Managing Internal Knowledge Bases: The Biggest Challenge for Growing Teams
This article is a part of our Q&A series, The Power of Conversation, powered by Aircall. Have a question about creating memorable customer experiences, meeting your business goals, and increasing internal collaboration? Join the Support Driven community, and we’ll get your question answered by Customer Support leaders and practitioners.
Tips for Managing Internal Knowledge Bases
Q: Hi, everyone! Does anyone want to recommend their favorite tool for internal knowledge management? Mainly for customer support teams to quickly find information. We’re currently using Google Docs, and it’s hard to find what we need. Another pain point is that changes happen all the time especially for feature launches, so we have to keep updating them. Thanks for any input!
- Carmen, Support Driven Community Member
Emily Gregor, Content Lead at Aircall: Hi, Carmen! As a quickly growing scaleup, documentation is key to our success at Aircall, but we know from experience that there’s always more to learn when it comes to keeping people updated on processes and best practices. To give us some additional perspective, we turned to our community members to weigh in.
Community Member: Hi, Carmen! We’re using Notion, and it works well for us.
Stephen Nock: A lot of people talk about Guru.
Sandy Murphy: We use Guru after being in a similar spot with Google Docs. Our processes change frequently, and new updates occur quite often. It's pretty easy to manage, but it's a bit pricey. They have a nice Chrome extension as well that makes it easier to find answers while staying in your ticketing system.
Stephen: What are you using for external knowledge management, Carmen? Perhaps there's an opportunity to unify?
Community Member B: Similar to Stephen’s idea, we use Help Scout for our public KB and we have a private collection for internal use on the same KB. The great thing is that it's one place to search for all knowledge—internal or public.
Mark Bangerter: We use Zendesk and just create KB articles that are internal only.
Alice Hunsberger: We use Confluence, and I actually really like it. I like that everyone else in our company uses it too, so our internal support/cx info isn't a silo unto itself.
Mahesh Ram: Looking across our entire customer base three clear options seem to be the most popular:
The native CRM KB used for internal-only use cases
Guru
Confluence (used alongside the CRM ticketing as a plug-in)
Folks who use GDocs etc are constantly outgrowing it and moving to one of the above. We use Notion heavily internally, but not for agent-facing knowledge; it's not built for purpose enough, but it’s highly flexible so if you have resources available to “bend it to your will”, it can be very powerful. That would be true for Monday.com or other similar ones.
Community Member C: Forethought has a tool that uses AI to surface relevant information about the ticket from wherever knowledge is stored whether that is Notion, Confluence, ZD guide, past tickets, Guru, macros, etc.
Carmen: Thanks for all your input! Stephen, I’m currently using Help Scout. I’m trying out Guru and really like the ability to add information from Slack to Guru directly and the browser extension option so our team can stay on the same page.
Stephen: That's helpful context, Carmen. I haven't used Helpscout, but if you're using their Docs product, the documentation shows an example of having a Collection for the team. I've used Guru in the past, and in my experience, teams find it easy to have the latest info. The main con, as others say, is the cost per user + people who don't have Guru being outside the "silo" of knowledge, so it depends on your organization and structure.
Mike Louth: I've been using Helpjuice for a personal project recently, it has some great features and is well priced.
Community Member D: I like Guru as a company-wide resource, especially if there are different knowledge sources, like Confluence, Salesforce, or Zendesk. If it’s just for the support team, I would simplify by using the KBs supplied by your CRM since most of them have integrated knowledge bases with permissions.
Emily: Thanks for sharing such amazing tools, everyone! Before we shift gears, since this is such a competitive space, let’s review the top tools you mentioned:
Guru
Notion
Help Scout
Confluence
Salesforce
Zendesk
Helpjuice
The great thing about a cloud-based phone system like Aircall is that it offers more than 80 integrations so you can easily access all your information—no matter what knowledge base management tool you’re using.
Helping Support Teams Avoid Burnout
Q: Looking for tips/resources on helping your support team avoid burnout. I know this is a common issue in support, and we’ve dealt with it in the past, resulting in us making scheduling adjustments that helped a lot. I’m just looking to gain more understanding in this area so I can stay ahead of this on the leadership side with my team when/if it comes up again in the future!
— Corey Purves, Support Driven Community Member
Emily: Thanks for sharing such a great question, Corey! Helping team members avoid burnout is such an important aspect of leadership. Let’s ask our community for their top tips.
Community member: Make sure that your team feels comfortable taking time off and is actually taking time off when they need it. If someone hasn't taken a personal day in a few months, remind them that they can take a break and that their health is important. It's something I had to remind myself as an individual contributor and had to remind my team as a manager.
Simone Secci: Creating a culture where people don't feel guilty for taking time off. Personally, it's making sure the team knows I care about their well-being. Also having good communication and pushing people to be unafraid to share what their limitations are. It's up to the manager to reassure the team in that sense.
Paul Tucker: I’m always asking my team about their energy levels. How’s your energy level today/this week/month? Are you feeling energized, drained, productive, stuck? Just opening the door to that type of conversation is helpful—and as follow-up questions to see if there’s a specific reason for how they’re feeling (whether that’s positive or negative). I then remind people that I’m more interested in their long-term health than their short-term attendance—and that they should be too!
Emily: “How’s your energy level today?” I love that question, Paul. I might have to steal that one for my team!
Maximilian Bauer: The most impactful I found is to establish open communication around mental health. Bring it up in meetings, invite guest speakers, give managers mental health first-aid training or similar, create a Slack group to share experiences, offer company-paid consultations or easy access to therapists, etc., or very simply share your own story. The more people see past that Instagram syndrome of, I need to endure this because everyone else seems to, and the more they hear from others that they struggle too, the easier it is for them to ask for help and ask for time off.
Paul: Here are some additional resources:
Larry Barker: I'd also add one thing: Plan ahead. Make sure you're building in enough cushion to your forecasting for team members to take time off and get time to work on projects that energize them. Don't let yourself get into a position where you're slammed, people are wearing down, and you can't provide any relief because you need four weeks to hire and onboard additional help.
Desiree Gregory at DroneDeploy: The best ways I have found to create a culture where people don’t feel guilty about taking time off:
Model the behavior you want. Take days off and don’t work while you’re OOO.
Tell people they do not need to give you a reason for taking time off beyond sick/time off (depending on how you do vacation time).
If you see or hear of someone trying to power through when they don’t feel well, nip that in the bud. Give them specific permission to take the rest of the day. Let them know the team will be fine.
Reinforce psychological safety on your team by discouraging people from expressing annoyance about having to cover someone else’s work. Tell them they can express those frustrations to you privately, but that when someone is ill or needs time off, it’s not fair to make them feel bad.
Reinforce a spirit of cooperation when the person comes back. If they thank the team for covering, say, “the team knows you’d do the same for them if they needed the time off!”
If you notice people working late regularly, try to get to the root cause and shut that down as well. I always tell my team that sometimes working late is necessary to meet a special deadline or make a push to get something wrapped up. But if it’s happening regularly, it’s a sign that something is out of whack. Be transparent about your efforts to determine what is making them feel the need to work late or log back in after dinner, etc. There are a lot of reasons this can start happening, and it’s best to dig in and figure it out to avoid it becoming an entrenched habit or part of the team culture.
Emily: These are such great tips, Desiree! Thanks for sharing such quality advice, everyone. These resources can really make an impact when it comes to prioritizing mental health on your team.
About the Editor
Emily Gregor is a Content Marketing Lead at Aircall, an integrated, easy-to-use, cloud-based phone solution.