Salesforce Service Cloud Knowledge Basics

In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the pivotal role of knowledge articles in enhancing customer service through effective knowledge management. By exploring this resource, readers will gain insights into:

• Strategies for Efficient Information Sharing: Discover how to leverage knowledge management to distribute insights and answers, optimizing both internal operations and customer engagement.
• Key Features and Use Cases: Learn about the essential functionalities of knowledge articles in Salesforce, including internal and external publishing, self-service capabilities, and case resolution support.
• Optimization Techniques: Understand methods to refine article suggestions for improved search experiences, ensuring users find the most relevant information swiftly.
• Comparative Analysis: A concise comparison between Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience, highlighting the evolution of knowledge management practices.

Let’s get started!

How Knowledge Articles Benefit Customer Service

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management allows the ability to effectively share information, insight, and answers across digital space. It allows companies to organize and supply information to employees, customers, partners, and others.

Key Features

• Published articles can be used either internally or externally through different channels.
• Exposing knowledge articles enables customers, partners, and agents to self-serve.
• A knowledge article can be attached to cases as a resolution reference document.
• Salesforce shows recommended articles alongside each case using the Einstein Article Recommendation algorithm.
• Agents can attach the knowledge articles while emailing customers using the Insert Article into Email button. This decreases the time spent on each case.

Use Case

The agents at Auto Car get requests from customers to reopen their cases. The service agents want quick access to the document referred to during the initial closure of the case. Which feature of Service Cloud can be leveraged by the consultant to meet this requirement?

Solution: Add the Knowledge component to the Case page to attach and view the attached articles.

Reason: If a case must be reopened, an agent can review the Article used to close the original case by viewing the attached cases in the Knowledge component added to the case page. Further, any attached knowledge article helps the Einstein Article Recommendations algorithm display the most helpful Article. 

How to Optimize Article Suggestions

Search Experience

Salesforce Knowledge Management provides an automated search engine that returns relevant results. Salesforce allows for further customization, which returns more relevant data from the search engine.

Autocomplete

Highlighting and snippets provide relevant articles within the knowledge articles, and the keywords entered in emails and text fields are used to return relevant articles within the search.

Promoted Article

A promoted search term can be associated with an article by allocating the same key terms to multiple articles that generalize a search and provide multiple relevant articles for the end user.

Case Fields

Configuring the key fields from the case allows the search engine to automatically display articles by comparing articles with specific fields on the case records. These fields can be specified from Knowledge One under Knowledge Settings in Setup.

Synonym Groups

Salesforce offers standard synonym groups that are enabled automatically. The returned search results can be customized so that they return knowledge articles that are related to the words that are associated with the search terms. Synonyms can group a total of six terms within the same group.

Topics

Topics help you categorize articles based on their content and make searching within your knowledge base easier. By indexing your articles according to their topics, your matched articles will match your search terms more accurately.

Use Case

The Service Content Manager at a company wants to classify articles using keywords that are used in the articles. The manager wants the article searches to be optimized based on this classification. The company already uses data categories, but the classification needs to be more granular and precise. What should the consultant recommend using?

Solution: Topics

Reason: Topics help you categorize articles based on their content and make searching within your knowledge base easier. By indexing your articles according to their topics, your articles will match your search terms more accurately.

Types of Auto Complete

• Autocomplete keyword search: Results from the Knowledge tab are based on the top three queries performed on the Knowledge tab from internal, customer public, or partner articles.
• Autocomplete title search will suggest up to three articles with matching titles on the Knowledge tab.

Promoted Article Search – Key Considerations

• Promoted search terms can be added as a related list from the page layout.
• Only published articles can have a promoted search term. 
• Salesforce allows up to 2000 promoted terms.

Knowledge Management Considerations

• Accessibility – Knowledge articles can be enabled for internal and external Salesforce Users.
• Accuracy – Providing access to the same Knowledge Article ensures that all readers have the same outcome.
• Search – Enhancing search will reduce time spent searching for articles and automatically provide the most relevant article.
• Management – Einstein Article Recommendation is not created automatically. Admins must define fields.

Differences between Article Suggestions and Einstein Article Recommendations

Suggested Articles

Suggested Articles provides an out-of-the-box solution that automatically displays relevant articles and is available in both Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lightning.

Articles suggested are determined by an algorithm driven by keyword searches, such as:

• Matches on the term searched
• How frequently is an article used
• Articles that have been viewed or attached to an article

Einstein Article Recommendations

Lightning Knowledge Users access Einstein have Article Recommendations by default.

Einstein Article Recommendations uses artificial intelligence (Al) features like:

• Term overlap.
• Recommendations are continually refined based on agent input.
• Analysis of past case articles to find and display relevant articles.

Knowledge Management in Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning Experience 

Conclusion 

In summary, harnessing the power of knowledge articles within Salesforce not only streamlines customer service processes but also empowers your team with the tools needed for efficient information management and case resolution. By implementing the strategies and optimizations discussed, you can ensure a more informed, effective, and satisfying service experience for your customers, agents, and partners alike.

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