Knowledge is power. Okay, okay – we know that’s a little cliche. It’s true, though. But what’s even more powerful than what you know? What your team knows.
As your business goes on through successive years, you collect a body of knowledge that defines all aspects of your organization, tempering the customer relationships you forge, and shaping the actions future generations of team members. In short, nothing is more important that the preservation of your business’ collective knowledge.
Imagine if Apple, Inc. suddenly lost all of the knowledge imparted to it by Steve Jobs. Imagine if Tesla somehow lost none of its founder, Elon Musk’s, fundamental ideology – closing its patents back up, and negating the influence of its luminary namesake, Nikolai Tesla in the process. Those companies would be half what they are – or worse – if not for their knowledge management practice.
Your company is just like them. Your knowledge, your insights and your operating principles have made your business what it is, and that’s worth preserving. Of course, knowledge is of central importance to customer support. But it’s also integral to new employ orientation and many other aspects of your business. That puts a strong emphasis on how you store and access the content that makes up your business’ body of knowledge.
To help you achieve this end, we’ve put together this list of the top five knowledge management apps available today.
HappyFox
HappyFox (Official Website) is a help desk with a knowledge base added on for a total knowledge management solution. By aligning knowledge management with help desk functionality, your support team benefits from instance access to internal and external content relevant to their objectives.
If your support team needs to pull together a wealth of contacts, internal and external links and customer annotations, HappyFox makes it all nice and easy.
Knowledge base & FAQ
Custom fields
Advanced Search
CRM Integration
Community Forum
Live Chat Integration
IntelligenceBank
IntelligenceBank (Official Website) is an app that wholly focuses on knowledge management.
The app provides convenient access to documents, data and social knowledge. That means your team can access the know-how that makes your business tick with ease.
IntelligenceBank sports a simple interface that is easy to follow, even if you’re just getting started with knowledge management apps.
Features:
Document management
Audit trail
Version control
Bulk uploading and downloading
Playback of online and offline media
Custom databases and forms
HelpGizmo
HelpGizmo (Official Website) is a knowledge management app that helps your team access manuals, handbooks, articles and other content on-demand.
HelpGizmo is a really easy app to understand. It operates on a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) principle that is basically as simple to operate as it is to create a post in Blogger or WordPress (probably closer to Blogger, really).
HelpGizmo has excellent mobile support and an intuitive search function, so it proves quite usable for support staff who are always on the move.
Features:
WYSIWYG and source editors
Video and media embeds
Mobile optimized
Custom branding
Versioning
Easy integrations
Confluence
Atlassian Confluence (Official Website) is a knowledge management app that aims to capture the daily interactions between your team and its customers.
The idea is to pool the know-how that would normally be buried in emails and hard drives in one dashboard. Organization is in focus, as such, inside Confluence.
Confluence is about conversations among your team and your customers. The app allows you to capture the answers to questions that arise, so that finding the same solution becomes subsequently simpler.
Features:
On-demand or hosted
Advanced search
Knowledge base
Rich text editor
Drag and drop editing
Custom layouts
SkyPrep
SkyPrep (Official Website) is actually an online training app. But that still makes it an important addition to this list of knowledge management apps.
Knowledge is most potent when it’s second nature to your team members. The ability to know and understand customer needs is utterly valuable. Whereas the other apps on this list focus on the easy access to dynamic internal and external content, SkyPrep arms your team with forehand knowledge.
SkyPrep allows you to create online training courses with great ease. With its simple interface, you can snap together learning modules, and track employee progress. You can even start with existing PowerPoints and videos. From there, you can build-out quizzes and tests and more.
Features:
Upload content once, use everywhere
Easy reporting tools
Upload PowerPoint, Word, Excel, PDF etc
Create courses within minutes
Easily create exams and quizzes
Course certificates
TalentLMS
TalentLMS (Official Website) is also a learning management system with plenty of upside potential.
TalentLMS is fully online. That means there is nothing install. With a quick learning curve, you’ll find it easy to use TalentLMS. Though most learning management systems focus on employee on-boarding, and TalentLMS certainly does that as well, it goes beyond that. TalentLMS is quickly accessible.
If your team needs to go back to the source and look up pertinent information, it’s really easy to use TalentLMS.
What’s more: TalentLMS works in such a way that you can create end-user courses and sell them. That means TalentLMS is the most imminently profitable offering on our list.
Features:
Use your own presentation and documents
Reuse content from Youtube, Slideshare, Wikipedia etc
Reuse content from Articulate (Quizmaker, Storyline, etc)
Create Assessments and surveys
WordPress integration
Are you using the right knowledge management app for your business?
Let’s face it: your business depends on your team’s ability to deliver consistently great customer experiences.
Half the battle is know-how. And knowledge management apps put the deep archive of experience at the disposal of your employees as they engage customers on a daily basis.
Though there are few knowledge management apps out there, GetApp has a running list of all the current ones for your convenience. Check them out and pick the one that is perfect for you!