instant tweets on what’s next on stage, Top session, and live engagement of who we meet at the stand, also connected last year talk by the same speakers. 

We were listed on the top for being hyperactive on Social media. Also, we were highlighted in SaaStock Promo blogs 

SITS19, London

SITS – The Service Desk & IT Support Show, is Europe’s leading event for IT Service Management and Support professionals. The 2019 event was a great success, with thousands of attendees across the two days.

NASSCOM Product Conclave 2019

NPC is the India’s prestigious event which provides industry-platform for driving and enabling digital transformation across industries. With the objective of driving product development & market strategies, EIGHT Industry verticals took centre stage at NPC 2019 in EIGHT highly-focused Industry Summits—FinTech,HealthTech, RetailTech,Mobility, IoT & Devices, BharatTech, SaaS, Product Management & Design

Launched Document360 on Product Hunt

We finish on the #4 position with 450 votes on Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a website that lets users share and discover new products. The platform combines peer referrals with the forum-like format and surfaces products that are both intriguing and relevant to the tech-focused community.
Product Hunt tweeted about us (395k subscribers)and shared a Facebook post (200k subscribers)

Black Friday & Cyber Monday deal

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping weeks of the year where the sale extravaganza add the extra tail for four sign up list. 

At Document360, we partnered with a few top sale sites and promoted our exclusive sale. This ramped up the visitor traffic, helped in gaining backlinks and overall increased our sign-ups. 

A little more than normal productivity

Finally, we want to recognize and appreciate our pillars— development team effort in building around 23+ features releases and product updates in a year, that count to an average of nearly two releases a month.

This proves we are a customer-centric company. At Document360, we fine-tune our ears to the voice of our customers— empathy begins with active listening.

New Integrations– We have extended our reach to the top helpdesk software in the industry— Freshworks and Zendesk marketplace and added new integration between Document360 and theirs. You can find Document360 app in Freshworks marketplace under Freshservice category and in Zendesk. Now your agents will be able to search the knowledge base for possible answers, copy links to articles and even draft new articles; everything without leaving their favourite helpdesk solutions.

A happy customer is more than a satisfied customer — it’s a retained customer.

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Jeff Bezos, CEO & Founder, Amazon

At Document360, customer satisfaction is our ultimate goal. A high customer satisfaction rating is an indication of reduced customer churn and high product adoption. We focused on monitoring the comprehensive SaaS metrics dashboard which accounted for all our MMR & ARR, CAC and Average cost per account. See what our customers have to say about our product and service…See what our customers have to say about our product and service…

“We have recently started to write our documentation in Document360. I have personally used it a lot the last few weeks and I am very satisfied so far. I think that it is a professional and polished product. It was easy to get started and the result is awesome.”-Lars Lindberg,Solution architect and developer at XLENT

“We reviewed a number of options and Document360 was the only one that offered git-style controls on article revisions. This was one of our top requirements and is unique to Document360 as far as we can tell. Also, Document360’s ability to have document versions associated with software versions is a huge plus for any software project.”-Victoria Risk,Product Manager at ISC

“Document360 has given us the customizability of a static site generator without the development, upkeep, or learning curve!”-Dustin Smith
Technical Writer at Mambu

We promise to keep our customers happy, it is more than continuing to receive their money, it also helps us improve our standards to make them even happier and in turn, they’re happy to spend more money. We secure it as a win-win.

What lies ahead for Document360 in 2020?

We’re excited to share some insight into our goals and what you can expect from Document360 next year.

We are starting our New weekly podcast – Knowledgebase Ninjas stay tuned for great tips on creating, optimizing and marketing your knowledgebase.

Focus on creating Domain Authority, Ramp up growth, Hire and train new talents and as always we work with customers to build a better product than ever.

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One way that leading SaaS have found a competitive advantage which has propelled their growth is through the use of knowledge base software.

Knowledge bases are increasingly popular add-ons to existing SaaS products and services. Not only do they help to improve the way internal teams share information effectively across the business, they empower customers to solve their own problems and become power users.

This is delivering short and long term benefits that drive growth, reduce customer churn and maximize revenue for SaaS companies.

In this post, we’ll explore the many reasons how knowledge base software can build efficiencies related to information sharing throughout your SaaS business and power long term customer growth.

Here’s a few things we’ll cover:

• Which type of knowledge base should your SaaS business use?
• How SaaS internal teams can use a knowledge base to operate more efficiently
• Fixing onboarding and activation with a knowledge base
• Using a knowledge base to reduce customer churn
• Reducing customer support queries with a knowledge base
• Discovering customer problems via search analytics
• How to power your content marketing with a knowledge base
• The hidden SEO benefits of knowledge base documentation
• Best practices of managing a SaaS knowledge base

What is a Knowledge Base?

