After a year of sheer determination, research, and creativity, we reinvented the product and launched Document360 2.0 in November. One of our focus areas was reducing the number of clicks authors had to go through to access basic functions like single sign-on, setting up review reminders, and publishing articles. Thus, we centered our design principle on just “simplifying” every task on the platform.

With the gradual emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we also looked to infuse our product with AI-powered features that tech writers and knowledge base users could benefit from.  Our generative AI solution—Eddy, was a brainchild of that line of thinking. Eddy now provides an elegant and efficient way to interact with your knowledge base. Eddy provides accurate answers to users’ questions and is equipped with robust security features, ensuring it only combs within the knowledge base for answers. Our customers are deriving value from every feature and enhancement we have introduced this year. Many of our customers have already begun trying out Eddy and seeing the difference it makes in their user patterns.

We also observed that API documentation had become compulsory for brands to unlock the power and potential of their product. This prompted us to integrate their API documentation and knowledge base into a single tool, which reduces duplication of multiple efforts, including branding and styling.

As our number of users at any point crossed 100K, 2023 saw the launch of Document360’s partner program. We have partnered with some globally renowned software resellers to increase our penetration within the market. 

Let’s look at the top highlights in terms of brand-new features, Generative AI capabilities, and improvements we made in 2023.

Meet Eddy, Your AI companion

We introduced Eddy our Generative AI solution. Eddy provides an elegant way to interact with your knowledge base underpinned by trustworthy content.

Eddy can help answer your questions faster, provide more accurate responses based on the reference article, and provide answers in the format you like. All you need to do is “Ask Eddy”. Besides knowledge navigation, our Eddy can assist you in numerous ways that are listed below:

 AI Writer-Outline creation: When an author inputs a prompt for generating a content outline on a specific topic, “Eddy” AI functions similarly to other AI content creation platforms. It produces a detailed outline of the specified topic, with headings and concise abstracts.

AI Article Title Recommender: The Article Title Recommender is an AI-powered tool within Document360, designed to assist in choosing or revising article titles. When you’re naming or renaming your articles, this feature offers three suggested titles based on the article’s content. Each generation of a title suggestion for an article uses one credit. You can find the ‘Suggest title’ option in the article title area.

AI article summarizer: The Article Summarizer is another AI-powered feature available in Document360, ideal for readers who prefer to avoid going through extensive articles. This tool, which uses one credit per article summary, analyses the content of an article and produces a concise summary that appears at the top section of the article for easy reader access.

AI Tag Recommender: Document360 now features an AI-powered Tag Recommender. This tool enables you to automatically generate pertinent tags derived from the content of your articles. Doing so enhances the accuracy of articles’ categorization and boosts their discoverability within the Knowledge Base. This feature is particularly timesaving for Team accounts that require support in determining suitable tags for their article content.

AI SEO description generator: The AI-powered SEO description generator helps you effortlessly generate meta descriptions for your articles and category pages based on the content. It ensures you have the best meta descriptions to improve your SEO and increase organic traffic.

AI-related article recommender: The AI-related article recommender suggests a few related articles relevant to the article’s content. This helps maximize self-service because users can keep reading more and deeper into a particular topic they want to know more about. This enhances customers’ self-learning and improves content discoverability.

While there are only the initial AI features, we are working on many exciting new Generative AI features which will be released in the coming months.

New Feature Edition

Besides empowering our platform with Generative AI capabilities, we also introduced plenty of new features that enrich the authoring and content management experience with Document360. Right from a brand-new editor to enhanced solutions for API documentation, we have thoughtfully explored and analyzed requests before working on them. Below are a few of our salient new features.

API Documentation: The new feature in the API documentation tool offers a full-fledged solution for creating and managing your API references. This new feature ensures that your API documentation is thorough, well-organized, and user-friendly. The crucial “Try it” feature is included, allowing you to execute actions directly within the Knowledge Base site.

Advanced WYSIWYG Editor: We are excited to announce the launch of a brand-new editor, adding to our existing suite of Markdown and WYSIWYG editors. Effortlessly structure and enhance content with our editor’s intuitive “blocks” system—no coding required!

Explore new features like slash commands, accordions, callouts, and inline comments for seamless content editing.

Dashboard: Imagine a dashboard that’s the ultimate destination for everything related to documentation. Your search ends here! The Dashboard in Document360 2.0 acts as your central control hub, seamlessly transforming your ideas into published masterpieces. It’s a comprehensive platform where you can easily monitor your project information, and track your contributions, making your digital documentation experience effortlessly efficient.

Github integration: The new GitHub integration allows users to connect their GitHub account and repositories to sync content with Document360 articles. Any updates made in the GitHub repository will be automatically synced with the corresponding Document360 articles.

Freshservice integration: The integration of Freshservice and Document360 streamlines IT service management and knowledge base handling by offering centralized access to comprehensive documentation. This synergy allows both support teams and customers to effortlessly access and utilize the latest how-to guides, FAQs, and product information within Document360, directly from the Freshservice interface. It enhances customer support efficiency by enabling quicker ticket resolutions by easily referencing relevant knowledge articles.

Sandbox: You can now set up a Sandbox project, offering a platform to explore and experiment with various features, settings, and integrations, all without impacting your active projects. This Sandbox project includes a 14-day trial period and is available for team accounts linked to a paid project.

Zendesk federated search: The Zendesk federated search allows users of the Zendesk integration to perform a search that will include results from both Zendesk’s native knowledge base and Document360 coherently. This feature provides seamless user experiences, improves support experience, and enhances productivity.

Group-based tag: Allows team accounts to group similar tags into “Groups” for enhanced organization within the Tag library. By enabling the grouping of similar tags, teams can streamline their documentation process, making it easier to categorize, find, and manage articles or documents. This improved tagging system aids in maintaining a well-organized and user-friendly knowledge base.

Schedule a demo with one of our experts to take a deeper dive into Document360

Book A Demo

Elevating User Experience

While we always focus on making authoring and creating content simpler, more seamless, and more efficient, we have also been improving on ways documentation can be made more secure, analyzed, and managed by content management teams. Some new features that will enhance your user experience are listed below.

Analytics 2.0: With the new version of analytics, revolutionize how you track, understand, and optimize your reader’s interaction with your documentation. The Performance analytics data can now be exported as a CSV file using the new “export to CSV” feature. The data that can be exported includes–Leading Contributors, Top Articles, Primary Categories, and Countries.

Import and export project: The Import and Export features in Document360 have been significantly improved, particularly with optimizing project file exports. All newly exported project files are designed for effortless importing into Document360. For importing older project ZIP files exported before August 12, 2023, the Document360 support team is ready to assist.

We also have an additional update concerning the Drive capacity utilization. When it exceeds 1 GB, the option to “Include media files” in your export becomes unavailable. If you need to export files larger than 1 GB, please contact Document360 support for further assistance.

Import articles: Experience the pinnacle of convenience with our latest update – a Unified Import Window for Word Articles! Gone are the days of navigating through multiple clicks and screens. Our innovative feature streamlines your workflow by reducing the number of steps required to import your documents.

Bulk operations: Unveiling our enhancement: the integration of Bulk Operations within the ‘All Articles’ section! This move is designed to elevate your content management experience, making bulk actions more accessible and user-friendly.

Knowledge Base Site: We have introduced a Cache mechanism for every public project’s Knowledge Base site. This enhancement facilitates any updates made in the knowledge base portal to take up to 15 minutes to become visible on the public project’s knowledge base site.

Integrations—Zendesk: The main improvements in the Zendesk integration include a new look and feel with enhanced options, such as project workspace and language selection, and the ability to create root-level categories and subcategories directly from Zendesk. Additionally, the integration now allows for linking articles in response chats and displays the last updated date information in articles.

While we have been busy developing and building new features and improvements, the brand Document360 has been capturing the attention of top SaaS reviewers, directories, and awards. The brand has also been making its presence known at top industry events across the globe.

Awards and Recognitions

Reviews-wise, Document360 created a strong hold on the top position in the knowledge space category of top SaaS directories like G2, Capterra, and Source Forge. The product won 34 awards throughout the year.

Insights from Webinar Series

To promote knowledge sharing by technical writing experts, Document360 conducted 9 webinars this year. We have featured well-known personalities from around the globe, including Sofia Emelianovav from Google, who spoke about Documenting large-scale and complex products, and Khrystyna Humenna from Crowd In, among others. We have also conducted insightful webinars through the Knowledge Base Ninjas podcast. Check below to catch them.

Knowledge Base Ninjas Podcast

We regularly interview some of the leading scientific writing and documentation experts to bring you top-notch learnings and ways to boost your Product and Technical Documentation skills. A few of our popular podcasts include “Crafting Quality Product Documentation” with Sofia Emalianova, Senior Technical Writer at Google, and “Navigating Team Dynamics in Technical Writing with Yael Basford, Senior Technical Writer at Akamai.

