How to Build a Powerful Helpdesk Knowledge Base in 2025

Is your support team wasting time answering the same questions repeatedly? This leads to longer wait times for everyone and higher costs…
Let users help themselves! A comprehensive knowledge base provides instant answers.
In this article, we’ll walk you through how to build one in 2025 with our step-by-step guide.

What Is a Helpdesk Knowledge Base?

A helpdesk knowledge base is a centralized online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic. Knowledge bases are made to help users find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems on their own. This lowers the need to contact a support agent.

For support teams, it’s a very useful tool, which is very underused! A Gartner Survey found that 60% of Customer Service Agents fail to promote the kind of self-service that knowledge bases help enable.

There are Primarily Two Types of Help desk Knowledge Bases:

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Many organizations use a combination of both, leveraging a shared platform but curating content specifically for each audience.

Why Support Teams Need a Helpdesk Knowledge Base

The benefits of helpdesk knowledge bases are manifold and directly impact efficiency, user satisfaction, and operational costs. Here’s how a knowledge base helps:

• Lowers Ticket Volume: It gives customers easy-to-find answers to common questions and solutions for simple problems. This allows them to find help on their own.
• Improves Agent Productivity and Efficiency: An internal knowledge base gives agents fast access to correct and steady information. This shortens the time spent looking for answers or asking colleagues. This results in quicker resolution times and lets agents handle more questions.
• Improves Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and User Experience: Customers now often prefer self-service for fast solutions. A complete and easy-to-use knowledge base gives them immediate support when they want it. This leads to a better overall experience.
  Supports Consistent Service Delivery: It makes certain that all users get the same, correct answers. This happens no matter which agent they talk to or when they look for help. This is important for keeping up the company's image and trust.
• Lowers Support Costs: A knowledge base can cut down the operational costs for customer and internal support. It does this by deflecting tickets and making agents more efficient.

How to Choose the Perfect Helpdesk Knowledge Base Software

Choosing the right software is important for the success of your knowledge base. Think about these points for your 2025 needs:

• Ease of Use (Authoring and End-User): The software should be simple for both content creators and those looking for information. A clumsy interface will stop people from using it.
• Good Search Capabilities: Look for features like natural language processing (NLP), filtering, and keyword highlighting. These help users find information quickly.
• Customization and Branding: Being able to change the look and feel to match your brand is important for a smooth user experience.
• Content Management Features: Good version control, content scheduling, review steps, and ways to categorize/tag are very important.
  
• Connection Capabilities: A smooth connection with your helpdesk/ticketing system, CRM, chat tools (like Slack), and other business applications is very important.
• AI-Powered Features: Think about software that gives AI help for content suggestions, chatbots, sentiment analysis, and personalized content delivery. DevRev, for example, points out AI tools like GPT-bots and Semantic Search.
• Pricing and Support: Think about the total cost to own it and the quality of support from the seller.
  

Using Thunai as Your AI-Powered Help desk Knowledge Base

Thunai is an AI-driven system made to change how your business manages and uses its shared knowledge. Its main goal is to give your customers instant self-service. It also aims to give your support agents the tools for efficient, accurate resolutions.

With Thunai, you create a knowledge base with:

• AI-Powered Response Automation: Use Thunai's AI Voice, Email, and Chat agents to give instant, accurate answers directly from your knowledge base. This works 24/7 on all communication channels.
• Thunai Brain: Turn your company knowledge into a living, learning storage place. Thunai Brain works as the smart center of your knowledge base, gathering information.
• AI Screenshare Troubleshooting: Improve self-service abilities with AI Screensharing. Here, AI agents can visually show users solutions on your system in real-time. They get relevant steps and information directly from the knowledge base articles.
• Intelligent Workflow Automation: Use your Thunai-powered knowledge base with your CRM and helpdesk systems. This makes it possible to automate tasks. For example, creating follow-up tickets for knowledge base searches that didn't find an answer. Or, suggesting new articles based on new solutions written down by agents.
• AI-Driven Content Insights: Benefit from AI-generated summaries of lengthy knowledge base articles for quicker agent understanding and getting started. Also, sentiment analysis on user feedback.

Want to see Thunai action? Try it out for free today!

Types of Information in the Helpdesk Knowledge Base

A reliable helpdesk knowledge base holds a wide variety of information made for its specific users (internal or external). The aim is to give complete materials that answer both common and uncommon questions.

Common Types of Helpdesk Information Include:

1. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs): Answers to the most common questions users have about products, services, policies, or processes.
2. How-To Guides and Tutorials: Step-by-step directions on how to do specific tasks or use certain features. These are very important for helping new users get started and adopt features.
3. Troubleshooting Guides: Information that helps users diagnose and resolve common problems or errors they might encounter.
4. Product and Service Documentation: Detailed information about product features, specifications, updates, and available services.
5. User Manuals: Complete guides that cover all parts of how to use a product.
6. Policy Documents: Information on company policies, terms of service, SLAs, and other guidelines.
7. Best Practices: Tips and recommendations for using products or services the best way.
8. Glossaries and Definitions: Explanations of key terms and concepts.
9. Visual Aids: Screenshots, images, diagrams, and videos to go with text-based content. These make it easier to understand.
10. For Internal Knowledge Bases: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), internal process documentation, detailed technical specifications, agent scripts, escalation procedures, and training materials.
    
