Enhancing User Interaction in Help Centers

Almost all bad customer service experiences begin with poorly designed generic options for customers to get in touch. There are still so many companies sticking to outdated methods that really could make significant improvements almost immediately E.g. For self-help, don't have generic FAQ pages, often with text input boxes that don't even pull up an answer Instead embed self-help contextually into each individual customers activity. So if they are looking at a flight, show them all the potential dynamic information relevant to that experience. If they are looking at a particular item in a retail page, show them relevant help related to that. Put a little 'Need Help / More info' Avatar on each page, but build it so it's dynamic to the experience being shown Obviously with natural language interfaces in the future you can allow customers to simply ask their question naturally, but it's still possible to personalise self-help experiences before that just with some common sense design thinking And as for customer contact, the days of generic call centre numbers, with layers of IVR options, or generic agent chat options working to a process of simply answering the longest waiting customer first, that all needs to stop immediately Well designed, integrated, personalised, contextual self-help will remove so many avoidable calls, chats or emails, but If a customer still wants to speak with an agent over the phone, or indeed any channel, that's fine, but first establish from them what their question, issue or need is Just let them type (or speak if you have the tech already) their question, show them some potentially relevant answers, and then if they still want to speak to an agent, you will know precisely why already Again you should do this by embedding the customer contact options into the relevant thing the customer is interacting with. And customers aren't stupid, if it's not urgent they can just send a message, but if it is maybe you can allow them to request a callback So if a customer is looking at a hotel booking, allow them to ask their question from the hotel booking page. If they are looking at a mobile phone, again let them ask their question from that page This approach will of course significantly improve self-service performance, but will also allow dynamic decisions to be made as to the best channel to offer to the customer based on their issue or need, but also allow the right priorities to be applied which contacts are more time urgent than others Let's embed customer service into each individual customers experience, then we can finally kill off the painful IVR, chat, email service experiences we all still currently suffer This requires consideration about data platform integration of course, such as linking these journeys to CRM, ERP, PoS, GPS etc And we don't need to wait for the great GenAI revolution to get started with this approach. Although of course the future potential is amazing #cx #ai #recruit

🔎 How To Redesign Complex Navigation: How We Restructured Intercom’s IA (https://lnkd.in/ezbHUYyU), a practical case study on how the Intercom team fixed the maze of features, settings, workflows and navigation labels. Neatly put together by Pranava Tandra. 🚫 Customers can’t use features they can’t discover. ✅ Simplifying is about bringing order to complexity. ✅ First, map out the flow of customers and their needs. ✅ Study how people navigate and where they get stuck. ✅ Spot recurring friction points that resonate across tasks. 🚫 Don’t group features based on how they are built. ✅ Group features based on how users think and work. ✅ Bring similar things together (e.g. Help, Knowledge). ✅ Establish dedicated hubs for key parts of the product. ✅ Relocate low-priority features to workflows/settings. 🤔 People don’t use products in predictable ways. 🤔 Users often struggle with cryptic icons and labels. ✅ Show labels in a collapsible nav drawer, not on hover. ✅ Use content testing to track if users understand icons. ✅ Allow users to pin/unpin items in their navigation drawer. One of the helpful ways to prioritize sections in navigation is by layering customer journeys on top of each other to identify most frequent areas of use. The busy “hubs” of user interactions typically require faster and easier access across the product. Instead of using AI or designer’s mental model to reorganize navigation, invite users and run a card sorting session with them. People are usually not very good at naming things, but very good at grouping and organizing them. And once you have a new navigation, test and refine it with tree testing. As Pranava writes, real people don’t use products in perfectly predictable ways. They come in with an infinite variety of needs, assumptions, and goals. Our job is to address friction points for their realities — by reducing confusion and maximizing clarity. Good IA work and UX research can do just that. [Useful resources in the comments ↓] #ux #IA