Insights from Global Meetups

In a bid to keep up with the pulse of the technical documentation community, Document360 was a platinum sponsor of MegaComm 2023 in Jerusalem, Israel.  Later on in the year, Document360 participated in the TC World Conference in Stuttgart. TC World, attended by 4,000-5,000 people, is one of the world’s largest gatherings of technical writers. We got to showcase the future of AI advancements in technical writing and our generative AI assistant, Eddy!

Looking ahead to 2024

Over the next year, we will focus on how generative AI can further empower content creation. We plan to help authors simplify and speed up creating content and publishing by providing gen AI features to paraphrase sentences, suggest alternate words, change the tone of an article, suggest a content for our article outline, and even adjust the length of the content.

With growing cyber security and malware threats that threaten loss of reputation, data, and even finances, we will be rolling out several measures to protect your knowledge base site. This will enable our customers to expand their site usage to store more critical and sensitive information.

Along the same lines as our portal, we also plan to revamp the knowledge site to give it a modern look, making it a more fun, interactive, revamped user interface.

Wrapping up

Overall, 2023 turned out to be extremely eventful and productive for us at Document360. Right from introducing breakthrough generative AI features and rebuilding and launching Document360 2.0 to watching the customer base grow and diversify, we can see ourselves being at the center of the documentation revolution!

Through this transformative process, we stick to our core values of being customer-obsessed and working to make documentation simpler and more effective for everyone.

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

GET STARTED

The post 2023 in Review: A Year of Transformation to AI appeared first on Document360.

Top 12 Conferences Every Technical Writer Should Attend

While there are plenty of technical writing community meetups and events across the globe, we recommend short-listing the ones you would like to attend based on the value you plan to derive from them. While some showcase new technology in the field, others focus purely on upskilling and writing methodology. So, let us look at the top-rated conferences right away!

1. Convex: April 8-10, 2024: Minneapolis

Convex promises to be an immersive experience for content developers. Their 3-day conference plans to offer technical writers a wealth of ideas and information to support their efforts in defining and executing a comprehensive content strategy.

Writers attending the conference will be able to learn more about content management, ways to improve the visibility of their content, the latest technology and tools that assist in content creation and management, and, most importantly, network with top industry representatives.

The conference promises more than 15 sessions daily, making it an extremely valuable conference for technical writers and Documentation experts.

• Registration for the event is priced at $1,395.

2. Write the Docs: April 14-16, 2024: Portland

Write the Docs is one of the USA’s largest communities of people involved in software documentation. Their annual conferences are attended by programmers, tech writers, customer support, designers, project managers, product managers, developer advocates, and literally anyone else who cares about product or service documentation. Around 400 people usually attend this conference.

They have innovative sessions like “Writing Day,” where you can get other attendees to work on a project you have in mind, or you get to show off a tool you have discovered. If you don’t have either, you can join someone else’s project or discover new tools as a writer, which helps you improve your core writing skills.

There are also a lot of opportunities to brainstorm in their “lightning talks” and “unconference” sessions, where you can speak about any topic you want by scheduling it. This helps you expand your network and learn about topics you love or are passionate about.

• Tickets are priced from $100 for students and $600 for corporate employees.

3. STC summit—May 13 & 16, 2024, Atlanta USA

The Technical Communication conference and expo include education sessions, pre-conference workshops, keynotes, vendor showcases, networking opportunities, and entertainment and social events. Attendees will get the opportunity to meet and listen to experts who are shaping technical communicators’ work. Speakers include celebrated authors, industry pioneers, and leaders from well-known companies.

It is a great conference for anyone involved in technical communication, from technical writers to content strategists and information architects to user advocates. The sessions are in-depth on topics like how writers can use open API for documentation, how to use data to inform your decisions, etc.

While most technical communications conferences may have a narrow focus, the STC summit is broad, with its depth reflecting the diversity of technical communication.

• The registration fee for this conference is $1,300.

4. LavaCon—October 27-30, Oregon, Portland, USA

LavaCon specializes in content strategy by inviting content professionals to share their best practices and lessons learned. The benefit of attending LavaCon is that it is highly focused on content strategy, Content metrics, Authoring tools and more. So, most sessions are extremely in-depth, and strategists gain a lot of knowledge.

For example, last year’s LavaCon focussed on “Creating Enterprise Content Strategies” and had 70 sessions on planning, managing, and implementing content initiatives. To give you an idea of the sessions you may see this year, last year’s sessions included “Convergence of MarComm and TechComm”, Headless Content Management, and more.

• Tickets to this conference are priced at $2,450, but early bird registrations allow you to take a colleague or your boss along for free.

5. Tcworld—November 5 to 7, Stuttgart, Germany

The Tcworld conference is one of the world’s largest gatherings of technical writers, with anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 writers from across Europe, Eurasia, and the USA attending it. With writers and speakers flying in from all over the world, it allows every attendee to get updated with the latest updates, events, and technology being implemented in their industry in any country.

The three-day conference usually features more than 200 specialist lectures, meetups, workshops, and presentations by exhibitors and stalls. There are also lively and fun evening events and discussion forums. Parts of this event can be attended online too. As an exhibitor or product owner looking to create brand awareness, this is one of the largest audiences you can access in a single location.

• Tickets to this event are priced at €580 for online and €940 upwards.

6. MEGAComm 2024—February 7-8, 2024

This conference, mainly meant for technical Communicators, translators, and Content managers, is attended by around 200 of them from in and around Israel. The sessions are largely focused on documentation. You can expect to attend sessions about visual testing of documentation and polishing your API Documentation and CommonMark Tips &Tricks. 2024 will be the 18th year this popular conference is conducted.

Considering Tel Aviv is one of the startup capitals in the world, it’s a great event to understand the direction in which the documentation industry in Israel is moving, industry requirements, challenges, and, of course, networking!

• The MEGAComm event can be attended online, too. Tickets are priced between $280 and $415.

7. CPSTC—October 18-19, 2024, Menomonie, Wisconsin

Organized by the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, the conference is meant for all scientific and technical writers who specialize in writing and publishing scientific and research papers and will be held in Menomonie, Wisconsin, this year. The conference sees a lot of exciting research papers being presented—which include poster presentations, workshops, panel presentations, and individual presentations.

This conference is meant more for students looking at tools and ways to plan their paper and poster presentations. It will also include many sessions on business, science, and technology writing for specialized magazines and journals in those fields.

• The ticket prices for this conference have not been released yet.

8. Tekom Europe

Tekom Europe mainly attracts technical writers and technical communicators who focus on different types of industries and roles, including software documentation, content for user manuals and brochures, etc. So, for those looking to explore newer avenues in technical writing, trying to pinpoint trends, wanting more information on specific skills, networking, or finding solutions together, Tekom’s conferences are a great way to start.

In 2024, Tekom will organize five European conferences focusing on technical communication and writing. The most popular among them is NORDIC TECHKOMM which is held between March 6-7 in Stockholm and then again in September in Copenhagen. NORDIC TECHKOMM gets international experts to convene to share best practices and present current ideas on User Experience. The conferences are attended by a broad spectrum of professional backgrounds ranging from technical writers and information designers to technical communication managers to content architects and many more.

They are also hosting TEKOM FRUHJAHRSTAGUNG, their spring conference, between April 11-12 in Freiburg and COMTECNICA in May 2024, which will be conducted in Italian.

The fifth conference in ETC-Evolution of TC in June 2024 in Sofia. ETC is an annual meeting point for all technical writers, focusing on software documentation. ETC is the only conference for technical communication in southeastern Europe. It is also attended by technical writers, information developers and technical translators with a software background.

• Ticket prices are yet to be announced.

9. Soap! conference—June 5-7, Krakow, Poland

Soap conference again targets content writers but plans to focus on numbers. This conference may be ideal for content managers. The sessions promise to cover a lot about the role of numbers in technical communications, such as demographics, stats, data analytics, salaries, content and team sizes, budgets, metrics, etc. They plan to prove that numbers matter as much as words in technical writing.

Some sessions will also cover data storytelling and how it could be used in customer documentation, making our content more data-driven, information architecture, etc. However, there will also be sessions on technical documentation, learning materials, use of video and graphics, UI and UX, etc.

• The sale of tickets has not begun yet.

10. International Conference on Knowledge Discovery (ICKD)- March 8-10, 2024, Macao

The Faculty of Business—City University of Macau sponsors the International Conference on Knowledge Discovery. It aims to provide a forum for researchers, practitioners, and professionals from industry and academia to share their latest research findings and results.

They invite research papers on knowledge engineering theory and practice, soliciting proposals on new ideas and paradigms on knowledge management and engineering technologies. This conference is great for technical writers, communicators, documentation specialists, and documentation tool managers based in Asia.

Topics covered include text analysis and understanding, machine learning, privacy-preserving data mining, Interactive and Online Mining, and Knowledge Management.

• Ticket prices start from $260.

11. API the docs—April 3, Virtual

API the docs conference will completely focus on API documentation, specifically on “How Generative AI has introduced fresh perspectives and dimensions to API documentation? How do you improve AI readiness within the organization? The conference will cover key trends shaping API documentation through practical examples and how organizations can adapt to stay at the forefront of innovation.

