Best Knowledge management systems (KMS) in 2024

It’s cliche at this point to say that knowledge is power, but in the business world, this adage still rings true. Having easy access to knowledge is crucial. That’s true both internally for your staff and externally for customers seeking additional information on products and services.

But lack of, scattered or disorganized data frustrates teams and customers. This negatively affects the employee and customer experience and unnecessarily burdens your managers and customer support staff. This is where a powerful knowledge management system comes into play.

With a knowledge management system, you can create a deep knowledge base that can positively impact your company on many fronts.

With a knowledge management system, you can: 

• Empower employees with vital information that’ll help them become more effective in their roles

• Provide customers with information they need to resolve issues and get the most out of their purchases

• Take the pressure off your customer support staff when access to self-service support lowers their call volumes

In this article we’ll explore the nature of knowledge management systems, why they’re important, and how you can pick the best option for your business.

What is a knowledge management system?

A knowledge management system (KMS) is a customer service software tool used by companies, specifically to organize documentation, frequently asked questions, and other information into easily accessible formats for both internal staff and external customers.

Using knowledge management software can help keep documentation up to date.

It can also help customers find their answers, and manage knowledge access and permissions across user groups.

It’s a tool that’s valuable to both small businesses just starting and global enterprises that need to distribute knowledge to a wide variety of audiences.

You're in the right place if you need more insights on knowledge management systems. 

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is the process of identifying, gathering, storing, evaluating, and sharing all of the valuable information organizations create in their day-to-day operations.

It involves capturing answers to frequently (and not-so-frequently) asked questions and documenting them in an easy-to-understand format across multiple file types. This could include step-by-step written articles, videos, or images.

A KMS makes knowledge sharing a whole lot easier by having an answer ready and easily accessible to share. But if you just store all of that knowledge in a chaotic Word document, no one will be able to find it or update it.

Knowledge management acts like the catalog system at the library. It helps you find exactly the right shelf and the right book to answer your questions (and even keeps a record of when it was last checked out).

In a Freshdesk, managing knowledge effectively means that accurate answers to common questions are easily accessible to customer support agents and customers.

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What are the types of knowledge to include in knowledge management?

There are three different types of knowledge you should gather and include in your knowledge management system. The following section touches on each knowledge area, diving into why they’re important for continued success. 

Explicit knowledge

Explicit knowledge is easily documented knowledge that’s usually easy to turn into an article. It’s a description of or a set of steps toward achieving something.

Content examples include tutorials, listicles, how-tos, and guides. When planning these assets, gather explicit knowledge through fact-finding with your subject matter experts.

Implicit knowledge

Implicit knowledge is information customers need to infer from explicit knowledge. It requires customers to interpret existing pieces of explicit knowledge as described above, or general knowledge to create desired outcomes.

For example, how to combine software integrations with your productivity platform to create an all-in-one productivity suite. Gather implicit knowledge by documenting your employees’ and customers' use cases. Then explain how to combine other knowledge to achieve them.

Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge comes from experience and typically requires a lot of context and practice to acquire.

For instance, knowing immediately what to do during an emergency or that a specific shoe brand doesn't give you enough arch support.

Tacit knowledge is hard to gather because it’s often specific and requires individual testing. Start by getting specialists or senior team members together to disseminate complex ideas and use that to build larger training content.

Bringing these all together 

• Explicit knowledge is knowing what apples, cinnamon, flour, and sugar are. 

• Implicit knowledge is knowing they can combine to make a pie.

• Tacit knowledge is knowing the exact combination of the ingredients that make the most delicious pie without looking up a recipe.

Top 8 knowledge management software

1. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a feature-rich, powerful knowledge management software that can manage, curate, and share company knowledge for both employees and customers. 

You can host a vast content repository organized in categories, folders, and articles that your customers can use to find answers to their knowledge-related queries easily. 

By making the knowledge base articles private, you can also own an employee-facing, internal knowledge management system that can help in onboarding new agents and help them find the right solutions to share with customers.

