Best Knowledge Management Tools To Improve Employee Productivity & Customer Experience (2023)

Introduction

Did you know that an employee spends an average of 3.6 hours daily searching for relevant information? Coveo’s 2022 Workplace Relevant Report also found that 31 percent of employees feel burnt out from the lack of information at their work.

Okay... but how does that affect your customers?

According to Latana, 70 percent of customers expect a response time of less than a day. Slow customer service, on top of lacking accurate information, won’t please your customers. Even worse? They might switch to one of your competitors.

The good news is you can solve this issue and make your employees and customers happy with one method — effective knowledge management.

Let’s see how you can use knowledge management tools to improve employee productivity and customer experience.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

Wh‎‎at is knowledge management?
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Every organization spreads (or should spread) knowledge across different teams . Knowledge management takes the information that lives in peoples' heads and makes it accessible to employees, vendors and customers.

The knowledge management process involves:

Collecting information from departments and people.
Creating knowledge-sharing material like webinars, blogs and how-to guides.
Storing this information in an organized system for easy retrieval.
Adding and editing knowledge base articles/content.
Sharing the information internally and/or externally.

Scribe top tip: Your employees and customers have different knowledge requirements. Make sure separate how you document your company’s knowledge by its audience. This might mean using different platforms, language and distro measures.

Ty‎‎pes of knowledge management

An organization might have valuable information for stakeholders, like:

Employees.
Customers.
Vendors and partners.
Investors and creditors.

You can divide knowledge management into two main categories, based on who it's for.

Internal knowledge management

Let’s say one of your teams has a great collection of troubleshooting tips that could help everyone in the company. This information might end up collecting dust in team members’ inboxes without a proper knowledge management system.

As with troubleshooting tips, every organization has confidential and proprietary information in different forms. That might include:

Product specifications.
Internal processes and policies.
Onboarding material.
Product and troubleshooting guides.

Internal knowledge management ensures everyone who needs this information has access to it.

External knowledge management

For example, your customers should know how to use and troubleshoot your products. And if you’ve partnered with a content marketing agency, they’ll need information about your company to create content. Plus, your investors likely want to know about your organization's financial performance.

External knowledge management ensures that those outside your company, like customers, vendors and investors, have easy access to the right knowledge.

Having an external knowledge management system offers plenty of benefits, such as:

Improving customer satisfaction by quickly answering their questions.
Getting vendors and contractors up to speed by sharing relevant knowledge.
Impressing investors by making financial information easily accessible to them.

Every organization needs a knowledge management system. And knowledge management software will help you capture, convert, store and share this information.

Wh‎‎at is knowledge management software?

Knowledge management software is a platform or tool that lets you capture your internal and external company knowledge, organize it in a central location and share it easily.

Why do you need knowledge management software?

Let’s say all your organization’s knowledge is stored in a filing cabinet. Even though all of the information is in there, it’s hard for people to find what they need.

That’s where knowledge management software comes in. It turns your information into an easily accessible, self-service knowledge base.

A good knowledge management platform can help your company in many ways.

It breaks down information silos.
It boosts employee productivity by providing them with accurate information.
It eases the support team’s workload by enabling customers to help themselves.
It keeps confidential data secure, so information is only shared how and when you want.
It increases compliance by offering quick access to policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Essential features of knowledge management software

When you choose a knowledge management solution for your company, make sure it offers the following features.

Rich content creation

Text-only content isn’t always the best way to convey quick information or step-by-step procedures. So your knowledge management software should support different content formats, like images and video. That will empower you to share knowledge in formats that work best.

Powerful search

Some businesses have comprehensive knowledge bases, but their customers still have trouble finding the information they need.

That’s why your knowledge management software should provide a powerful search function that offers the most relevant results to people’s queries.

Auditing & editing

Outdated information can put off customers and cause compliance issues. That’s why it’s crucial to keep your knowledge base’s information up to date.

Your knowledge management tool should provide easy editing options. For example, you should be able to edit an article from your smartphone on the go.

Sometimes you might want to go back and cross-check an older version of your knowledge base article. So your software should offer version control to allow you to access older versions of your articles.

Privacy & data backup

The last thing you want is to lose your valuable company knowledge because of a server failure.

Your knowledge management software should have robust data backup options. And since you’re relying on your content management platform to store confidential data, it should be secure.

Access control

Good knowledge management software will let you control access to your data. For example, you might not want people outside of your company to see a particular product roadmap.

Your knowledge management software should offer authentication methods to restrict access to sensitive information. You may also want to create different permission levels for partners and vendors.

Integrations

Your knowledge management software should easily integrate with other tools you use, such as your customer service tool, to allow sales reps to easily pull information.

It’s also a good idea to integrate your knowledge base with collaboration tools so team members can work together to create knowledge base articles.

Analytics

Your software should provide insights into how your audience uses your knowledge base. That way, you can both improve it and cater to your customers.

Your software should be able to:

Identify the most popular articles.
Include product plugs in your most viewed articles.

Knowledge management software with good analytics tools will also help you understand how much time a customer spends on your website, which can help your marketing team target your most engaged customers.

Now that you know which knowledge management software features to look for, let’s explore a few of the best options.

To‎‎p knowledge management software for 2023

1.‎‎ Scribe

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G2 rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars.
Scribe pricing: Free basic version. Premium plans start at $23/user/month when billed annually.
Scribe overview

Scribe is a cloud-based knowledge management tool that helps you create knowledge-sharing articles in seconds. It automatically captures your online workflows and turns them into step-by-step guides, which you can then share or embed into your website or other platforms.

Scribe has several features that will serve your knowledge management needs.