Some topics that will be discussed include How to adapt and improve API management strategy and data safety, compliance &API design, tools in practices, and new dimensions in API docs with generative AI.

The conference offers AI developers and API documentation experts many opportunities to participate in discussions, network, and educate themselves. This is the only conference that purely focuses on AI.

• Ticket prices are yet to be announced.

12. Tcworld China—May 23-24, Shanghai, China

Tcworld China, one of the country’s most popular events on technical communications, will be conducting its 10th conference this year. The event, with a tagline of “Smarter technology, better communication!” aims to unite national and international leaders, professionals, and partners in technical communication. TcWorld China will feature experts from within the country and abroad to share their experiences and best practices with solutions for China-specific challenges and the latest developments in the country’s technical communication industry.

This is a great conference for knowledge managers, technical writers, and documentation specialists working in China or in Chinese companies to attend.

• Ticket prices for this event are yet to be determined.

Wrapping Up

Thus, the landscape of technical writing conferences in 2024 offers a diverse range of opportunities for seasoned professionals and newcomers alike. Whether interested in content strategy or honing your AI focus, you can choose from plenty of conferences. So, save the dates, study the schedule carefully, and register early for the best ticket prices and sessions.

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

Book A Demo

The post Must-Attend Technical Writing Conferences of 2024 appeared first on Document360.

What is process improvement?

Process improvement methods encompass a range of approaches that aim to identify, analyze, and implement changes to boost operational efficiency, minimize loss, and improve overall quality and performance. Process improvement tools are software that enables organizations to systematically evaluate their processes and enact effective solutions by providing them with data and insights.

Benefits of Process Improvement

There are multiple benefits to companies investing in process improvement tools. Tools can help streamline operations, minimize loss, and enhance efficiency, fostering organizational growth. They enable data-driven decision-making, optimizing performance, and delivering sustainable benefits all of which improve revenue and profits. Here are some reasons why organizations should invest in process improvement tools:

Identifying inefficiencies

Tools systematically help companies identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and unplanned outages within organizational procedures. Techniques such as Lean Six Sigma and BPMN enable the analysis of workflow identification and elimination of inefficiencies. Providing a structured framework for continuous improvement also helps organizations streamline operations, enhance productivity, and ensure efficient allocation of resources.

Reducing Errors and Defects

Process improvement tools minimize errors and defects by systematically identifying potential pitfalls within operational workflows. Organizations can analyze processes in detail, identify points of failure, and start implementing targeted improvements. Organizations can proactively detect and rectify errors by standardizing processes and incorporating quality control measures, preventing them from propagating through the workflow to the end product.

Optimizing workflows

There are workflow automation process improvement tools that can streamline, optimize, and automate many business processes, which leads to improved efficiency, accuracy, and a marked reduction in defects. They can particularly be used in situations to help you speed up processes and improve the quality of products. It also brings about transparency in departments’ interactions with each other.

Enhancing Visibility

By implementing strategic initiatives and adopting more technology to do the same, you make all transactions, processes followed, and goals achieved transparently. This fosters transparency, efficiency, and innovation. It also makes specific wastages or issues more visible, allowing management to tackle them effectively. All of the above are critical for continuous improvement and achievement of operational excellence.

Enhancing Decision Making

Provide teams with access to accurate data and in-depth analytics, allowing the management to make data-driven decisions. Decisions can be about using lesser or different transport systems, procuring less raw material, or maintaining a smaller inventory—all of which could lead to cost savings and higher profitability. Since it’s usually an informed decision, it leads to more effective problem-solving and strategic planning.

Cost Saving

Process improvement tools make your operations lean, processes more efficient, and improve quality. Once you achieve quality and efficiency, you can easily start reducing wastage in terms of manpower, time, transport, raw material wastage, space and other resources. Some processes point out your systems functioning longer than necessary, eliminating an entire step in your production line, etc., which leads to cost savings.

Empowering Employees

When employees feel involved in initiatives to improve processes, it fosters a culture of continual learning, innovation, and effective problem-solving. Employees who participate actively tend to be more motivated, proactive, and dedicated to realizing organizational objectives. This empowers them to share their ideas and expertise, contributing to positive change. Employees are more confident to do the above with readily available data.

Also Read: Organizational Learning and Collaboration with Knowledge Management

Customer Satisfaction

Process improvement leads to the reduction of errors, variations, defects, and wastage. Organizations must implement quality management techniques and tools to improve the consistency, reliability, and accuracy of their products and services. An increase in quality leads to higher customer satisfaction and a boost in brand loyalty.

Schedule a Demo with Our Experts to Explore Process Improvement with Document360

Book A Demo

Process Improvement Methodologies & Techniques

There are numerous types of process improvement methodologies adopted by organizations depending on the area of business operations they are trying to improve. Each method has multiple tools in the market to implement more seamlessly. Below, we have listed seven types of the most adopted methodologies.

Six Sigma Methodology

Six Sigma methodology aims to minimize variations within a product. Used heavily by manufacturing industries to minimize defects and inconsistencies, it helps improve customer satisfaction. Six Sigma is implemented through two main processes—DMAIC on existing processes and DMADV on new processes.

DMAIC is more analytical, using a fishbone diagram to visualize possible causes of defects. It stands for

• Define: Mention the problem or improvement opportunity and establish the project’s goals.
• Measure: This phase involves data gathering to assess the current process. This includes identifying critical process inputs and outputs and developing measurement plans.
• Analyze: The collected data is then analyzed to identify the root cause of the process issues or variations.
• Improve: This phase aims to generate and implement solutions to address the main cause of the problem and create and evaluate potential ideas to solve it.
• Control: The control phase ensures the sustainability of the new measures being implemented and methods to continue monitoring the process and implementing continuous improvements.
• DMADV follows the first three steps of DMAIC and then introduces the design or redesign of a problematic or new product to get the improvements required.

Standard Work

In Lean Manufacturing, standardized work establishes precise procedures to make products in the safest, easiest, and most effective way based on current technologies. The technique usually requires three elements:

• Takt Time: Rate at which parts or products must be produced to meet customer demand. This includes the number of production cycles required in a day or duration to meet the target.
• Work Sequence: The steps operators and supervisors need to perform within the Takt time in the order in which the steps need to be completed. This again ensures minimal variations and defects in the end product if every step is followed perfectly.

Standard Inventory or In-process stock: The minimum quantity of raw materials required to operate a particular order, ensuring there is no wastage or delays in the production of unavailable raw materials.

Total Quality Management

(TQM) is a customer-centric approach focusing on ongoing improvement. It’s usually used in supply chain management and customer satisfaction projects. It relies on data-driven decision-making and performance metrics, using success metrics to guide process improvements. Some of its popular features include customer focus, involvement of the entire team in the improvements, and commitment to continuous business enhancement through small, adaptive changes. TQM is characterized by its process-oriented focus, seeking to minimize inefficiencies and optimize overall performance.

Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) Cycle

The PDCA cycle is a dynamic problem-solving approach for improving processes and bringing about change. It incorporates a scientific method for quality control and process improvement. The PDCA cycle involves four key steps

• Plan: Identify the problem that needs to be addressed and create a plan to solve the same
• Do: Implement and test the devised plan on a small scale
• Check: Evaluate the outcomes and performance of the test run in the “do” stage
• Act: Based on the results of the trial run, decide whether to implement the change on a large scale

Business Process Management (BPM)

Business Process Management, or BPM, is analyzing and improving business processes. Like any institution, businesses grow and shift over time. Processes that once suited a smaller team may hinder efficiency as the team grows. BPM typically identifies bottlenecks, areas for automation, and strategies to enhance overall effectiveness. The technique comprises five key steps:

• Analyze: Examine existing processes and create a comprehensive map called process mapping.
• Model: Design the process, addressing inefficiencies identified during the analysis.
• Implement: Put the model into action, establishing key success metrics to assess the effectiveness of the changes.
• Monitor: Evaluate the project’s success by tracking improvements in the success metrics from the implementation stage.
• Optimize: Continuously refine and optimize the process, identifying and addressing inefficiencies as the business environment evolves.

Continuous Improvement (Kaizen)

The Japanese philosophy of kaizen supports the continuous improvement model, with the conviction that life should be continuously improved for greater satisfaction and fulfillment. The principle seamlessly extends to the realm of business, where ongoing improvement is synonymous with increased success. Continuous improvement aims to optimize value-generating activities and eliminate any unnecessary loss. Kaizen usually targets three types of loss:

•  Muda (loss): Practices that consume resources without adding value
• Mura (unevenness): Overproduction leads to excess products and financial losses.
• Muri (overburden): Excessive strain on resources, such as overworked employees or worn-out machinery.