On Freshdesk, you can customize your knowledge base or help center and brand it with the company logo, themes, and colors for a seamless user experience. It’s also possible to modify your KMS’s domain URL to align with your website.

Since the knowledge management system comes with a customizable help desk, it becomes extremely easy to extend customer support using your knowledge base. 

Customer service reps can easily attach a solution article from the KMS to support tickets. They can also convert ticket responses into knowledge base documents. 

You can also host a variety of self-service options like chatbots, community forums, FAQs, and web widgets from one centralized knowledge management system with a customized, branded look and feel.

Key features of the Freshdesk knowledge management system include:

• Flexible hierarchy: Based on the customer journey, your team can curate knowledge under six levels in Freshdesk with one main category and five levels of folders, adding articles and folders to any of the five levels.

• Multi-product knowledge base: You can create individual knowledge management systems for multiple products with a single Freshdesk account, each having its own categories and folders.

• Access controls: Determine who in your team can create, edit, publish, review, and approve knowledge base articles and set permissions at folder levels.

• Powerful document editor: The Freshdesk knowledge base editor supports advanced, rich text formatting options and content formats, including adding tables, code snippets, images, and videos.

• Built-in SEO options: To make your content rank better on search engines, the Freshdesk knowledge base allows you to add meta information such as meta title and meta description for every document.

• Multilingual support: Host articles in multiple languages within a single content repository. Create your documents in the primary language and translate them quickly into your supported languages within the Freshdesk knowledge base editor.

• Article list view & quick view: Both list view and quick view help you see the different status of the articles, including drafts, reviewed, approved, published, and untranslated content, at one glance. You can apply filters to these views and work on the articles that need your immediate attention.

• Bulk actions on articles: Update author details or add tags for several articles in one go by applying the suitable filters.

• Article templates: Create templates for different categories of articles like user guides, FAQs, or tutorials for your team to reuse while documenting new knowledge.

• Team collaboration: Know who’s editing an article in real-time and share your drafts for approval and review right within the Freshdesk knowledge base software.

• Document versioning: Track changes made to a document throughout the article lifecycle with clear timestamps and switch back to previous versions with ease.

• Analytics & reporting: Collect user feedback on how helpful an article was and track critical Kbase metrics like article views, likes, dislikes, articles created, reviewed, etc., on intuitive dashboards and custom reports.

Advantages:

• User-friendly interface: Freshdesk's intuitive design ensures ease of use, making it accessible for teams of all tech levels.

• Scalability: Adapts to the growth and changing needs of businesses, making it suitable for small and larger enterprises.

• Comprehensive feature set: Offers a wide range of functionalities, from basic ticketing to advanced analytics and integrations.

• Strong customer support: Provides reliable support and a wealth of resources for users to make the most of the platform.

Freshdesk has a forever-free plan with knowledge management capabilities for up to 2 users, and the paid plans begin at $15 per user/month.

2. Freshdesk Omni

Freshdesk Omni is a seamless platform combining customer support and powerful ticketing in a unified experience. It simplifies your knowledge management system and helps you to businesses of all sizes, offering a scalable and intuitive way to manage customer interactions. It centralizes emails, social media messages, live chat, and phone calls into a user-friendly platform, eliminating the need for technical expertise. It utilizes knowledge management best practices while harnessing the power of AI and automation streamline workflows, ensuring no query goes unanswered, and allowing agents to focus on what matters most - delighting your customers.

Key Features include:

Built on Freddy AI, a next-generation AI engine, Freshdesk Omni offers a host of features:

• Empowering Self-Service: Freddy AI Agent can engage with customers in real-time, answer common questions 24/7, and is available on all channels for faster resolution.

• AI-Driven Efficiency: Say goodbye to manual ticket routing. Freddy AI categorizes and prioritizes inquiries, ensuring they reach the right agent for the fastest resolution.

• Empowering Knowledge Base: Freshdesk Omni integrates seamlessly with a knowledge management system, allowing you to create a robust collection of articles, FAQs, and resources. This empowers customers to find solutions independently, reducing support ticket volume.

