On July 29th, the Zendesk team hosted the third episode of the 5 steps to get started with self-service series, titled Step 3: Create your knowledge base articles. This session empowered participants to confidently build and optimize knowledge base articles that address real customer issues. Using Zendesk tools, AI enhancements, and best practice writing techniques, participants learned to create clear, searchable, and helpful content to reduce support tickets and improve self-service satisfaction.

What we learned:

• Choosing the Right Topics: Selecting the right topics for your knowledge base articles is essential. By analyzing support tickets, macros, and AI-driven intent data, you can identify common customer issues and prioritize content creation accordingly. This focused approach ensures you address real customer needs and avoid unnecessary articles, making the help center more useful and easier to navigate.

• Using the Article Editor: Zendesk’s new article editor provides a range of formatting tools to help you create well-structured, clear articles. You can add headings, lists, images, and links, use alt text for accessibility, and preview your work before publishing. Proper use of these tools results in content that is both user-friendly and professional, improving the overall support experience.

• Leveraging AI Tools: AI-powered features simplify article creation by increasing content volume, simplifying language, and generating summaries from minimal input. Additionally, the built-in AI translation tool allows you to easily translate articles, helping to reach a broader, global audience efficiently without manual translation efforts.

• Writing Effective Content: Clear and simple writing is key to effective articles. Use customer-friendly language and titles that reflect how users search. Write concise instructions in an active, imperative voice, and keep each article focused on a single topic. Related articles can be linked strategically without overwhelming the reader, improving its usefulness.

• Search Optimization: To help users find answers quickly, create high-quality, original articles with structured templates like Q&A formats. Avoid keyword stuffing; instead, use relevant keywords naturally within the content. Monitoring article performance with analytics tools can help you improve content effectiveness and engagement.

• Configuring Article Settings: Properly setting article permissions, placement, and visibility is critical. Assign articles to appropriate sections, control who can view them, add labels to enhance search and AI recommendations, and decide on user feedback settings like enabling or disabling comments. These configurations ensure your content is organized, accessible, and engaging for your audience.

Each topic was illustrated by live demos to provide a practical understanding of how to implement these features within your Zendesk account. At the end of the presentation, the team hosted a highly insightful live Q&A session.Useful resources

Useful resources:

Identify topics

• Searching for article ideas

• Best practices for finding customer issues to start your knowledge base

• Analyzing your intelligent triage activity

• Categorizing your tickets

• Recipe: Using an About field to identify common issues

Article creation

• Creating and editing articles in the knowledge base

• Using the new article editor with generative AI article summaries (EAP)

• Using generative AI to expand and enhance help center content

• Translating articles in your help center using AI (EAP)

• Using the new article editor with generative AI article summaries (EAP)

• Using labels on your help center articles

Article structure and formatting

• 5 strategies for building up your help center content for AI

• How you can optimize your help center for search

Other

• Creating a ticket from a comment on a knowledge base article