5 Whys analysis

The 5 Whys analysis is a straightforward process improvement method aimed at identifying the root cause of a particular problem. In this technique, a group of stakeholders involved in failure repeatedly ask, “Why did this go wrong?” about five times until the underlying issue is revealed. The 5 Whys focuses on process errors rather than human error. For example, if a company sees an increase in customer complaints about damage to a product, the analysis may reveal that the problem stems from a lack of stress testing the packaging process and recommending adding a new step in the product launch template.

Also Read: Guide to Improve Healthcare Process

Top 3 process improvement tools

If you want to enhance your organization’s operational efficiency, create process improvement tools that empower your team. We list our top three process improvement tools and delve into how they can elevate your processes and drive organizational excellence.

Document360 – Process documentation tool

Document360 is an online documentation software that helps you create and share step-by-step guides for your employees and customers. You can create process documentation, employee handbooks, standard operating procedures, FAQs, and more. The platform allows you to create interactive documents that contain images, videos, or other forms of media to make your document more robust. Additionally, its advanced text editor simplifies content creation.

Teams can collaborate on documents in real-time by commenting and tagging a team member for review. The platform also allows you to create templates for standardizing the documents. It offers granular access control and permissions to streamline and improve processes. With Document360, you can provide each employee with a personalized dashboard with workflow assignments, review reminders, feedback, and more.

Also Read: Best Process Documentation Software

Reduce errors, and boost productivity with cutting-edge process documentation tool. Give Document360 a try!

GET STARTED

Trello – Project management tool

Trello is a simple, visual project management tool that utilizes boards, lists, and even cards to help teams organize and prioritize their work. Though it looks lightweight at first glance, it’s popular for its flexibility and ease of use. The tool is known to allow powerful process improvements in various projects.

Pipefy – Business Process Automation

Pipefy’s low-code process automation makes it simple for teams to build, optimize, and automate any type of workflow. It does not require the users to have any coding experience. It offers a comprehensive set of features that help refine workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, and provide insightful analytics and real-time visibility into processes. It enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and fosters collaboration among team members.

Conclusion

Integrating process improvement tools is essential for organizations seeking heightened efficiency and effectiveness. From identifying inefficiencies to empowering employees, these tools play a crucial role in continuous improvement. Adopting them can have a transformative impact on streamlining processes and achieving organizational excellence. Embracing tools is no longer a choice but a strategic requirement for evolving businesses.

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

GET STARTED

The post Process Improvement Tools: Enhancing Efficiency and Effectiveness appeared first on Document360.

1. Document360

Document360 is an AI-powered knowledge base platform enabling the creation of a robust self-service knowledge base catering to both external customers and internal users. The new AI Concierge, Eddy serves as a sophisticated AI-driven search expert equipped with natural language processing (NLP) capabilities enabling users to find information quickly and accurately.

Leveraging its user-friendly configuration options, you can effortlessly produce various resources like user guides, internal wikis, frequently asked questions (FAQs), standard operating procedures, and user manuals.
Furthermore, it offers private hosting and API documentation features as optional. Document360 seamlessly integrates with a range of platforms, including Intercom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Freshdesk, Zendesk, Zapier, and many others.

Key Features: Rich Text Editor, Version Control, Custom Domain and Branding Content Organization, Multi-language Support, Analytics and Reporting, Granular accessibility.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Save up to 50% on all annual plans
• Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAY2023
• Offer validity: November 6 – December 8, 2023

Get the Deal

2. Chanty

Chanty is an all-in-one team collaboration platform for remote and onsite business teams of all sizes. Chanty offers unlimited searchable messaging, audio, and video calls with screen sharing, task management with the Kanban board, and voice messaging to communicate on the go.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% Off on the monthly and 40% off on the annual plan
• Offer validity: November 6 – December 3, 2023

Get the Deal

3. Pixpa

Pixpa is an all-in-one, no-code website builder for creatives and small businesses to create beautiful, professional websites with an in-built online store, a dynamic blog, client galleries, e-commerce galleries, a photo gallery app, and marketing tools. Pixpa’s versatile platform has everything you need to showcase your work, share ideas, and sell your work online without any coding knowledge.

Key Features: Portfolio Website Builder, Customizable Templates, E-commerce Integration, Client Galleries, Blogging Platform, SEO Tools, and 24/7 Support.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% discount on annual plans and 60% discount on biannual plans
• Coupon code:  BLFPIXPA50
• Date Validity: November 24 – December 31, 2023

Get the Deal

4. SocialBee

SocialBee is an all-in-one AI-powered social media management tool, designed to let you create, schedule, and post content across all major social platforms from one centralized location.

Eliminate the hassle of manual posting and save time with SocialBee’s standout features. Leverage AI to generate captivating captions and images, or let Copilot, your AI social media manager, create a personalized social media strategy based on your input.

Organize content into categories, schedule posts with ease, and set your evergreen content to repost regularly. Leverage hashtag collections and discover new hashtag ideas, collaborate with your team, track performance with analytics, and engage in real-time with your social inbox.

Plus, take advantage of powerful integrations like Canva, Unsplash, GIPHY, Bitly, Zapier, and more to streamline your workflow.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Save a whopping 70% on your SocialBee tool plan for 3 months
• Coupon Code:  SOCIALBEEBF23
• Offer validity: November 24 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

5. Churn360

Churn360 is the key to reducing customer churn and boosting Customer Lifetime Value for SMBs and Enterprise SaaS businesses. With unified data, predictive analytics, and automated plays, your customer success operations will thrive. Elevate your customer retention game with Churn360 now.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal:  Get up to 40% off on annual plans
• Offer validity: November 06 – December 12, 2023

Get the Deal

6. Callpage

CallPage is a lead capture tool that enables site visitors to request an instant callback or schedule a meeting in just a few seconds. CallPage widget helps increase the number of leads generated from the website by an average of 35%–120%. The CallPage widget helps you gain 30-125% more leads. Moreover, CallPage is mobile-friendly, responsive, and looks great on all screens.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Get up to 40% discount
• Offer Validity: November 21 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

7. BoldDesk

BoldDesk revolutionizes help desk ticketing system with its intuitive interface and efficient features. Streamlining ticket management ensures swift resolution times and delighted customers. With robust automation and insightful analytics, it empowers teams to deliver exceptional service, making it the go-to help desk software for modern businesses.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off on all yearly plans
• Coupon Code: BLACKFRIDAY50
• Offer validity: November 01 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

8. Nifty

Nifty is the all-in-one project management solution that aligns project collaborators for all phases of a project’s lifecycle. You can look forward to Nifty bringing the best out of you and your team as you utilize beloved functionality such as:

• Project Milestones that automate reporting as tasks are completed
• Project Discussions and Direct Messaging to align all stakeholders within and outside of projects
• Collaborative Docs (including a 2-way Google Doc integration) to keep meeting notes, requirements, and specifications aligned
• Scaled-up reporting of timelines, Tasks, and other KPIs across your Workspace
• Simple team management with All Tasks and My Work

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% off on all plans
• Coupon Code: BF2023
• Offer validity: November 24 – November 28, 2023

Get the Deal

9. Coupler 

Coupler.io is a no-code platform that simplifies complex data transformation into simple reports. You can effortlessly gather, organize, and present your business data by leveraging its advanced analytics and reporting features. Boasting over 200 integrations with diverse apps, ranging from advertising platforms to databases, Coupler.io provides a comprehensive solution. Additionally, it offers a gallery of dashboard templates and analytics consultancy services.
For those seeking automated updates in their reports, Coupler.io is the ideal solution. Not only does it automate report updates, but it also helps streamline your analytics processes, extracting valuable insights from your data and presenting them in a visually appealing way.

Key features: A one-stop shop for business data analysis, a wide array of seamless data integrations, a data transformation module, ready-to-use dashboard and reporting templates, and personalized reporting solutions.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% OFF all pricing plans for new users
• Coupon Code: BFCM23
• Offer validity: November 01 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

10. Internxt

Internxt is revolutionizing the cloud storage industry with its robust commitment to user privacy and data security. Using end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge technology, Internxt ensures that your data is not only stored securely but also remains completely private. You have sole control of the decryption keys, making unauthorized access practically impossible. Additionally, Internxt complies with strict data security regulations like GDPR, guaranteeing responsible handling of your information according to global standards. Its user-friendly interface is compatible with various operating systems, providing seamless access and fast file management across multiple devices. Internxt isn’t just cloud storage; it’s a comprehensive data security and privacy solution for the modern world.