Advantages:

• Omnichannel Support: Engage customers on their preferred platforms, including Email and WhatsApp.

• AI-Supercharged: Freddy AI helps agents navigate complex data and reports, enabling them to make data-informed decisions.

• Streamlined Operations: Automate repetitive tasks, create a substantial knowledge base, enabling self-service thereby freeing agents to focus on complex issues.

• Data-Driven Decisions: Advanced analytics and reporting provide insights to optimize your knowledge management system service strategy.

Why Customers Love Freshdesk Omni?

Customers love Freshdesk Omni for its comprehensive yet intuitive approach to customer support, seamlessly integrating multiple communication channels into a single platform. Its ability to automate and streamline knowledge management, with a user-friendly interface and easy-to-use generative AI features, significantly enhances the efficiency of support teams, making it easier to deliver prompt, personalized service. 

3. Document360

Document360 is a popular document management system that helps build online public and private knowledge bases to manage and share company knowledge.

Key features include:

• Article version history

• Document tagging

• Content migration

Document360 has a 14-day free trial period, and the lowest-paid plan is $99 per project/month.

4. ClickUp

ClickUp is primarily a project management tool that helps teams become more productive by streamlining tasks and projects.

The Docs feature serves as an effective knowledge management platform with multiple teams collaborating to create comprehensive company wikis.

Key features include:

• Multiple text formatting options

• Real-time team collaboration

• Integration among docs, workflows, and tasks

ClickUp has a forever-free plan for an unlimited number of users but limited storage. The paid plans begin at $5 per user/month.

5. Guru

Guru is a content management system that organizations can use to streamline internal communication and make product information accessible to employees.

Key features include:

• Simple editor

• Powerful integrations, including a deep Slack integration

• Browser extension

Guru has a free plan for up to three users, and the paid plan comes at $5 per user/month if you want to add more users.

6. Helpjuice

The Helpjuice knowledge management tool has a range of features to host a customized knowledge base to create and share content with customers and employees.

Key features include:

• Customization

• Team collaboration

• Advanced KM analytics

There’s a 14-day free trial offered by Helpjuice, and its starter pack begins at $120 for up to 4 users a month.

7. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk has a knowledge management system that customer support teams and customers use to power self-service.

Key features include:

• SEO-friendly Kbase

• Auto-suggest of articles for tickets

• Security controls

Zoho Desk provides the option to host help centers with limited features as part of its free plan, while its paid plans begin at $10 per agent/month.

8. ProProfs

The Proprofs knowledge management software can create a corporate wiki or a help center for customers with ready-to-use templates to help organizations build a knowledge management system.

Key features include:

• Branding and KMS customization

• Security controls

• Multilingual support

• Integrations with ticketing tools and G-Suite

Proprofs has a 15-day free trial period, and the basic plan is available at $30 for three authors/month.

Choosing a knowledge management software

There are so many different knowledge management solutions and tools available today, but not all of them offer the same value. To help you understand your options, look at your current knowledge management system needs as well as what you might need in the future.

The cost of switching later can be quite high in terms of time and money, so you want a solution that will grow with your team and customer base.

Here are some things to consider:

Ease of use

How quickly can you get up and run with your new solution? Is it set up out of the box, or do you need to download and install software on your own server to get started?

Modern knowledge management solutions should be simple to use — just choose a theme, copy and paste in your existing articles, and click publish. If you need to set up much more than that, ask yourself if the extra hassle is really worth it.

Cost

The price tag is always a significant factor when it comes to choosing a new tool.

Using the knowledge management app built into your secure help desk can help save those valuable dollars in your budget.

If you’re pricing out an entirely new knowledge management software, make sure to evaluate the price point of each plan and the features offered in them. While you might be able to use the starter plan initially, the costs can grow exponentially if the features you need lay behind a paywall in an advanced plan.

Scalability

Switching from one KMS to a new one is never a fun experience, so make sure you choose one that will expand with your team as you grow and add new support options.