Let’s start with the basics. What is a knowledge base and can it deliver such great benefits for your SaaS business?

A knowledge base platform is a self-service repository used to store easily retrievable information about a company’s products or services and customers. At its heart, it’s a collection of a business’s internal and external knowledge, structured in a way that can help both employees and customers find the information they need, when they need it.

By collecting, standardizing, organizing and managing information about your SaaS product or service, a knowledge base ensures information is easy to find and can be easily used by the right people, as and when required.

Choosing a SAAS Knowledge Base – Internal, External, or Hybrid?

When it comes to choosing a knowledge base for your SaaS businesses, there are typically 3 options available; an internal knowledge base, designed to be used by your internal team only, an external knowledge base that is customer facing, or a hybrid of the two.

Here are the benefits of each knowledge base category.

Internal Knowledge Base

• Ensures employees can search and find key information quickly, optimizing the customer support experience they deliver
• Helps upskill employees and provides individuals with autonomy over their own development
• Drives employee collaboration and knowledge sharing

External Knowledge Base

• Helps customers find the information they need on their own
• Assists with customer onboarding, maximizing customer retention rates after signup
• Reduces the support resources required to deliver customer satisfaction
• Enables customers to provide feedback directly into the asset
• Usage data helps identify and prioritize subject matters that are popular, offering opportunities to iterate and improve

Hybrid Knowledge Base

• Delivers value to customers and employees
• Can be used as a high value reference tool when delivering customer support
• Helps employees and customers align when discussing a particular topic

The type of knowledge base chosen is often dictated by the objectives a SaaS company is aiming to achieve.

If for example, the goal is to enhance and scale customer support to improve the experience and reduce churn, then an external knowledge base makes sense.

On the other hand, if the aim is to embrace knowledge sharing within your business then an internal knowledge base would be more beneficial.

Here’s a few use cases:

How SAAS Teams Can Use an Internal Knowledge Base to Operate More Efficiently

There are many moving parts to a SaaS business and transparent information sharing amongst internal teams is a critical activity.

Technical teams need to document major changes to the product and be able to track the changes they are making in an effective manner. Product teams need to document new features and functionality. Marketing teams need to work with product teams to create documentation that is used to communicate with customers to explain how features work. And customer support teams need to work with everyone to ensure bugs are flagged and fixed, and customers get their problems solved quickly!

As you can see, good documentation is at the core of every sensible SaaS business, and an internal knowledge base is the perfect tool to bring it all together.

By having a central repository of all the valuable information relating to your SaaS business, immediate benefits are realised:

• Better Collaboration Amongst Teams – Improved information visibility enables in-house product, marketing, technical and support teams to work more collaboratively and ensure everyone is working towards the same common goal – growth!
• Consistent Product Information – SaaS products are constantly evolving and features are regularly updated which can make it challenging for everyone to maintain the same levels of product knowledge. A knowledge base gives everyone in the business a central place to find the very latest product documentation.
• Improved Employee Onboarding – As your SaaS business grows, new hires are inevitable. With a well documented knowledge base, new employees can hit the ground running by finding all the information they need about your product in one easily accessible repository.
• Minimising Risk of Knowledge Loss – In those early days of a SaaS business, you may find just a few members of the team hold the keys to some of the business critical information. Unless this information is well documented, you may find technical knowledge leaves your business overnight with no plan B in sight.

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Using a Knowledge Base to Drive SAAS Customer Growth

Fixing SAAS Customer Onboarding and Activation

Once you’ve got the basis of your product documented internally, that becomes the foundation of your customer support information.

Empowering your customers with adequate information about your product or service is particularly important at the activation phase – a measure of how many users take a specific action to get value out of your product.

The activation phase of a customer’s experience with your software product is one of the most important to perfect, but also the hardest to facilitate.

This is why a good onboarding process is vital in a SaaS product. Most customers start with zero product knowledge and as a result they struggle to fully adopt and often cancel as a result.

75% of new SaaS customers leave a product within the first week. (Hubspot)

With such a high level of customer drop-out it’s clear, customers need more in order to effectively adopt a SaaS product.

This is where a good knowledge base comes in.

Drawing attention to useful product documentation within your knowledge base throughout the customer onboarding experience is your opportunity to explain common use cases for key features and how to get the most out of them.

If your customers can quickly and easily understand what they need to do and see the value of your product, the likelihood is that you’ll be able to keep them coming back for more.