Internxt is a game-changer in cloud storage, offering unmatched data security and privacy with cross-platform accessibility, ensuring your information remains safe and confidential.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 91% Discount on all annual subscription plans 
• Offer Validity: November 13 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

11. Woorise

Woorise is a powerful lead generation and marketing platform that allows you to create a wide range of interactive campaigns such as landing pages, forms, surveys, quizzes, viral giveaways & contests, accept payments, and more to help you grow your business from a single platform.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% Off on all plans
• Coupon code: BLACKFRIDAY
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

12. Weblium

Weblium is a website builder to turn your ideas and conceptions into a ready-to-use functional site. With the assistance of our builder, you can create different types of websites and edit them at any time, adding more content. While integrations with different payment systems and built-in CRM will help you bring your business online, a flexible editor will be an advantage for designers and marketers. Round-a-clock support provides stable work for your website.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% off on annual plans
• Offer Validity: November 21 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

13. NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat offers a whole stack of features for social media managers and teams. In your Social Inbox, you can track and reply to messages, reviews, and comments (including the ones on your Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ads). By filtering out and automatically handling generic, repetitive comments and messages, you can reduce your team’s workload and improve response times. You can also schedule posts across multiple profiles and platforms and analyze the results of your social media campaigns. A multitude of collaboration-dedicated features will help you delegate tasks and facilitate the approval process. Thanks to automated performance reports, you can update your boss, clients, and team members on your progress.

NapoleonCat supports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google My Business, and YouTube.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% off on the annual subscriptions
• Offer Validity:  November 24 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

14.  Consolto

Consolto redefines the conferencing experience for customer meetings, merging the power of live chat, appointment scheduling, and video chat into one unified platform. Tailored exclusively for enriching customer interactions, imagine the best of Zoom, Calendly, and Intercom seamlessly integrated into one transformative tool.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off yearly subscriptions for the 1st year
• Offer Validity: November 15 to November 28, 2023

Get the Deal

15. Mailmodo

Mailmodo is complete email marketing software that helps marketers create app-like experiences in email without coding.

Mailmodo helps businesses build and scale their email automation engine with an intuitive visual builder that has drag-and-drop workflows to automate time-based drip series. They make checking responsiveness for different devices easy and have an in-built open rate suggestion feature to fix errors in an email before sending it.

Best of all, with Mailmodo’s AMP technology, you can add calendars, forms, surveys, live ratings, reviews, polls, and widgets to gamify emails like Spin the Wheel, quizzes, etc. Inside the email to reduce redirections and boost engagement.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 20% off on annual plans to new customers.
• Offer Validity: November 25 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

16. Apploye

Apploye has a perfect combination of time tracking, and employee monitoring. By using Apploye you can easily manage your remote team, in-house teams. It helps you to minimize time wasting in your company and stay productive for your employees.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 15% lifetime discount on all plans, whether you opt for monthly or annual subscriptions
• Coupon Code: apploye-15
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

17. Surfer

Surfer builds SEO tools that help marketers and business owners plan, create, and optimize long-form search engine content to drive organic traffic to their websites.
Unlike other SEO tools that rely on users having up-to-date SEO knowledge, our tools are the experts. So whether you’re a novice or an SEO guru, Surfer leverages AI to help you conduct SEO tasks with the click of a few buttons.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: Monthly plans = 10% off for 6 months and Annual plans = 30% off for the first year
• Date Validity:  November 24 – December 08, 2023

Get the Deal

18. Cheqmark

Cheqmark, the ultimate free checklist maker tool, has been designed to elevate daily routines and revolutionize your approach to productivity.

Unlock a world of possibilities with Cheqmark beautifully pre-designed templates, crafted to cater to any need. Craft your own designs, save them for your personal collection, download them in a PDF format, and even bring them to life by printing them out. Cheqmark has a range of useful templates such as habit trackers, daily checklists, monthly calendars, goal trackers, and much more.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% off on a yearly plan
• Coupon code: BF2023CQM
• Offer Validity: November 01 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

19. Jotform

Jotform is an online form builder with automation capabilities. Get started with one of their many ready-made templates and easily share your forms using a link or QR code. Use conditional logic to provide a fresh experience for your users and show them only the relevant questions. Use the data you collected to generate spreadsheets and reports to uncover new insights.
Embed your forms directly onto your website for all visitors to see. Take advantage of Jotform’s app integrations to connect your forms with your favorite apps and incorporate them into your workflow. Integrations such as Zapier, Salesforce, and Square can come in handy when collecting submissions. You can also collect payments for your online store using the Jotform App. Just connect your payment gateway and securely collect online payments with no additional transaction fees.

Create secure online documents and allow your users to electronically sign them using Jotform Sign. Automate your workflow by adding signers to an approval flow and uploading the signed documents to your storage account using your integrations.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off on all annual plans
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 26, 2023

Get the Deal

20. JoomUnited

JoomUnited provides a large range of WordPress plugins, including the most popular and advanced WordPress media manager “WP Media Folder,” and the file manager “WP File Download”.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 40% Off on all our memberships, including bundles and renewals!
• Coupon Code: BFJU40
• Date Validity:  November 21 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

21. Linguise

Linguise is an automatic AI translation service that offers instant translations in over 85 languages. It integrates seamlessly with popular CMS platforms on the market, including both self-hosted PHP systems like WordPress and various cloud-hosted platforms. Translating a website has never been this easy!

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% Off all membership
• Coupon Code:  BLACKLINGUISE
• Offer validity: November 21 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

22. Tagmate

Tagmate is a GTM (Google Tag Manager) automation tool built to set up 100% accurate analytics tags and marketing pixels as well as debug them. With Tagmate, you can:

– Set up GA4 tags in seconds with 40+ templates
– Create GA4 custom events with the Chrome Extension
– Configure Meta Ads and Google Ads conversion pixels using client-side or server-side tagging
– Debug your GA4 implementation for websites and mobile apps

Black Friday Deal: 

• Deal: 66% Off with 100 hours of FREE GA4 support for annual subscription
• Coupon Code: TagmateBFCM23
• Offer Validity:  November 12 – December 10, 2023

Get the Deal

23. ContentStudio

ContentStudio is a social media management platform that helps businesses save time and manage their social media presence more effectively. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that can help you save time, create better content, and better understand your audience.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 67% Off Agency Max Plan | 30% Off All Regular Plans
• Date Validity:  November 09 – December 09, 2023

Get the Deal

24. LambdaTest

LambdaTest serves as a cutting-edge test orchestration and execution platform driven by AI, empowering businesses to accelerate their product launches without compromising on quality. This robust platform supports digital expansion by facilitating real-time and automated testing across 3,000 browser, operating system, and device combinations, positioning itself as a premier choice among cloud testing platforms.

Trusted by more than 10,000 corporate clients and boasting a user base exceeding two million from over 130 countries, LambdaTest has become a go-to solution for diverse testing needs. Seize the opportunity to assess your websites and apps ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 30% discount on LambdaTest Annual Plans
• Coupon Code: BFCM30
• Offer Validity: November 01 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

25. WPLoyalty – Points and Rewards for WooCommerce

Unleash Black Friday’s customer loyalty potential with our WooCommerce Points & Rewards plugin. Elevate loyalty, drive repeat sales, and grow your business with our WooCommerce Loyalty Program.

Black Friday Deal: 

• Deal:  Flat 30% Off
• Coupon Code: BFCM30
• Offer Validity:  November 01 – December 05, 2023

Get the Deal

26. Retable

Retable is a smart relational database management solution to help you to organize your workflows, projects, teams and business operations. With a user-friendly spreadsheet-like UI, Retable offers you real-time collaboration and easy-to-use rich features to manage your projects and business workflows.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off on all plans 
• Coupon Code: RTBLBF50
• Offer Validity: November 01 – December 31, 2023

Get the Deal

27. Mysignature

MySignature is all-in-one email signature and email tracking platform. It allows you to easily create professional email signatures and make your business emails stand out from the crowd.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off for the first payment for all yearly plans 
• Coupon Code: BF2023MS
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

28. Brand24

Brand24 represents an AI-driven tool for monitoring media and listening to social interactions. It not only assists in identifying online references to your brand but also provides a substantial amount of beneficial information related to the reputation of your brand. If you are in search of a user-friendly media monitoring solution, Brand24 is unquestionably a worthwhile option. Not only will you obtain a condensed overview of your media exposure, but you will also be able to access a variety of analytics concerning brand health, such as sentiment analysis, reach, AVE calculations, and numerous other valuable metrics.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 50% off of any plan for 3 months
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 27, 2023

Get the Deal

29. Newoldstamp

Newoldstamp is the leading email signature management platform that empowers to effortlessly design and implement brand-consistent signatures across the entire organization.

Black Friday Deal:

• Deal: 25% off on any plan (recurring discount for all next payments)
• Coupon Code: BF2023NOS
• Offer Validity: November 20 – November 30, 2023

Get the Deal

30. Salesgear

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.

You can build targeted prospect lists, connect multiple inboxes, warm up your domain, automate follow-ups, and more.

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

Get the Deal

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.

What is an employee intranet?

An employee intranet is a private, secure digital network accessible only to a company’s employees. It is a centralized space where employees can access company information, share documents, collaborate on projects, communicate with colleagues, and stay informed on internal news and updates. Having an employee intranet helps improve communication, streamline procedures, and create a sense of community within an organization. Employee intranets can be customized to suit a company’s specific requirements.

Benefits of Employee Intranet 

The employee intranet provides employees with a secure platform to communicate with each other, collaborate, share sensitive documents, access important announcements, and, most importantly, make them feel engaged. All the above directly improves productivity. 