Also, consider if your team will be expanding into other languages in the future. You might require the ability to track translations and display multilingual articles to your new customers.

Type of support

The kind of support you offer will make a big difference in the features you need in knowledge management software.

If you offer multiple products, you might need a multi-brand help center that keeps everything separate for customers on the front end but integrated for agents on the backend.

For a simple retail product that only receives questions about shipping and delivery, a full KMS might be overkill.

Instead, focus on providing helpful FAQ pages. If your product is highly technical and requires code samples in your knowledge base, you’ll want to make sure that the tool you choose embeds code nicely.

Business size

How big is your company? What geographic areas do you serve? Are you hoping to get bigger and expand in the future? These questions about business scope are highly relevant to the search for a quality KMS.

Look at your business’s size. That includes your staff, audience, and reach in the industry. This information will help you determine what kind of KMS system you need.

If you have a massive ecommerce platform that ships all over the world, you might need a complex and powerful KMS. However, maybe you have a small market share in a very specific region with no intention of expanding beyond it. In that case, you could get by with a smaller, more limited KMS.

Alternatively, you might not even need one at all if you could get away with a simple FAQ page.

But it’s not a question of if a mid-to-large-sized business needs a KMS. Instead, consider how large of a KMS you need to create to build an effective and beneficial knowledge management solution.

Team needs

What kind of support does your team need? When’s the last time you asked them this question?

One of the main groups to benefit from a KMS is your employees. Before taking the plunge and purchasing a KMS tool, it’s a good idea to ask them what they need from you to do their jobs effectively.

Where are the pitfalls they’re experiencing? Do these hardships come from a lack of knowledge?

If so, then you have some serious insight into the kind of KMS you need. It should be a platform that meets the internal team’s specific needs and serves as a resource that’ll help them serve your customers.

Take a look at your documented HR coaching records. What are the performance issues that keep popping up? This can be a huge indicator of where the gaps are in employee knowledge. These are the gaps that a KMS must fill. 

Audience needs

What are the most common questions that plague your audience? How often are these same questions piling up? Do the questions have simple answers?

Audience needs are an important factor in your KMS purchase decision. It can form the backbone of a solid customer experience strategy. These people are the heart and soul of profitability, so make sure that the solution you choose can handle the volume of queries that are sure to come through and can accurately display complete and easy-to-understand answers.

If you know that your audience prefers to direct queries to a chatbot instead of searching for answers on your site, choose a KMS that integrates with automation AI chatbots.

Of course, to keep your audience and its needs top of mind you’ll need to understand who they are, what they want, and which customer pain points bother them the most. This comes from demographic research and behavioral data. This data can compile over time from an AI solution, which will place its findings into detailed reports.

Review your customer support ticket logs to find the most common issues and questions that clog up your support lines.

Once you have a solid grasp of the kind of content they need, it’s up to you to find a KMS platform that can deliver that knowledge in a matter that appeals to them.

Benefits of a knowledge management system

A knowledge management system helps employees, customers, and businesses as a whole — but it especially benefits customers.

Whether you’re a SaaS company supporting business customers, a consumer product business shipping out retail items, or a helpdesk manager dealing with internal customers, a customer portal software solution can effectively deliver information to those who need it.

Providing a thorough knowledge management system is the key to helping customers help themselves and improving the overall customer experience. Below, we’ve listed the benefits of knowledge management and how it can help your customers succeed. 

1. Organizes & makes information accessible from a single source of truth

A Gartner study on the top priorities for customer service leaders in 2022 revealed that 74% of leaders pointed to improving content and knowledge delivery to customers and employees as important in their support strategy.

Organizing and presenting collective knowledge in easily-accessible formats from a centralized content repository breaks down information silos within organizations. With clear organization and effective search capabilities, visitors can locate exactly what they need, when they need it. 

2. Keeps information up to date

A knowledge management system helps identify out-of-date articles. It’s then a simple matter of refreshing them with new information.

This service provides a big advantage over a file folder full of documents. These file folders can easily become unwieldy and messy. A KMS, on the other hand, will keep valuable information organized.