    

Step-by-Step: How to Build a Powerful Helpdesk Knowledge Base

Building a helpdesk knowledge base in 2025 needs careful planning, content creation, and ongoing upkeep. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Define Your Audience and Goals: Know who will use the knowledge base (customers, employees, or specific groups). Also, know what you want to accomplish (e.g., lessen ticket volume, improve First Call Resolution, boost user satisfaction). This will guide the content, tone, and setup.
2. Choose the Right Knowledge Base Software: Pick a system that fits your needs for features, ease of use, and making it your own. Also look at its ability to connect with other tools (especially your helpdesk/ticketing system), how it can grow, and its data analysis tools.
3. Plan Your Knowledge Base Structure: Logically arrange your content. Use clear categories, subcategories, and tags. A good structure helps users move through it and find information easily.
4. Create High-Quality Content: Make good content by writing clearly using simple words. Use a consistent style and descriptive titles. Improve understanding by using visuals. Also, break up long text with headings or lists.
5. Publish and Promote Your Knowledge Base: Once your first set of content is ready, publish it. Promote it through different channels – your website, email signatures, support interactions, and social media – to encourage its use.
6. Connect with Other Tools: Link your knowledge base with your helpdesk ticketing system, CRM, and other important business tools. This allows for smooth workflows and the sharing of information.
7. Maintain and Update Regularly: A knowledge base is not a one-time project. Keep content fresh, correct, and relevant by scheduling regular reviews and updates. This is especially true when products, services, or policies change.

Help desk Knowledge Base Benefits with Ticketing Integration

Connecting your helpdesk knowledge base with your ticketing system (like Zendesk, Jira Service Management, or DevRev) brings many good results. It makes support operations smoother and improves experiences for both agents and customers.

For Agents:

• Faster Ticket Resolution: Agents can quickly search and find relevant knowledge base articles directly within the ticketing screen. They can easily put links to articles or pieces of information into their replies.
• Consistent and Accurate Responses: Connection with the knowledge base ensures that agents use approved, current information. This leads to steadier service.
• Less Workload for Repetitive Questions: When a ticket arrives for a common issue, agents can efficiently direct the user to an existing knowledge base article.
• Easier Content Creation: Some systems let agents easily create new knowledge base articles from resolved tickets. This captures valuable solutions that can help others.
• AI-Powered Suggestions: Modern systems can present AI-powered article recommendations to agents inside support tickets. This further speeds up the process.
  

For Customers and Overall Operations:

• Improved Self-Service: Customers sending a ticket might be shown relevant knowledge base articles based on the keywords in their question.
• Contextual Help: Knowledge base content can appear within a customer portal or even inside a product. This gives help where users need it most.
• Better Data for Knowledge Base Improvement: Linking tickets to knowledge base articles helps show which articles work best. It also shows which are missing or need updates based on real support interactions.
• Better Communication: AI tools like GPT-bots, when connected, can use the knowledge base to give instant support. They can also suggest relevant articles to customers before an agent steps in.

Best Practices for Creating a Help desk Knowledge Base

Making a useful helpdesk knowledge base means more than just writing articles. Following help desk best practices for knowledge bases helps make sure they stay a valuable resource in 2025:

• Look at User-Friendliness: Give focus to easy-to-understand navigation, a clean design, and a good search function. If it's easier to find information, people will use it more.
• Write for Scannability: Use clear headings, subheadings, and short paragraphs. Also, use bullet points and bold text to highlight important information. Users often scan for answers -  make this easy.
• Maintain a Consistent Voice and Style: Create style guidelines. Make certain all contributors follow them for a unified user experience.
• Optimize for SEO: Use relevant keywords in titles and content. This helps users find articles through both internal search and external search engines (if it applies).
• Make it Accessible: Follow accessibility standards (like alt text for images and keyboard navigation). This helps make certain that everyone can use it.

FAQs for Helpdesk Knowledge Bases

How often should a knowledge base be updated?

Update your knowledge base constantly, like a living resource. Make immediate changes for new products or policies. Regularly check articles and improve them based on user feedback and data analysis.

How can I encourage adoption of the knowledge base?

Boost adoption by promoting your knowledge base actively. Make certain it's easy to access with quality content. Train agents to direct users there and connect it with your helpdesk. Acting on user feedback and highlighting popular articles also helps.

What's the role of AI in a modern knowledge base?

AI greatly improves modern knowledge bases. It makes search better with NLP, runs chatbots for instant answers, and helps personalize content. AI also assists with making content and uses data to give predictive insights.

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