Improved communication and collaboration 

An employee intranet allows employees to share information through chat windows, make announcements through certain channels or features, share files or articles and provide feedback. All this helps streamline communication and helps them work together on projects. Most intranets have features like project workspaces and internal groups. For example, four to five people can form a separate channel and work simultaneously on a particular document, presentation, or project.  This allows remote teams to stay in touch 24/7 and work together.  

Centralized Information Hub 

Once employees start using the intranet for communication, team collaboration, and knowledge-sharing purposes, the network becomes a central location for all the company’s critical information instead of using multiple channels like email or other chat windows. Once people upload all their internal documentation, employees will never have to look or search anywhere else for information. This can include employee handbooks, crucial customer management policies, code of ethics, software information, etc. This prevents duplication of effort and simplifies the management of corporate knowledge. 

Personalized for Enhanced User Experience 

Employee intranets can be personalized largely by enabling user profiles, using AI to provide tailored content recommendations, introducing or integrating social features for interaction, creating role-based access, increasing privacy layers for certain channels, making it accessible on multiple devices, including mobile phones, etc. It can also be integrated with other platforms like your internal documentation, knowledge base, etc. All this enhances an employee’s user experience and adds to their convenience, making it more attractive for them to use regularly.  

Facilitating Knowledge Sharing 

Almost all employee intranet portals have a capacity where many files can be stored on the cloud, and this can be accessed from anywhere 24×7. With an efficient search function and integrations with some important apps, this can ensure every employee has access to the information they require. They can quickly search for files, brochures, conversations, tasks, and compliance checklists from within the internet. This makes it extremely easy for any manager, member of the management, or human resources to share any information with the entire company.  

Strengthened security and employee trust 

With emails and online systems continually being open to cyber-attacks. Employee intranets which are equipped with the latest security measures, is an ideal platform to share and store commercially sensitive or confidential information. Movement and downloads of files from the network can also be quickly traced.  

This helps build employee’s trust in sharing confidential knowledge. 

Showcasing Organizational Culture  

The employee intranet is a great place to show off or introduce your organization’s culture to new employees during employee onboarding. It can start off by introducing a new joiner to the entire company, giving an opportunity for all existing staff to welcome him or her through messages. This creates a warm and welcoming corporate culture. It also has opportunities to form channels with people who share an interest or hobby, like Girl Power groups, Book clubs, History lovers, ChatGPT explorers etc along with official channels like marketing, sales, lead generation, etc.

Analytics for Informed Decision-Making 

When all your employees use the employee intranet for access to any official transaction like raising tickets to various helpdesks, leave applications, working hours availing an employee benefit like transport, advance on salaries, or wallets, you have a wealth of data. When it comes to increasing or decreasing a benefit to use resources better, introducing a new policy, evaluate usage, intranets are a great tool for you to access and analyse data before you decide, ensuring it is an informed one. Intranets also allow you to create and circulate surveys, an effective data generation source. 

Streamlining HR Processes  

Employee intranets are extremely feature-rich, allowing you to ensure every human resource procedure is conducted through it. This includes sharing crucial policy documents like training manuals, employee handbooks, etc. They also have portals for putting up salary slips, processing leave applications, loan applications, and employee benefits. When everything is done on one platform, it helps streamline all HR processes, brings transparency, and is easier to track employee engagement. 

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

GET STARTED

Methods to create an employee Intranet 

While many intranet platforms have different combinations of features, many of them similar, it is critical to choose one with a simple user interface and good functionality so even employees getting onboarded and working remotely can navigate their way through it. It is advisable to take a few free trials and start with the most crucial features relating to HR processes, cyber security, and knowledge management.  

Assessing Organizational Needs 

The process begins with comprehensively examining an organization’s unique requirements, objectives, and challenges. This helps identify specific functionalities and features the chosen employee intranet should offer, ensuring it will help achieve the company’s goals.  

The assessment involves consulting with key stakeholders, including employees, managers, and the IT department to understand their pain points and expectations.  

Building a Cross-Functional Team  

Create a team with members from different departments, including HR, Marketing, IT, management, Design, and customer support. Announce that you plan to create an employee intranet for them and ask them to make a list of “must have” and “nice to have” features. This can include critical HR features, integrations with tools like Slack or Teams, different media features like video calls, podcasts, playing videos, recording and transcription of calls, etc.  

Setting Clear Objectives and Scope 

The next step would be to list the problems the intranet needs to solve. One common objective is usually creating a functional workspace for employees who rarely meet in person. Another aim was to create a company culture where employees feel engaged and motivated and can communicate freely.

Choosing the Right Technology 

Once you have fully assessed all your requirements, you can start looking at the software solutions. It’s ideal to put together a team, ideally with members of your IT and HR department, to do some market research and identify a few probable solutions. Most companies would choose a social intranet packed with features. Also, assess cyber security measures and the network’s agility to scale with your company. 

Designing User-Centric Interfaces 

Remember that if you want your employees to use the intranet frequently, regularly, and for all transactions, they need to enjoy using it. And for someone to enjoy using a platform, it needs to be simple, intuitive, and feature-rich but manageable. Ideally, it should invite people to browse through to explore features, try some of them when free, and get used to logging into it daily.  

Content Strategy and Information Architecture 

Ask yourself three questions—what type of content do you require it to have? Where do you need the content to live? And who the content is for? Most companies choose content like employee handbooks, security policies, privacy policies, HR policies and benefits, employee onboarding tools, company culture and events, etc. 

It is crucial to organize the content coherently and logically. The structure and design should be attractive and make users want to interact. Place the search bar on top of the homepage and frequently used content in prominent places.  

Implementation and Rollout 

It is critical to discuss with your top-level managers and ensure they are on board with the timing of the intranet rollout. In fact, even better, get them to try out the platform before its rollout and iron out all their pain points and doubts. The faster the top-level executives accept and adopt it, the quicker the overall adoption. 

You can consider training sessions after the rollout, to improve implementation. Ensure all the frontline managers can answer employee questions on usage.  

Security and Compliance Considerations 

During the implementation process, an important step is to establish access controls. Sit with your IT department and identify which areas or content must be placed under restricted access to or kept confidential. You may need to establish controls where sensitive information is only searchable by authorized personnel. 

You may also inform your employees if links to certain websites or certain files can be posted only after it is checked for trojans. This can keep your company secure from any attacks.  

User Adoption and Engagement Strategies 

Employees should know everything the intranet can do and how to use it. Some fun ways can be devised to highlight all the pain points the intranet will solve through graphics and emails. The intranet can behave like a social media platform, provides a better employee directory or make applying for salary slips easier. Most importantly, get the management to use the platform to communicate important announcements to employees in the initial days, so employees start using it. 

Maintenance and Continuous Improvement 

Maintenance and regular updates are crucial to sustaining an effective employee intranet because they prevent user disruption and trust in the system. This includes bug fixes, incorporating user feedback, and incorporating feature requests to adapt to changing business needs and technology trends.  

Top Intranet Solutions 

There are several intranet solution providers in the market. It is critical to choose a solution with a simple user interface, rich in features, and solves as many pain points as possible. It’s an advantage when employees can resort to one platform for any information, transaction, or communication. Below are three top intranet solutions in the market. 

Happeo

Happeo is a social intranet platform that aims to encourage interaction. Similar to a social media platform, users can like, comment, or react to posts, add emojis, schedule quick video meetings, and share images. It integrates with popular tools like Microsoft Office 365 and GoogleWorkspace. It has a mobile app, which can push notifications about important company news.  

It is also simple to use so most users start using the full software in a few weeks. 

Sharepoint 

Sharepoint, being a Microsoft product, is usually the preferred choice for documentation because it integrates with all other Microsoft products like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, One Note, etc. However, it does not integrate with Google workspaces. While it allows customization, centralized access to resources, collaboration on projects, and making announcements, it doesn’t provide much in terms of enhancing communication and social interactions among employees.  

Future Trends in Employee Intranet 

With a growing number of companies going global and employees moving to hybrid or remote working, intranets have become more crucial. Intranets must scale and adapt to different industries’ changing requirements. Some future trends we could be seeing in Employee Intranets are listed below.  

Knowledge base Solutions

A knowledge-base solution can serve as an alternative to traditional intranets for sharing and managing information within an organization. While intranets typically offer a broader range of features, knowledge base solutions are focused on knowledge management and can often provide a more specialized and user-friendly approach.

Document360

Document360 is a knowledge base software that offers features for creating, organizing, and sharing internal documentation and knowledge. It’s user-friendly and designed for knowledge management.

Integration with Collaboration Tools 

Most intranets will collaborate with as many tools as possible in the future to offer seamless and unified communication and productivity experiences. Most solutions will offer integrations with collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and project management tools like Trello and Asana, to streamline work processes and centralize information sharing.  

Personalization and User Experience 

Personalization is all set to be another big communication trend in the intranet space. Most solution providers are noticing that personalized employee feeds are becoming more popular. Personalized intranet experiences will motivate employees to return to the platform and use it actively. This can be done by showing organization news or content based on an employee’s interests and skills.  