Out-of-date information can mislead customers and lose their business. That’s why it’s so important to take care of aging data quickly.

3. Makes self-service functionalities more effective & deflects support tickets

78% of US leaders are investing more in self-service, offering customers self-help portals and AI-powered chatbots that empower them toward helping themselves.

Self-service, or customers helping themselves through documentation, is the most cost-effective way of supporting your customers. For instance, you might extend self-service through an exhaustive knowledge base, AI chatbots, or community forums.

Each of these self-help options works by retrieving relevant solution articles and FAQs from a centralized, updated knowledge management system, deflecting tickets away from your customer support team.

4. Allows agents to share & reuse knowledge and learnings

Do your customer support agents spend a lot of time writing out thorough and detailed support emails to customers? If you’re using a modern KMS, you can capture that knowledge by converting their support emails into knowledge base articles.

In other words, a knowledge management system democratizes valuable information and promotes knowledge sharing so that everyone in the company can access it. This also means customers have more (and faster access to) helpful information at their fingertips. 

5. Empowers customers to help themselves & improves customer satisfaction

About 39% of customers prefer self-service options over speaking to actual human agents.

Thankfully, knowledge management software provides customers with 24/7 support. That means they can find what they need quickly and won’t have to wait in a phone queue to get their answers. With many customers capable of finding their own answers effortlessly, you’ll see customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores rise.

Continually improving the way you deliver information to customers via an online help center can reduce churn and improve customer loyalty and customer retention.

*Pro-Tip: Grouping your FAQs on a branded, easy-to-read page can also help win business and prevent support issues from cropping up later.

6. Provides more detailed help to customers

There’s only so much you can communicate over email or the phone. Knowledge management systems allow you to pull together multiple types of media to provide extremely thorough help.

All customers have their preferred ways of learning — whether it’s through text, videos, or images. Providing all of these options in your help center will make sure no customers are without help, no matter how they prefer to consume online material.

Who uses a knowledge management system?

Regardless of whether you’re a one-person support team or a team of 10 knowledge specialists, a knowledge management system can help put your best foot forward when sharing information online.

Let’s take a closer look at who uses a KMS.

Knowledge management systems for small businesses

If you’re a small business, you might think you don’t have enough knowledge to require a system to manage it. But small businesses benefit just as much from using a KMS as mid-size companies and enterprises do.

Providing a way for customers to help themselves is even more important because your team doesn’t always have extra time — and scaling as you grow is important.

Here are a few ways a KMS benefits small businesses: 

• It’s all hands on deck, so having an easy-to-use tool that encourages team members to document their work is important.

• Finding opportunities to surface relevant information is critical to helping a small customer support team manage customer contacts.

• As processes change regularly, keeping internal documentation up to date can help small businesses maintain order in the chaos of growth.

• While analytics might be essential for revisions and improvement, it probably won’t be the priority of small business teams focused on getting things done. But this will come into play as they grow.

Enterprise knowledge management systems

For enterprise companies, effective knowledge management has exponential returns as the number of customers that will receive help grows — but their knowledge bases require much more effort to maintain and scale.

Here are a few ways a KMS benefits enterprises: 

• Workflow management and permissions are more important as more people become involved in updating existing articles.

• As knowledge grows, keeping it organized becomes more important. Enterprise teams will rely heavily on information architecture to organize content.

• Global companies will require robust multilingual support to track translation completion and support customers in their native languages.

• Internal documentation tools are essential for growing enterprise teams that have complex and large amounts of knowledge to share internally.

• Reporting and analytics are crucial for enterprise teams. They can integrate their KMS with Google Analytics for robust insights.

Internal knowledge management systems 

An internal KMS is only accessible to employees (or a specific group of employees) and hosts private, internal information that customers shouldn’t have access to, such as policies, specific troubleshooting requirements, or HR material.

Developing an internal knowledge base can help scale your customer support team more effectively, and help onboard new agents as you grow.

