The importance of FAQs for your business

As a result of the pandemic, customer support requests have increased by 16%, but businesses are not planning to spend more on increasing their customer service departments. Agents are feeling more stressed by these heavier customer support loads and businesses need to find a way to lighten the load. 

Companies need to think about customer questions that are frequently directed at your support team – there are many repetitive enquiries fielded by your agents that could potentially be resolved with a simple FAQs page.

What is an FAQs

FAQs stands for Frequently Asked Questions and is usually a page on your website devoted to answering customer queries in a question and answer format. It’s an organized collection of important information that customers are often looking for in relation to your products and services. 

An FAQs page can be a key part of a customer-facing knowledge base and link to more comprehensive articles. Your FAQs should be constantly evolving, and regularly updated with the latest information. Whenever a customer asks your support team a question, you need to decide whether this information would be useful and valuable for other customers to know and take the time to add it to your FAQs page. 

Why you need an FAQs page

An FAQs page is an important part of your website that can help existing customers and also attract more customers to your business. FAQs are an important part of the customer journey and are the prime area of your website that customers will visit to learn more about your products and services. 

For many customers, the site’s FAQ page is the second page they visit after the homepage or services page, so it needs to include a wealth of relevant and valuable content to help your customers understand your products and services. 

Your FAQs page is a key way that you can drive casual browsers into paying customers, because they will have their questions answered all without reaching out to a customer support rep. Let’s face it – most people probably wouldn’t bother and might just leave your site altogether. 

A lot of stress in your customer service department can be eliminated with some high-quality FAQs. A large volume of easy-to-answer questions can be deflected with your FAQs page, freeing up your agents to work on the more complex queries that require human intervention. 

The benefits of an FAQs

1. FAQs reduce the cost of customer service

When you provide customers with a way to answer their frequently asked questions, this means that they don’t pick up the phone to call your support team. A costly human interaction is avoided and customers will feel happy that you took the time to create content that is useful and helpful. 

While FAQs pages are an integral part of helping customers, make sure you always offer a way for customers to quickly contact support if they need to. An FAQs is not a way to stop customers contacting you; it’s intended to supplement customer support. 

2. FAQs improve the user experience of your site

Even if your website is the most well-designed and organized tool you could possibly imagine, customers with burning questions will probably still have to navigate through a few pages to find the answers. This could be frustrating for customers who just want a quick answer to a simple question. FAQs pages come in useful as a central place to find the answers to all the common questions that customers could possibly have in relation to your business. 

Remember, if you have more than ten questions in your FAQs then think about adding categories and providing a search bar. 

3. FAQs enable you to build relationships with your customers

In order to successfully build relationships with your customers you have to establish a sense of trust – be transparent and open about how your business operates. Customer perception of your brand is improved because customers can see your business is trustworthy, and this leads to repeat customers who return to your business time and time again seeking to have the same positive experiences.

4. FAQs improve your ranking in the organic search results

In your FAQs page you can use this as an opportunity not just to answer questions about your company but also general questions about your industry. These questions will bring in potential customers who may not have even heard of your brand, but found an answer to their search query on your site and clicked through to your FAQs page to learn more. 

5. FAQs allow you to quickly tackle new customer service issues

Your FAQs page should be regularly updated with the latest information that customers need to know. When you make any changes to products or policies, even if it doesn’t warrant a press release, ensure you add it to your FAQs page so your customers have access to the most recent information. Ask your customer support reps if they’re hearing any new questions from customers and think about adding these to your FAQs. 

What to avoid in your FAQs

Don’t have too many FAQs or it will take customers a long time to search for the answers they’re looking for. If you find your FAQs getting longer and longer then think about migrating this content to a customer-facing knowledge base. 

If customers are getting in touch with you about information that is contained in the FAQs, don’t simply direct them away and avoid speaking to them altogether. Some customers actually prefer talking to a human and you need to make sure you’re not using your FAQs as a way to avoid speaking to customers. 

Avoid formatting your FAQs as a list of statements – ensure you’re using the question and answer format such as “How do I…” or “Does your product offer X”. 

Tips for writing your FAQs page

When you write your FAQs page, you need to know what questions your customers are asking most often and provide comprehensive answers. Don’t just throw together a collection of questions and answers but rather think carefully about what to include. 

Understand whether customers are unsure about some technical aspects of your products and services and provide appropriate answers. You can link to further information on your product pages to ensure customers are being provided with enough support. 

• Organize your FAQs into categories so customers can easily find the answers they’re looking for. 

• Make sure your content is easy to scan by formatting your content into short paragraphs and bullet points. 

• Place yourself in the mindset of your customers by figuring out what questions they are likely to ask. 

• Be sure to emphasize the benefits and value of your products and services in your FAQs. 

• Don’t be too wordy in your answers – keep it short and to the point and link to further information if necessary. 

Over to you!

Hopefully now you’ll be convinced of the value of FAQs for your business. You’re investing in the customer experience by providing easy answers to customers’ most common questions and simultaneously reducing the load on your support team. 

Your customers will thank you and you will be enticing new customers to do business with you.