Such a report displays a graphical representation of where customers start, the pages that they visited, and where they left your help center.
Things to look out for in a user flow report:
- High drop-off rate on the search results page.
- Movement between high-level sections of the knowledge base without landing on a particular key article.
- Customers landing on the contact page after visiting the help center. What articles did they read before that?
- Searches which lead to the right article, yet still end up as support tickets.
- Compare the user flow for different segments, like mobile and desktop users.
User flows are not usually part of the offering of knowledge base or helpdesk vendors, but they are available with third party user analytics tools such as
Mixpanel or
Google Analytics.
Helpdesk data
The helpdesk platform that your team uses to communicate with customers is home to valuable information. These are a few examples of qualitative data you can use to decide what to work on next in your help center.
Commonly used saved replies
If your support reps are using a saved reply frequently when responding to customers, you can turn that reply into a short article that answers the customers’ questions.
Common issues seen in support conversations
When available, the top reasons customers are contacting your support team can guide you into what the next article should cover.
Conversations with long handle times
If your support reps are spending more time than usual on certain conversations, it might be because they refer to complex topics. If you can, simplify them with a helpful article.
Articles often recommended in support answers
If you find that your team recommends certain articles frequently, ask yourself why aren’t the customers finding the article themselves. Try to picture the journey a customer has to get to the article and look out for reasons why they are not able to.
Watching for trends
Overall, these are some global metrics to watch out for.
Ratio of number of searches per new conversations created
The more customers are visiting the help center to search for answers to their questions, the less likely they will contact your support team. This ratio should increase over time as you work on the knowledge base.
Customer contact rate vs. knowledge base visits
These two values combined are often seen as representative of the overall health of a self-service system. The customer contact rate is the percentage of unique customers contacting support in a period of time out of the total number of active customers. As you gradually introduce and improve a knowledge base, this metric should decrease while the number of visits to the help center increases.
Keep At It
Success rarely comes over night. You need time and perseverance to make an impact. Although you might get a few quick wins at the start, most KB improvements will be gradual and take a significant amount of dedicated work.
I hope you enjoyed this guide and found it helpful. 😊
Sorin