Here are a few ways a KMS benefits employees:

• As your company grows, there’s more information and processes required for the organization to run smoothly. If this information isn’t documented, it’s tough to keep everyone on the same page.

• When you scale, instead of continuing to hire support agents, a robust internal knowledge management system can equip your existing team to provide speedy answers and work efficiently.

• The internal knowledge management system captures organizational knowledge known to long-term employees, making it accessible to the wider team and helps maintain organizational continuity.

• An internal KMS fosters collaboration among different teams and breaks departmental silos that exist within different departments at your company.

• Creating onboarding guides in your internal knowledge management system can help transfer knowledge to new employees more effectively. New employees will have a go-to place to search for help before asking another team member.

SaaS knowledge management systems

Companies that sell software need to provide a lot of educational knowledge to customers. It’s one of the reasons why quality customer support is so important throughout the SaaS industry.

By creating self-service options that customers can use to educate and train themselves on how to use a certain software product, SaaS companies can enrich the lives of both their customers and employees.

Here are a few ways a KMS benefits SaaS companies:

• By making frequently asked questions available instantly through a KMS, SaaS businesses can empower customers with valuable knowledge.

• Including multimedia content in these KMS platforms, like videos or diagrams, can make it even more effective. Humans are visual creatures who respond well to instructional data they can watch. A KMS can be a solid way to roll out these effective customer tools.

• Customer support representatives can make better use of their time. They won’t be fielding the same series of questions over and over again anymore. Instead, their time goes to unique, thought-provoking support queries that the KMS can’t answer on its own.

• The KMS can also become a referral tool. Users can share support articles through social media channels or email. If the information you’re creating is valuable, more target audience members will seek it out.

• Every knowledge base article becomes an additional entry point for new users seeking information. By optimizing these pages, software companies can rank for relevant key terms and pull potential customers in for the first time. 

Ecommerce knowledge management systems

Companies selling individual products online can save sales and create more informed and confident buyers through the implementation of a knowledge management system.

These systems can educate buyers on how your ecommerce platform works. It can also show them how they can go about starting a return, and any other special store features. More educated customers will trust your company more, leaving nothing to chance.

By making knowledge more readily available, you’ll create an army of dedicated, trusting, and efficient buyers who want to support your platform.

Here are a few ways a KMS benefits ecommerce businesses:

• Knowledge systems detailing questions about your platform and check-out process can create confident buyers who return time and again. They understand your platforms and don’t have to worry about a tech learning curve.

• Knowledge base articles about your security measures can put customer minds at ease, showing them that they can trust you with their card information.

• Resources about individual products can educate customers on their use and prevent returns coming in due to a lack of understanding.

• The customer support department will be able to easily handle the decreased call volume. That’s all thanks to the self-service options customers turn to for the more common questions.

Knowledge management system examples

A good knowledge management system is well-structured, tagged, and organized into folders with a proper hierarchy that users will find easy to search through.

For instance, an excellent example of a knowledge management system is the project management tool, Asana.

Asana’s external knowledge management system has a vast collection of resources neatly segregated as onboarding guides, developer guides, step-by-step instructions for Asana features and use cases, and answers from their community forum.

Within the guides, product information is again sectioned into broad categories, further divided into individual topics. The topics have a clear table of contents on the top, which makes it easy for users to access the specific information they need.

Another example of a customer-centric knowledge management system is Shopify. It sections resources according to the customer journey beginning from “getting started” guides to selling, managing, and marketing Shopify stores.

Other popular companies like Apple and Canva also have exemplary knowledge management systems that have information compiled in multiple file formats like text files, images, videos, and even gifs.

How to implement a knowledge management system

Now that you know all about KMS, it’s time to work on your knowledge management strategy. This is key to deciding the right knowledge to share, whom the information is for, the best format to convey it, and the optimal way to organize the information.

Let’s dig into this a bit further.

Start capturing the information you want to document

Decide what information you want to record in your knowledge management system.

It could be product information, onboarding guides, how-to tutorials, FAQs, or troubleshooting instructions for common issues. Find out common customer inquiries submitted to your support help desk and build your knowledge repository based on customer needs.