Pylon has long been on my radar as an industry trendsetter and thought leader. Scaling support is often an afterthought for many startups, so it’s refreshing to see a guide that assesses these challenges early on. That said, I’d like to add some clarifications regarding one critical area: managing knowledge effectively as you scale. First, while the piece rightly justifies the need for a Help Center, it describes it as a "giant FAQ". However, a true Help Center (or Knowledge Base) should be much more than that. It's not just about answering repetitive questions but about empowering users with a structured, searchable repository of comprehensive guides, troubleshooting tips, and best practices. This is the foundation of your customer self-service strategy. Here are a few points I believe could enhance the perspective: 1. Waiting until you're answering 20+ questions per day is a reactive approach. Instead, begin building your knowledge base as soon as patterns emerge in customer queries. It’s much easier to scale a well-laid foundation than to backfill a disorganized structure. 2. When multiple people contribute to documentation, style inconsistencies can creep in. Establishing a style guide early- covering tone, formatting, and terminology - ensures that the Help Center feels cohesive and professional, no matter who writes the content. 3. Articles need regular reviews and updates to stay relevant. As your product evolves, your Help Center should evolve too. Assign ownership to specific team members and create a review cadence to ensure nothing becomes outdated. 4. Meeting customers "where they are" with Slack or chat support is great, but a Help Center should be the go-to for common queries. A well-designed, user-friendly Help Center doesn’t just deflect support tickets - it enhances the customer experience by enabling them to find answers independently. 5. Invest in tagging, categorization, and analytics tools from the start. This will make scaling easier as your needs grow and support AI-driven search or predictive assistance when you reach Series B. Pylon’s guide is a fantastic resource and a great starting point for this conversation. Managing knowledge effectively is just as important as hiring the right team and choosing the right channels. I wonder how others are approaching knowledge management at the Series A stage. From my on-site experience discussing knowledge management at Web Summit, it seems this area is often overlooked. #KaterynaTracksUpdates

When you're deploying AI agents for a CX function, having a good Knowledge Base is a non-negotiable. Why? When optimized, it can empower your AI agents to deliver fast, accurate responses. When neglected, it can leave customers frustrated and agents underperforming. If you want to make sure your help center actually HELPS, here are 5 strategies you can deploy: 1. Structure your content in a Q&A format with clear headings and concise instructions to make it easy for both customers and AI to find relevant information. 2. Use precise keywords. If you have membership tiers, explicitly say which tier you're talking about. 3. Update content regularly with release dates for new features and remove outdated articles. 4. Use visuals (carefully). Reference images and annotations can improve usability—just make sure you have the bandwidth to keep them accurate. 5. Make agents accessible by providing a clear link to the AI agent channels for when customers need help beyond the answers available to them. A lot of companies view help centers as a nice-to-have but the truth is, the ROI is massive. And if you're thinking of using (or already use) AI agents for your customer support, you need to keep it well maintained so the agents can: → Identify knowledge gaps → Make suggestions to make your documentation easier to understand When your help center is optimized, AI agents can perform at their best, which translates to happier customers and less workload for your team. Read the full article for more strategies we recommend—link in the comments! 👇

“Why don’t our customers use the Help Center?” It’s one of the most common frustrations I hear from CS and Support teams. They think: 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘳! 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 24/7! 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮! 𝘚𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘥𝘰 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥? 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺: most teams think about Help Center usage as an adoption issue. But it’s not about 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. It’s about 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴. Customers won’t adopt your Help Center just because it exists. They’ll adopt it after they experience success with it once. So instead of pushing adoption, we need to engineer success. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝟯 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗜’𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻𝗲: 𝟭. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴. When a customer asks a question, pull up the Help Center with them. Let them see it solve their problem in real time.    𝟮. 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲-𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗱. At the end of onboarding calls, when you assign homework, leave them on the exact Help Center articles they’ll need to complete it.    𝟯. 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳. In support or CS conversations, don’t just answer, show the Help Center article you rely on. When customers see you use it, they’ll start trusting it too. The principle is simple: Adoption doesn’t drive success. Success drives adoption. When your customers experience success through the Help Center (or your AI chatbot), they’ll 𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘭 it into their workflow on their own. And that’s how you scale both support and customer success. Help your customers succeed once, and adoption will take care of itself. #customersuccess