Scribe’s process recorder works on Chrome, Edge and your desktop to capture any process.
Scribe converts your recordings into step-by-step guides with screenshots and descriptions.
It allows extensive customization so you can brand your knowledge-sharing material.
You can store, share or export your Scribe within your team or to your customers.

Here’s an example that will help you get started with Scribe.

Scribe Pages is another part of the tool that empowers you to create extensive knowledge base articles by embedding multiple Scribes, along with images and videos. Use Pages to build user manuals, templates and so much more.

Customers love Scribe for its versatile features and simplicity.

Claire Mai C., a product manager, says, “I use Scribe often as a way to share knowledge with different teams across my company. It’s very easy to use the tool and it’s saved our teams a lot of time.”

Check it out — for free!

2.‎‎ Guru

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G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
Guru pricing: Free with limited features for up to three users ($5/user/month when billed annually for each additional user). Premium plans start at $10/user/month when billed annually.
Guru overview

Guru is often used for internal knowledge management within teams. The tool offers many useful features to capture and share information.

Has a simple but powerful editor.
Integrates with Slack.
Syncs with tools like Google Docs or Confluence.
Offers various features for knowledge organization.

Guru works best for onboarding, keeping support and sales teams up to date and distributing internal communications. But it isn’t designed to create self-help knowledge bases for customers.

3.‎‎ Zendesk

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G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.
Zendesk pricing: Starts at $49/agent/month when billed annually.
Zendesk overview

Zendesk is mainly a service and sales communication platform, but it also has knowledge management capabilities.

Zendesk has customer support and relationship management systems, which can help you combine your organizational knowledge into the same platform.

Some of Zendesk’s main features include:

Team publishing for turning the support team’s expertise into articles.
User-friendly analytics and reporting.
Customizable help center options.

Zendesk can be a bit costly, especially for small businesses and startups that don’t need a wide range of features.

4.‎‎ Notion

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G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Notion pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $8/user/month when billed annually.
Notion overview

Notion is a highly flexible tool that you can use to create workspaces, pages and databases. Some companies also use it as an internal or external knowledge base.

Notion has pre-built templates for asset, task, calendar and project management.

Notion also allows you to create feature-rich knowledge articles by embedding tables, images, lists and calendars into your article. However, its flexibility might be confusing for new users looking for a simple knowledge management tool.

5.‎‎ ProProfs Knowledge Base

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G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
Capterra Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
ProProfs Knowledge Base pricing: Public Help Center starts at $30/author/month (minimum three authors) when billed annually. Private Knowledge Base starts at $2/user/month (minimum 25 users) when billed annually.
ProProfs Knowledge Base overview

ProProfs helps you create an internal knowledge base, corporate wiki, online documentation or user manuals. It offers a simple, Microsoft Word-like editing interface with templates.

ProProfs has many features to support effective knowledge bases.

Customize knowledge base articles with HTML and CSS.
Integrates with CRM, help desks and chats.
Offers access control options.

6.‎‎ Document360

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G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Document360 pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $99/project/month when billed annually.
Document360 overview

Document360 is useful for creating, distributing and maintaining content. You can create private or public knowledge bases with this software.

Document360’s main features include:

Special dashboard with an advanced editor, categorization and metrics.
API keys to allow integration with your own tools.
Markdown support.

If you run a medium-sized business and need more than five team accounts, Document360 might be out of your budget. Also, the free plan only supports 50 knowledge base articles, so you’ll need to start paying as you expand.

7.‎‎ Bloomfire

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G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars.
Bloomfire pricing: Starts at $25/user/month.
Bloomfire overview

Bloomfire is a useful tool for internal and external knowledge management.

It offers advanced search and content storage options, like:

Deep search and an FAQ feature.
AI-generated search tags.
Robust analytics to see top-viewed posts.
Document visibility controls.

Bloomfire doesn’t have a freemium version or free trial, so there isn’t a risk-free period to try it out.

8.‎‎ Confluence

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G2 rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.
Confluence pricing: Free with limited features for up to 10 users. Premium plans start at $580/year.
Confluence overview

Confluence from Atlassian is a versatile tool for team collaboration and knowledge management. And while it’s mainly used as an internal knowledge management tool, you can use it for customer knowledge bases, too.

Confluence’s main features include.

Collaborative editing, real-time comments and notifications.
Integrates with apps like Jira and Trello.
Templates to get started with documentation.

Confluence is designed around a team structure, so it’s best suited for internal knowledge management. Unlike the other platforms that provide AI-powered and context-based searches, the Confluence search function isn’t very advanced.

9.‎‎ Trainual

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G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars.
Trainual pricing: Starts at $99/month when billed annually.
Trainual overview

As its name suggests, Trainual is mainly for employee training and onboarding. It’s a good option for creating an internal knowledge management system.

Here are some of Trainual’s main features.

Includes a large number of templates.
Can create SOPs.
Connects with tools like Slack and QuickBooks.

Note that Trainual isn’t designed for creating an external customer knowledge base.

10‎. In‎tellum

(Source)
G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.
Capterra rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.
Intellum pricing: Not available.
Intellum overview

Intellum is a customer, partner and employee education platform. It claims to be education management rather than a knowledge management tool so the right information reaches who it needs to.

Intellum offers live training features to start webinars, virtual training and user conferences. It also powers many major brands like Google, Meta, Amazon and Stripe.

Intellum’s best for midsize to enterprise companies that need to educate their partners and customers.

Fi‎‎nal thoughts: Best knowledge management software for 2023

Knowledge management software helps companies ensure their employees and customers have access to the information they need. Having accurate information at their fingertips will boost employee productivity and make customers happy.

Knowledge management software like Scribe can create, organize and share your company knowledge. Want to build a comprehensive knowledge base for your customers and employees?

Get started with Scribe today!

Save 20+ hours a month explaining, training & answering quick questions. Send a Scribe instead.

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