Mobile Accessibility  

With many employees moving to hybrid and flexible working, most social intranets have begun functioning efficiently on mobile apps. They will ensure that users can reply to messages, fix meetings, login, log out, and even attend meetings while on the move. They will also ensure they do not miss important announcements that should appear as notifications. 

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots 

With generative AI becoming vastly popular for conversational purposes, generating human-like responses to user prompts, most intranets will aim to improve their AI capabilities. It could be in terms of AI powering their search engines, and introducing chatbots that could welcome employees once they log in and produce any information they are looking for. It could also offer reminders and suggestions on important tasks to be prioritized.

Gamification for Employee Engagement

Intranet gamification takes elements from gameplay and applies them to business practices to increase engagement and participation. Some incentive like a coupon or bonus introduces playful competition into work and motivates employees to go the extra mile. It can be used for employee onboarding, icebreakers, and participating in surveys.

Video Content and Live Streaming

With the goal of the intranet being the one platform employees should log onto for almost every official transaction, video streaming of official events and announcements by the management will be a feature most intranets will offer. Recording events, converting them into video content, and sharing the same will also be a feature that would be present.

Cybersecurity and Data Protection

With data becoming a precious and expensive resource for strategizing, providing the highest levels of cyber security and international privacy compliance will be a top priority for intranet solution providers. Intranets should have multiple backups and firewalls, protecting them against data breaches and hacker attacks.

Integration with HR Systems

Intranets will also aim to integrate with HR systems so employees can perform all their functions on a single platform—applying for leaves, encashing leaves, Resignation, applying for savings schemes, encashing savings, finding their salary slips, etc, so users don’t have to leave the platform for any functions.

Conclusion

An employee intranet directly impacts the knowledge-sharing and engagement of employees. It empowers employees by giving them a voice and a place to share their ideas and concerns. Ultimately, an effective employee intranet enhances productivity by making the workforce more motivated and happy.

Schedule a demo with one of our experts to take a deeper dive into Document360

Book A Demo

The post Employee intranet: Why does it matter to your employees?  appeared first on Document360.

What is customer self-service?

Customer self-service is an approach to solver customer issues where customers can find their own solutions. Rather than working with a company or product’s customer service representatives, customers can use the self-service portal to research and troubleshoot issues themselves. Besides troubleshooting, self-service can also be used for installations and onboarding. Self-service is a crucial arm of any company’s customer service because it can provide customers with 24 x 7 readily available support.

Why is customer self-service important for your business?

The core of any product or company’s success is happy customers. Happy customers stay with you longer, providing recurring revenues for years together, thus making you profitable. However, with intense competition across industries, customers have become extremely demanding.

Most customers want answers now! Not tomorrow or an hour later. The longer it takes for you to respond, the more frustrated they become. This is one reason self-service is becoming customers’ first choice.

78% of customers prefer self-service over physically calling or emailing a customer service representative. An efficient self-service system helps customers find information quickly, reducing the calls and emails your support team receives.

Customer self-support helps you scale your business while keeping your team lean.

Benefits of customer self-service

Customers prefer self-service options because they feel independent while using your product. They start having more confidence in your brand and product if they can resolve issues on their own. From a company point of view too, there are several benefits of investing in self-service options. Here are a few of them.

Reduces business cost on customer support:

With an excellent self-service channel, you can reduce the quantum of routine queries going to your customer support representatives, thus reducing customer support costs. It’s estimated that every live telephone interaction costs companies between $7 to $13.

Faster Resolution for Customers:

24×7 customer support and quick response to queries help customers derive value from your product without interruptions. Most customers, especially Gen Z, prefer looking for answers rather than calling or emailing a customer care representative. They feel that searching online and finding solutions is quicker and makes them feel more empowered.

24×7 consistent customer support

Self-service is a way to provide support consistently throughout the day. For example, when you provide FAQs, help pages to use various features or create a chatbot, these are available all day. People can find the relevant question or pages when they face a block somewhere, even if it’s in the middle of the night and your customer support team functions only during fixed hours. This ensures that they will require human support only as a last resort.

Improved Customer Retention

Customers want to feel more empowered rather than depending on others to get their products or service to work. They want to sort out their own doubts rather than wait for a call back from a contact customer support agent. A well-created self-service achieves the above, creating a positive experience for the customer. A happy customer is not likely to leave and will likely recommend your product to new customers too.

Increased Customer Satisfaction

When customers can resolve their issues quickly and get their product working or create value immediately, they feel more confident about the product. This also prevents situations where customers try multiple avenues to reach you, including calling your customer support helpline, emailing your customer support system or searching for a solution on Quora. The longer it takes to reach you, the more frustrated and angrier they become.

Higher and Quicker Sales

Many companies now realize that their customer self-service system can be used as an effective marketing tool. A customer who realizes he can access extremely quick help and support 24×7 starts trusting your product while researching and comparing multiple vendors. This leads to better and quicker conversion of leads into sales.

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

GET STARTED

How to offer Customer Self Service

Customer self-service can be offered in multiple ways like an AI-powered chatbot, FAQs, user guides and manuals or just a help section within your website and app. Below are a few customer self-service examples.

Building an FAQ page

Whether you’re a retailer or any company, an FAQ page is a must-have to help customers find answers to basic questions quickly. It is important that these answers are worded in a neat, simple and concise manner. For an FAQ section to be effective, it must be structured properly—category-wise and subcategorized issue-wise.

The biggest task in creating an FAQ page is finding what topics to cover to make it a good resource. One way to start is to list frequently asked questions your support center receives and answer them.

To ensure the best customer experience, providing links to knowledge base articles and customer support could also be considered.

Customer knowledge base

An online customer service knowledge base is a tool where you can combine all the resources a customer may need to use or troubleshoot your product. This can include FAQs, how-to guides, step-by-step procedures explained with images, video tutorials, technical documentation, and other articles regarding your product.

However, the key differentiator between an effective knowledge base and an ineffective one, is how quickly and easily it provides the exact information the customer is looking for. The knowledge base has to be organized in a user-friendly format with categorizations and equipped with a strong search engine to achieve this. The content must also be easy to read, without much of technical jargon.

Also, Check out our blog on Call center knowledge base

How to Videos

Videos are excellent self-service tools. It offers an easy way for customers to learn about your product or service. While interactive videos can give customers a complete support experience in one, even simple how-to videos can be very effective for product installations, using every feature, troubleshooting a problem, and handling a particular bug, among others.

68% of users prefer to watch a video that explains how to solve the problem instead of reaching out to a support team when they are having difficulty with an app or product.

Public Forum or Community

A community forum can also help customers feel part of a larger group. It creates a sense of belonging, which helps build brand loyalty and encourages continuous sign-ups and referrals.

You can also encourage your customers to post their doubts, questions, and requests regularly, and also answer questions from other customers.

AI-Powered Chat

You can train an AI-powered chatbot to answer frequently asked questions. The chatbot can bring up relevant information regarding articles, help pages, and an FAQ page covering the issue. The bot can also be used as a marketing and branding tool. However, a chatbot is a step before your customer care representative. This helps customer care representatives can focus only on support tickets that really need a human touch. focus only on support tickets that really need a human touch.

Find out how Document360 can help you to reduce support tickets!

Book A Demo

Three best customer self service platforms

We give you a list of a few versatile customer service tools that suit your every need.

Document360

Document360 is a knowledge base software, which is highly suitable for internal and public knowledge bases. It is an easy-to-use platform that allows you to author content using either Markdown, Block or the WYSIWYG editor. It also allows you to add images and videos to the article, making it more interactive. You can also customize your homepage according to your brand guidelines, making it appear like an extension of your website.

This enables you to create a beautiful knowledge base site within minutes that will be visually appealing to your users. It’s simple to drag and drop content among different categories and to group content up to six levels deep. It also has an AI-powered search engine that enables users to navigate the content and find the information they want within seconds.

It is also a popular choice among authors because it allows content contributors to be assigned different permissions and roles, and they can flag articles for peer review. It also offers integrations with Zendesk, Freshdesk, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Chrome and many more.

Helpscout

Help Scout is a useful combination of help desk and knowledge base software. Help Scout is a comprehensive customer service platform with a knowledge base software. Helpscout Docs is a flexible, easy-to-use knowledge-base software that lets you create neat, appealing articles through multiple formatting options in HTML and WYSIWYG.

They also have a chat style widget—Beacon, which can be embedded on any page of your site or app so visitors can have direct access to the knowledge base library without having to move away from the page they are on.

Docs is also built for SEO, making creating content that ranks highly in Google’s search engine easy for your customers to find the answers they need wherever they look. Docs also integrate with their shared inbox, so agents can share links to knowledge base content directly in customer email conversations without needing to do any copying and pasting.

Service Now

ServiceNow offers three different versions of its knowledge base system

• One for customer service management
• One for IT support enhancement
• One for HR and other internal operations

ServiceNow’s KB focuses heavily on real-time knowledge harvesting. As new data or information becomes available, knowledge managers and other team members can immediately use it to enhance their knowledge and improve their operations.