Arrange the information with your audience in mind

You need to start by thinking about who’ll be searching for the information and when.

You can do this by analyzing the customer journey and figuring out the information that’s required at each stage. Then, identify the best way to efficiently convey that.

For example, as you move down the customer journey, you’ll want to restrict some content like information on referral or loyalty programs to logged-in customers. Or, for an internal KMS, you can set your support agents up for success with deeper product details and pricing specifics.

Track and analyze feedback

In order to measure KMS success, you need to tap into user feedback. Add feedback surveys at the end of each article and guide to understand if the information was useful or not.

For example, Freshdesk articles offer an option for readers to vote Yes or No to “Did you find it helpful?” at the bottom of each article. If many customers report that an article is not helpful, it’s time for an update.

Modern knowledge management software has built-in analytics that track and project the article feedback and article view count on intuitive dashboards. Integrating your online knowledge management system with Google Analytics gives deeper insights into how users navigate within your KMS and how relevant your content is.

Update your KMS regularly

Rarely is any knowledge static. In other words …

You need to include a process that constantly revises your knowledge base as the product expands, as customers express confusion or dissatisfaction, or as your offerings change.

Invite multiple stakeholders within your organization, like the customer support team or the sales department to collaborate, contribute, and update the knowledge shared periodically.

Track and analyze user feedback for KMS articles regularly.

Interested in ROI? Estimate the returns your organization can realize with Freshdesk. Calculate ROI

Essential features of knowledge management software

Here’s what to look for in knowledge management software:

Hierarchical content curation

To own a well-structured KMS that’s easy for customers to navigate and find the help they need, your KMS tool should have a good hierarchy or taxonomy system to organize content.

For example, if a visitor has a question about retrieving their account password, they’ll be able to find the answer easily under Account settings->Manage account->Change password.

Collaboration & content management

As different team members contribute to your knowledge base, you need a system in place to collaborate, edit, review, and approve the articles created in your KMS.

Saving your articles as drafts, inviting team members to review the documentation, converting support ticket responses as articles, and viewing editorial history are all useful features that a good knowledge management system should support.

Permission & access controls

Though everyone on your team might contribute to your knowledge base, publish or update controls during the editorial process should be given to just a few team members. This can help prevent poorly worded articles or misinformation from slipping into public view.

Look for a knowledge management system that offers fine-tuned permission controls to allow members to draft articles but restricts publishing permission to certain group members.

Rich text editing and multimedia support

Knowledge management software should offer easy-to-use and helpful rich text editing, including the provision to add screenshots, videos, and text formatting, such as bold and italics for emphasis.

You should be able to import images, resize them, embed videos, or add code snippets to your articles within the KMS tool.

Search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities

Optimizing the content you publish for search engines makes the knowledge you share more discoverable for users and hence more valuable.

Built-in SEO features like metadata editing, keyword tagging, and properly formatted headings make your knowledge management portal easy for search engines to crawl and let potential customers discover your products and capabilities as well.

Multilingual support

If you operate globally or in multiple regions, you’ll likely need to offer multiple languages in your help center.

A knowledge management system should support multilingual articles and help in managing translation workflow. Provision to set up default languages as per customers’ geo-location will make sure that every visitor feels like you speak their language.

Reporting & analytics

Look for a knowledge management software that offers robust reporting on documentation, including the number of views and user feedback per article.

Being able to report on how many people are visiting your knowledge base weekly or monthly and whether they are finding what they need will help you identify priorities for improvement.

Customization of KMS

Keeping the same branding across all online assets (like your website, product, and help center) helps build trust with your users.

A good knowledge management software will let you incorporate your branding, logos, and color scheme to customize exactly what your customers see when they navigate to your support portal.

Integrations

If your company has different content repositories to store organizational knowledge, then look for a KMS tool with robust integrations to own a centralized knowledge management system.

You can then sync content seamlessly from Dropbox, Confluence, or Google Drive for a comprehensive knowledge management system.