How to Structure Your Self-Service Support Content to Improve Customer Experience

Self-service support content can help your customers solve their issue quickly and can save time for your customer support team. In order for self-service support resources to be effective, they need to be easy to read and understand. This would mean that customer support teams need to be knowledgeable about copywriting.

The key factors are to be concise, provide proper context and take into consideration the expertise cap of your audience. When customers find your knowledge base helpful, you will also reduce the number of calls and messages for your support team.

Clear and Concise

When a customer runs into an issue, they’re looking to find a solution as quickly as possible. Make your support content concise and to the point. Eliminate extra words and prioritize information that is essential to solving the issue.

If you’re unsure what to delete from your copy, ask yourself if the information is necessary to the solution.

Provide Context

Your team has already plenty of experience in the domain and it is easy to forget that customers might have a different baseline on understanding industry-specific concepts. That isn’t to say that you don’t understand the challenge they’re facing. Providing clear context is important, because customers might not be familiar with all the technical aspects and lexicon related to the product or service.

For example, a customer might be facing a problem with a particular feature, but doesn’t exactly know which feature it is or how it’s called. In your self-service support content, you should not only offer an explanation for how to solve the problem but clearly define the problem as well. This gives a clear signal to customer that they’re in the right place.

Reading Comprehension

Comprehension should be at the top of the priority list when devising self-support content. To make sure your self-service support content will help all customers, you must ensure that the content is easy to understand. That means using basic vocabulary, as well as short, clear sentences.

Use Helpful Links

When you create your support content, you can keep it concise by using helpful links. Links are great to structure the support content in an intuitive way and will see your customers also navigate to relevant articles more easily. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Link directly within the support content.
• Add links to related support articles in a sidebar or below the article.
• Create a list of categories, and link out to them.

Each piece of content should be focused on a specific issue and its solution. When you feel as though you’re touching on other aspects or features, add some links to other areas of your site to keep it concise.