Knowledgebase Survey Results
Several weeks ago, we sent a survey about our new Knowledgebase to more than 5,000 customers who’d used it in the month of August. We asked them how satisfied they are with our new Knowledgebase, whether they’d recommend it to a colleague, what they like, what they don’t like, and any additional comments.
We’re pleased that 90% of respondents are satisfied with our new Knowledgebase: 51% are very satisfied and 39% are somewhat satisfied. Here are respondents’ likes and dislikes and our plans to address them:
Font: Customers’ main point of dissatisfaction is the legibility of search results because of the light blue and gray fonts and bolding of key words. We’re changing the links’ font to a standard blue (like Google) to improve readability, and we’re removing the bold and gray fonts from search results. You’ll see the changes in a few days.
Search results: While most customers said they’re able to find the information they’re looking for, others complained about poor search results. Our new Knowledgebase has a much more powerful search engine than our previous Knowledgebase and gives us more capacity to optimize search results, which we’re still in the process of doing. Your specific solution or search feedback helps us improve search results, and we value your input. If search results seem too focused on a particular word, reword your search to remove the popular word, and complete the feedback form to let us know which word was problematic.
Most customers appreciate that search results are now automatically filtered according to your organization's products, which reduces the clutter. Most like not having to select their product prior to searching, but some mentioned that they wished they could. Our goal is for the results you’re looking for to be returned without having to select a filter, which is the main reason it’s not required before searching anymore. Once your search results are returned, you can select additional filters such as your product on the left side of the screen if you need to drill-down into the results.
We’re still working on doing a better job of incorporating user guides. The titles of PDFs aren't displaying properly, which is why you may see "Table of Contents" instead of the actual name of the guide, and PDF versions of the user guides include their tables of contents and indexes, which clutter the search results. We’re in the process of testing the search with shorter segmented user guides in HTML format, which include more targeted contents and don’t contain tables of contents. In the meantime, you can use the “solution” Document Type filter if you want to exclude guides from displaying in your search results.
A few customers said they wish they could still access solutions about products or maintenance levels their organization doesn’t have. By tying Knowledgebase to your organization’s products and maintenance subscription, we’re able to provide information specific to your organization. Solutions about products such as The Raiser's Edge and The Financial Edge display based on the products you own. Solutions about other related products and optional modules, such as NetSolutions and Accounts Payable, display under the product family umbrella (e.g., The Raiser's Edge and The Financial Edge). VBA, API and RODBA solutions are slightly different; they display based on a combination of the product and maintenance level you're subscribed to because they're so specialized. So in order to see VBA Raiser's Edge solutions, you'd need to have The Raiser's Edge and either the Advantage Priority or Advantage Professional support plan.
Speed and availability: Customers are very pleased that Knowledgebase returns results quickly and is always available; we are, too!
Navigation: Most customers said that Knowledgebase looks better, is more intuitive, and easier to use. Top features customers highlighted are the history of their recent activity, the recent and popular solutions about their products on Knowledgebase Home, integration with Case Central, the ability to enter the solution ID directly in the Ask a Question and New Question fields, the ease of asking a new question, and being able to use the Back browser button.
On the other hand, overall busyness was a point of dissatisfaction, so we’re making some formatting changes to simplify the layout during the next few days. Unfortunately, our Knowledgebase software prevents us from adding page numbers, a relevancy rating, or a “Next” button to scroll through results.
Subscriptions: Customers like being able to subscribe to solutions to be notified when they’re updated. A few mentioned they subscribe as a way to consolidate their favorites instead of marking them as favorites in their browser.
Feedback forms: Customers appreciate being able to rate specific solutions and provide comments, and we appreciate receiving this information, which we use to improve our solutions. Currently, several hundred solutions are rated each week and we review feedback about each one.
Thank you to all the survey participants and to all of you who have used our new Knowledgebase. Please continue to share your feedback with us on the Knowledgebase feedback forms. We will keep working to improve your online experience and look forward to hearing from you!