Documentation forWeb Help Desk

Knowledge-centered support

Benefits of KCS

Knowledge-centered support (KCS) is a set of practices that make information available and easily accessible to both clients and techs. With KCS, knowledge is considered a fundamental asset of the technical support organization. The goals of KCS include:

  • Improving efficiency within support organizations
  • Making customers self-sufficient
  • Reducing support costs while increasing customer satisfaction

KCS process overview

When an organization implements KCS, content creation becomes an integral part of the support process. Each tech is responsible for contributing new content and updating or improving existing content.

When a tech receives a ticket, the tech first searches existing FAQs to see if a fix is already documented:

  • If so, the tech follows the instructions in the FAQ (and updates it if any steps have changed). The tech can also attach the FAQ to the ticket.
  • If not, the tech:
    1. Troubleshoots and resolves the issue.
    2. Creates a new FAQ to document the resolution.

Using Web Help Desk to build your knowledge store

Within Web Help Desk, you can use FAQs to capture solutions to common problems and make that information available. Techs can quickly create a new FAQ based on a note within a ticket, or they can manually create an FAQ.

As you increase the amount of useful information in your system, both clients and techs will be more likely to find the answers they need. Helping clients get answers from FAQs will reduce the number of tickets opened. Clients can provide feedback by rating articles. Use the article ratings to recognize and reward useful content and to improve content that is incomplete or inaccurate.

By default, only admins can edit approved FAQs. To implement the KCS process, consider including the Approved FAQ Edit permission in the Default tech permission set. When techs have this permission, they can update or correct FAQs as needed.

Accessing FAQs in Web Help Desk

Web Help Desk promotes self-resolution by displaying relevant FAQs to clients as they enter service requests into the Web portal.

In addition, clients can search the FAQs that are available to them, view or edit an FAQ, and link an FAQ to a support ticket.

An FAQ can be available to all Web Help Desk clients, or it can be limited to a specific audience (for example, only to clients from a certain company).