Their features include Machine learning powered reporting and analytics which helps you identify knowledge gaps, which in turns helps you improve the knowledge documentation.

Customer Self-service best practices

How can you ensure your customers enjoy a pleasant self-service experience? We guide you through some of the best practices you can adopt.

Multi-channel support

For large brands its crucial to provide customers with multiple communication options to get the support they need. Ideally, companies need to have an FAQ section, which leads to a knowledge base with more detailed information for those who want it. Again, the knowledge base should lead to a live chat with a customer care executive or a phone call if the articles have not resolved the customer’s issue.

Other options are live chats on mediums like WhatsApp or Telegram or social media.

Make it easy to access

Make customer support easy to access for your customers. One way is to make a live chat option or chatbot pop-up on every page of your website that customers browse through or at least once they reach the help section. The help section should also display a link to the knowledge base site for customers seeking more detailed information.

Another way would be to create a help widget on the corner of your app or website. If clicked on, it shows relevant FAQs based on the topic they are reading on. The chat option should lead to the knowledge base and a phone call based on the customer’s issue.

Also, ensure your content is search engine optimized so Google picks it up if a customer searches for specific information.

Keeping knowledge bases up to date

It is important to ensure your self-service knowledge base is up to date. This includes updating articles when you improve a product or documenting the rollout of a new feature as soon as possible. In fact, it is new features for which most people turn to the internet for help. This is when it is crucial that you create new blog posts on the same and link it to the relevant knowledge base articles so people can access a detailed guide.

It is also important to keep checking articles for broken links, videos or images not opening or not being available etc.

Audit and Analyse the effectiveness

Create a set of metrics to audit the effectiveness of self-service to understand how it achieves its purpose. This can include the number of users visiting your help pages, FAQ sections and logging on to your chatbots or the online knowledge base. Keep tabs on the number of phone calls, emails or live chats your customer support team has to handle. If your self-service system is effective, all the above communication has to start seeing either a reduction in numbers or changes in the queries received.

Personalization

Choose a self-service system that you can personalize with your brand guidelines like logo, color themes, font, categorization, and extent of tabs. This includes your FAQ section, the homepage of your knowledge base, and the character you attach to your chatbot. This makes customers feel like they are still on your website or on a website managed by the company, which helps them maintain their trust in the brand.

Guide Conversation

Design your self-service system so that it eventually guides conversations to a customer support executive. For example, create a chatbot or a pop-up which invites customers to drop a “hi” or click on it for more information. The chatbot should be trained well enough to put up frequently asked questions and answer them, and then offer the option of a live chat or phone call if the customer still requires help.

Set up ticket deflection

Design your customer self-service system so that customers can find answers even when your agents are offline. This can be done with a chatbot trained well enough to find and share relevant links from your online knowledge base. Constantly checking and replying to feedback received on the knowledge base is another effective way to deflect tickets.

Conclusion

A customer self-service portal is important for any product or brand, but an effective solution is even more important. Nothing is more frustrating than a self-service portal that does not help you get the answers you need or the solutions you seek. To provide the above, you must understand your customers and the pain points they face through feedback and surveys. Also setting up a self-service portal is not a one-time job, but a constantly evolving factor that you keep improvising on.

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

GET STARTED

The post What Is Customer Self-Service? Benefits & Best Practices appeared first on Document360.

Conclusion

Our main priority at Document360 has always been building and maintaining customers’ trust in our product and brand. We believe this is a crucial step in that direction. A growing number of companies have made SOC 2 Type 2 compliance compulsory among their vendors, so we believe this certification will help us better serve our existing and future customers from across the globe.

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

GET STARTED

The post Document360 is now SOC2 Type2 Certified appeared first on Document360.

You asked we listened. When we reviewed the list of feature requests from customers to prioritize them, we decided to help a specific set of stakeholders. A lot of sensitive data is stored by our 100k users who emerged from a multitude of sectors, including banking, institutions, health care, and ITES.

In order to improve security, we implemented Mixed Knowledge Base Access, which enables businesses to use their websites for both internal and external access.

This move, which saved customers from having to purchase two licenses and maintain two portals, helped us retain a lot of customers while acquiring new ones. We also introduced category-wise access, where contributors and readers could be given access only to certain sections. We believed that this not only eased user experience but also gave our customers the required security and confidence they required that their sensitive knowledge was safe on our base.

Keeping in mind, that a majority of Document360 users are technical writers, we also introduced some features that solve specific pain points those technical writers face like getting detailed feedback. The Knowledge base health check metrics gave technical writers feedback and pointers to improve their writing also.

Document360 2022 Highlights

Schedule a demo with one of our experts to take a deeper dive into Document360

Book A Demo

Customization

Homepage Builder themes: Customize your Home page with Document360 themes. You can configure a unique theme for each version or language. Any theme changes can be discarded if you are not happy with the look and feel and changed at any point in time.

Custom Pages: This feature helps you customize and style the static web pages in your knowledge base. You can do a basic style with Themes, Image, Title and Description or a custom style with HTML or CSS.

Custom Link Color: By default, hyperlinks appear in blue. Now you can customize the below links—color of the hyperlink, color of the mouseover hyperlink, colour of the hyperlink that has been visited recently

Design Template: PDF design templates help you define the styling and text formatting aspects of the PDF ready to be exported. Users can now disable hyperlinks and choose the table of contents (TOC) to display the Headings tags in the document.

Enhanced Authoring and Collaboration Experience

Health check metrics: This feature helps you optimize the article’s SEO and readability. It gives you valuable insights into current problems, suggestions and good work in the content.

Feedback manager: The feedback manager keeps track of all your feedback on articles and categories in your knowledge base and knowledge base assistant. All existing feedback can be viewed on it.

Starred articles: If you use some articles frequently in your documentation, move them to Starred and access them easily. This feature is similar to the favourites section and is applicable only in the knowledge base portal.

Global Find and Replace: Find and Replace allows you to search for a keyword/phrase across articles and category pages within your project and replace it in the desired articles and category pages.

Article Feedback: Authors can enable comments. Readers can choose to leave detailed feedback on what is good or not in the article. They can also clearly mention what they find missing in it.

Cloning Articles: You can create a clone article of an existing article from your project’s respective version and language. This helps when you need a portion of an existing or the whole article to show up under another category too.

Glossary: To help readers understand the terms frequently used in articles. The definitions appear when readers hover over the terms.

Usability

SEO description generator: This AI-powered feature scans your article and generates a meta description based on the content. You can do this for multiple articles at a time.

KB Assistant Multi-Configuration: This feature allows you to have up to 10 KB assistants within one project. It gives project owners the versatility to configure contextual help based on different business scenarios.

Full Portal Search for Tags, Users, and Settings: Full portal search acts as a dedicated space to search the entire project content, files, tags, users, and settings.

Versions as Menu: Add public versions as a menu on your knowledge base articles page. This helps showcase the available versions in your knowledge base and provides easy navigation for your end users.

Remember State: This feature preserves and restores the User Interface (UI) state of the last performed activity in the knowledge base portal. It helps the team account navigate back to the activity in the previous module.

Advanced Search: Filter and search anything (titles, slugs, tags, text content inside the articles and categories) within your Knowledge Base site.

Auto-register SSO: User’s part of the customer-authorized network can access Document360 articles without the need for invitation emails.

Bubble-up Status: Readers can now view which categories have been updated with the latest articles

While we listened, customers seem to love every feature and enhancement we introduced. 2022 saw us achieving the special milestone of crossing 1000 customers. Despite increasing our pricing end of last year, our customer acquisition consistently accelerated, which was evidence of the value they derived from our product.

Though our user numbers, which have crossed 100k, have been increasing, we wanted to interact with existing and potential customers in person to understand their pain points better. This prompted us to conduct our first international event—a tech writers meet-up in Tel Aviv, Israel. We also attended NORDIC Techkomm, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the largest gathering of technical writers in Europe. We also showcased our product at a tech writers’ meet in Bangalore, India.

The year also saw Document360 being listed as the leader in the knowledge space category by top SaaS directories like G2, Capterra and Source Forge.

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

GET STARTED

What’s ahead in 2023?

We plan to introduce API documentation and Block editor early in the year to help companies further improve their documentation. We also plan to make our site and user interface even faster and more reliable in the coming year, so more companies can have a world-class documentation portal for their services or products.

We will continue working to improve our user experience with a road map of new features and plug-ins we have drawn up.

We promised, we delivered!

Most of the above features and enhancements came in as requests from our customers. In fact, we have managed to close more than 90% of feature requests in last year. In 2023 we are looking to give the product a refreshing new look, which is expected to boost customer experience. We are also looking to automate a few more manual features making it an exciting year for content creators and content consumers.

Schedule a demo with one of our experts to take a deeper dive into Document360

Book A Demo

The post Document360’s Year in Review: 2022 appeared first on Document360.