How a Good Knowledge Base Reduces SAAS Customer Churn

As any SaaS founder knows, churn is one of the more unavoidable aspects of running a SaaS business.

There will always be customers that don’t make it past their free trial period, cancel their monthly subscription or simply can’t see the value of the features of the product or service in the long term.

According to Lincoln Murphy at Sixteen Ventures:

…an acceptable churn rate is in the 5 – 7% range ANNUALLY, depending upon whether you measure customers or revenue.

So how can a knowledge base reduce churn?

By empowering customers to find critical information as and when they need it, a knowledge base helps them to make the most of the service and its features. This ensures they’re getting maximum value for money and seeing the full benefits of the platform, maximizing their satisfaction and minimizing their chance of dropping out.

The more you invest in supporting your customer’s understanding of your product or service, the greater the chance they will become a true advocate of it.

This can turn regular users of your product into ‘superusers’ – individuals who’ll not only know your product inside and out, they’ll be the first to want to test ride new features, flag bugs they spot and proactively share your product to their own wider network – completely free!

Reducing SAAS Customer Support Queries With a Knowledge Base

Providing Self-Service Customer Support

If reducing churn is your focus, then your SaaS business needs to be well on top of it’s customer support right from the off.

In principle, well designed software should equate to less customer support issues. That’s the theory but not everyone is tech savvy and many of your customers will need to contact support to help them solve the challenges they have using your product.

If you’ve got a large customer base, this may mean you require large amounts of resources to effectively communicate and resolve challenges. This can be costly and in many instances frustrating when the questions brought to customer support are often repeated again and again.

Only slightly more than 10% of consumers are willing to stay on the line for over five minutes for customer service. (Genesys)

To combat these inefficiencies, a knowledge base can be used to solve the majority of common challenges, enabling customers to help themselves, and reducing the need for human input.

This not only limits the time required to solve the problem, but ensures a 24/7 solution is available to resolve time-sensitive issues.

67% of customers prefer to self-serve over speaking to a company representative (Superoffice)

By enabling customers to help themselves, you can improve customer satisfaction and radically reduce support costs while providing a consistently high standard of customer service.

Read about more customer support benefits of a knowledge base here

Why Responsiveness Is Key for SAAS Customer Support

The modern day expectations of your customers have changed. It’s no longer acceptable to make them wait for a long time to get a problem solved.

SaaS companies that do not meet support expectations leave themselves vulnerable to much higher rates of churn, as customers will not stick around if the support experience is poor.

89% of consumers have switched to doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience. (Nextiva)

In order to deliver the high quality SaaS customer experience necessary, it’s essential that the support team have access to the information they need so they can provide a valuable answer quickly.

With an easily searchable comprehensive knowledge base, customer support operatives can find and provide key information as and when required.

With a knowledge base like Document360, features like advanced search and category management help SaaS businesses organise information in logical ways so they can be grouped into topics and then found very quickly by customers.

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For example, for a highly technical product like Stackify whose main customers are developers, they use category management to breakout the different ways the product can be integrated into other platforms.

This helps to direct customers to the right information quickly and efficiently without having to rely on customer support staff to do the same job.

Read our ultimate guide to SAAS customer support

Discovering SAAS Customer Support Issues With Search Analytics

When it comes to providing a high quality level of support for your customers, it’s important to cover all essential content topics and fundamentals.

To avoid a frustrating customer experience (and potential churn) the information customers are looking for needs to be easy to find and always available, as and when required.

The trouble is, it’s not always obvious what holes you have in your product documentation until you start hearing it directly from your support team in the form of customer problems and complaints.

This is where search analytics can play a strong role in helping your business discover areas of your product that aren’t quite up to scratch or are not easy enough to use.

By plugging in search analytics into your knowledge base, you’ll be able to use search query reports to monitor questions that are commonly asked, and also identify those that cannot be answered by the platform’s current resources.

This data-driven approach gives you the perfect insight into the holes that exist in your product and support documentation so you can fill them over time – improving your customer experience at the same time

Powering Your SAAS Content Marketing With a Knowledge Base

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 89% of B2B marketers use content marketing to grow their businesses.

The investment into blogging programmes, eBooks and whitepapers can be significant for SaaS companies with the goal of driving potential customers to their website and convert them to leads.

A knowledge base can go a long way to helping your SaaS business achieve some of the same objectives.

Growing Your Search Presence

The documentation that lives within your knowledge gets indexed by Google which means that it naturally brings potential customers to your website.

Knowledge base tools like Document360 have SEO features built directly into it to maximise the search potential of articles that are created.

