Who is this article for?
- Users with access to edit or create knowledge base articles
- Users with access to Conversational AI or Virtual Service Agent (VSA) with Knowledge Sets (Administrator) role
- Users with access to AI Service Assist
With knowledge bases being a common source for knowledge sets, writing in way that makes it easier for AI to ingest and parse information is key to getting the most out of your AI agents.
In this article we cover tips you can use to make your knowledge base more AI friendly.
Context
- Include a reasonable amount of context in your articles to help the agent understand the big picture of the information provided in an article
- Use problem-centric terminology
- Include the sort of terms that a reader might use to ask questions that should lead to the KB articles in question.
- In the Knowledge Centered Service (KCS) methodology, this is done by using the phrasing an end user put in their ticket a in an "Issue" or "Question" section of an article.
Structured Content
- Use clear headings and subheadings to logically structure the order of your content
- Crucial information like the issue or crucial info should be at the start of articles
- Organize info with lists and bullet points for easy scanning
User-Centric Terminology
- Common practice is to starting troubleshooting articles with a bullet-point list of example questions/issues that are answered by the information in the article
- Include the sort of terminology that a customer might use to ask questions that should lead to the KB articles in question
Brevity
- Break large paragraph content and huge articles into smaller, focused content
- Avoid long, unbroken text blocks
- Create separate articles for distinct topics
- Not great: One article that explains how to connect to Wi-fi and how to reset your network password
- Better: One article for connecting to Wi-fi and a separate article for resetting your network password
Descriptive Titles
- Use specific, clear titles that reflect the content accurately
- Include the most common keywords
- General recommendation is to keep article titles < 10 words. 5-8 words is usually a safe range
Avoid Information Overload
- Don't mix different types of info in a single article
- Avoid catch-all articles where possible
Manage Similar Articles
- Differentiate similar topics by adding clear context
- This helps the agent determine if an article contains relevant information.
- Use consistent terminology
- Don't use similar titles for different articles
- Not great: 4 articles, each with the title "Helpdesk Services - " followed by the name of the service
- Better: Drop the identical "Helpdesk Services - " from the titles and keep the different article titles
- In some cases, a parent article may be helpful to aggregate links to similar articles. In this case, the parent article should contain information that helps the user decide which child article they are really looking for.