Building trust with your help center

The level of trustworthiness of software companies varies wildly. For example, some companies exist solely to make as much money as possible, as fast as possible, and then get acquired. This fast growth approach can cause customer service quality to drop.

This is not KnowledgeOwl, and our customers already know this well. Over the last few years, we've been trying to more actively communicate to the wider world that we truly love helping our customers and giving them the best possible experience. This includes creating the best possible knowledge base software, as trying to go above expectations to delight our customers. 

A lot of our customers are also software companies, with values similar to ours. This is why they’ve sought out a more robust solution for creating online help centers for their customers. Sure as we want to serve their needs, they also want to serve the needs of their customers.

We've noticed that having a robust help center can be a meaningful way to show your customers that they are important to you.

In this article, I'll cover some tips on how to make a customer-centric help center so you can show your customers that they are number one in your books.

Content quality

Use a consistent style and tone

Whether your help center content is being written by one person or a team of folks, maintaining a consistent style and tone throughout can make your customers’ experience of your documentation more consistent, predictable, and pleasant, which inspires greater confidence and trust in your content. We recommend using a well-defined style guide (like Microsoft or Google), and then adding your own internal exceptions or more detailed guidance to that style guide for things like whether you use “you” or “we”, how to handle feature names and UI labels in your software, or other things specific to your company and brand. Help centers are different from marketing content and support ticket responses; be sure anyone on your team who might create content has some kind of guidance for what they should be doing.

Address your top support and sales questions

Nothing shows you care like anticipating what customers are going to ask about and making it easier for them to answer their own questions. Ask both your support and sales teams what they’re most commonly asked and make sure those answers are easy to find in your help center.

Be thorough (within reason)

Having only a few questions on a single FAQ page isn’t going to offer a ton of help to your customers. You will want to cover as many relevant topics as possible in your help center. If this is your first help center, you may want to check out our owlet’s guide to creating your first knowledge base.

Just-in-time documentation (JIT) is another great way to build out your help center knowledge base. With the JIT approach, you can create articles based on questions your customers are asking.

Make sure your content stays up to date

Nothing shows a lack of care like stale information your readers aren’t sure they can trust. Some knowledge base software solutions offer features that will mark your content as "Needs Review" after a set amount of time. You can also run reports or filters to find content that hasn’t been updated since a particular date. It’s important to create systems around ensuring your help center stays daisy fresh!

Related: Keep your content up-to-date and still have time for lunch

Show new/updated content

Another thing that builds trust is showing that your help center is being actively managed. Seeing content flagged as new or updated tells people that you’re actively working on the content, which makes it more trustworthy.

Make sure screenshots and videos match reality

Holy moly, this is a big one! Outdated screenshots and videos erode trust. If the images in your help center don’t look like what customers are seeing in your app, they're not helpful. You can use tools like LaunchBrightly to automatically update the screenshots in your help center. You can also use naming conventions, tags, or other metadata to make it easier to identify and update screenshots and videos in your help center.

Usability and navigation

Make it easy to find a contact

Whatever you do, don’t make it complicated for your customers to find a way to reach your support team. Have a contact form that is easy to locate, or an email address/phone number that they can find without effort. You want to make it clear to your customers that they can receive personalized help any time they need it. Some folks worry this will cause a deluge of support, but it doesn’t. Most people still prefer to self-serve. And when they can’t, they want to be able to reach someone who can solve their problem.

Make sure your help center is searchable

Let's be honest—most people aren't browsing your carefully curated knowledge base architecture. They are Googling, using ChatGPT, or using your built-in search. Make sure it's easy for people to find the info they need. Whatever knowledge base software you’re using to build your help center, make sure it has a robust search tool that automatically indexes your content.

Show navigation / wayfinding tools

Some help centers can feel like a black box with a search tool, which doesn't give customers much context or ways to find related content. Features like tables of contents, breadcrumbs, and related articles give your customers helpful wayfinding tools and instill trust regarding the amount and breadth of content in your help center. It also gives customers a chance to learn a little extra about whatever feature their initial question was based on, leading to a more holistic understanding of your product and help center.

Prioritize accessibility

Implementing accessibly best practices makes it possible for more people to benefit from your help center. This can include following image best practices and running your content through an accessibility testing tool like Lighthouse.

Match your branding

Does your help center's branding match your website or app? If it looks incomplete or like it was built 10 years ago, people might not trust your content. If it doesn’t look like care was shown to the help center, it might seem like your company doesn't value the experience of its customers.

Invite feedback

Comments and feedback forms not only give customers ways to contact you, but it also shows them that you want to make sure they're having a good experience. Bonus points if you can quickly respond to any feedback you receive. Giving your customers ways to share feedback is a simple way to show them that their opinions really matter to you.

Structure and organization

Define your content types

Most help centers contain a variety of different types of content, like explanatory/conceptual pages, detailed tutorials, or how-to guides. Figure out at least three buckets of content types and define guidelines—or even a template—for each type. This helps ensure formatting consistency and will make it easier for your customers to get used to your help center and how to use it. (It also makes writing content just a bit easier!) If you’re new to content types, Diátaxis can be a good place to begin.

Categorize your content 

While most people use the Search function to find the content they need, there are definitely some folks who prefer to browse their way to the information they seek. If your content is well categorized, it will lead to a much better browsing experience for these people. Tip: Organize your content in a way that is tailored to new users of your product, since new users are more likely to browse through your categories. You can categorize by roles, jobs to be done, popular content, and/or major features.

Closing

By implementing these strategies, you're not just building a help center—you're crafting a trustworthy resource that demonstrates your commitment to your customers' success. A well-designed, up-to-date, and easily navigable help center builds trust by showing that you value your customers' time and needs. This trust is an investment that pays off in multiple ways: increased customer satisfaction, improved loyalty, reduced support loads, and better retention rates. Start with these tips, and don't be afraid to iterate based on user feedback. Your commitment to providing reliable, accessible information will not go unnoticed, and it will reinforce your company's reputation as a trustworthy partner to your customers.