Optimising article page titles, providing article tags and customizable images are all critical to making content easy to organise and find in the digital space. Such usability benefits are key for making the tool valuable for users of the knowledge base.

With these capabilities in-hand, marketers in your SaaS business can optimize the visibility of the knowledge base through SEO best practice, driving higher yields of organic traffic.

Of course your content doesn’t have to be solely limited to the questions about your product. You can provide documentation about questions potential customers may have before they even register their interest.

Undertaking some keyword research, you’ll be able to identify what these key questions are, and provide useful, informative and relevant content to attract new visitors and draw them into your registration funnel.

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The Best Practices Behind Managing a SAAS Knowledge Base

Develop a Culture of Good Knowledge Management

In the world of SaaS, knowledge is power, and so it’s integral that information is effectively organized, captured, stored and managed. This is where knowledge management comes in.

Designed to optimize the value of internal information, knowledge management efforts typically help to generate competitive advantages, drive innovation, enhance performance and improve collaboration.

74% of businesses estimate that effective knowledge management disciplines increase company productivity by up to 40%. (AskSpoke)

Because SaaS products often iterate and evolve at a rapid rate, the information within them ages quickly and becomes less valuable.

As a result, product documentation needs to be regularly monitored and reviewed. It’s integral your knowledge base is accurate, particularly as the information held within may be shared with customers or used directly but support teams.

An outdated knowledge base is about as valuable as having no knowledge base at all. To get the most value out of it, it must be updated regularly to reflect the most current state of play.

Failure to update your knowledge base has the potential to frustrate customers looking for solutions to their problems and can lead to knowledge loss throughout your business if staff leave.

Consider Your Knowledge Base to Be a Live Asset and an ‘Open Resource’

By providing a single platform where knowledge can be effectively captured with easy-to-use templates, stored logically using category management features and edited to deliver optimal value, high quality knowledge management can be achieved.

SaaS companies often use knowledge base software in their knowledge management efforts to:

• Protect, record and store business-critical information, ensuring an unexpected brain drain or employee loss doesn’t impact the company’s ability to deliver its proposition.
• Improve team and employee alignment, driving enhanced collaboration, helping to identify and resolve challenges like unexpected customer churn.
• Enhance the user experience by improving the layout and hierarchy of information, making it easier to find and access. 

Assign an Owner to Keep Your Knowledge Base to a High Standard

As the knowledge base is typically a substantial asset, it requires an owner from within your business to manage and organize.

This stakeholder will take responsibility for optimizing the platform, resolving issues and ensuring everything delivers maximum value.

Some businesses assign owners to different sections of the knowledge base that align with their expertise, others assign ownership based on the function, for example, an individual will be responsible for quality checking and moderating all content uploaded before it is published.

Irrespective of how responsibility is allocated, it is key that someone is responsible for each element of the knowledge base in order to avoid high-risk issues and take full advantage of opportunities as and when they arise.

Optimize and Expand Your Content Based on Usage Data

As your customers engage with content from your knowledge base, analytics will become available that indicates which topics areas are popular and deliver the most value.

Ensuring that you are providing the right level of depth on features and functionality will be clear based on the usage data that you get from your analytics.

55% of consumers say easy access to support and information can make them fall in love with a brand. (RightNow)

If you release a new feature and suddenly notice a spike in search queries, you’ll know immediately that you need to develop adequate content to support your customers to help them use it more effectively.

Improve Information Access to Enhance Customer Satisfaction and Drive Retention

For SaaS businesses, retention is a top priority, and so it’s integral every effort is made to keep customers satisfied at every stage of engagement.

This is where a knowledge base can help, by giving customers direct access to the information they need, as and when they need it, they can quickly solve their own problems and maximize the value they derive from the SaaS solution.

Loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering. (Temkin Group)

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Why SAAS Businesses Need a Knowledge Base

SaaS businesses like yours can take full advantage of the significant benefits on offer by using knowledge base software.

SaaS companies that do adopt a knowledge base and regularly iterate will quickly develop an asset that offers increasing value over time, helping combat churn rates and deliver higher quality customer support experiences. This will help drive customer satisfaction and bring new levels of scalability to support functions, maximizing customer satisfaction and reducing drop out from the offering.

Best-in-class SaaS businesses use a knowledge base platform both internally and externally, enabling customers and employees alike to take full advantage of the benefits it can offer.

This not only ensures customer satisfaction is maximized, but retention is protected and revenues optimized – enabling growth.

If you’re looking for a knowledge base designed specifically to meet the needs of SaaS companies and customers, then Document360 can help.

See the benefits for yourself, try the Document360 demo today.

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