Zendesk-based help centers are increasingly a go-to tool for companies worldwide that know the value of customer satisfaction and timely access to information. Needless to say, a well-designed, informative online support site goes beyond giving customers what they want, whether that means troubleshooting a technical issue or clarifying shipping and returns.
Zendesk help center is essentially an extension of your company, and as such requires the same thought and attention to detail. What you include in your online knowledge base matters as much as how you do it. If you choose a standard solution, you are likely to get standard results, but that is hardly what a successful brand strives for. Customization amplifies all the work that you put into your Zendesk knowledge base and maximizes its impact, while bringing a few other benefits to the brand.
Increase brand trust
Customer service is integral to clients’ overall experience with the company. Your help center should meet your customers’ needs, and it should reflect your company’s values and identity. The issue of cohesion arises when you use third-party software, such as Zendesk Guide, and leave it uncustomized: while convenient and quick to implement, it looks and feels nothing like your company’s main website, or just barely. At best, your customers will suspect you of skimping on design and question your integrity; at worst, it’ll make them distrustful of the webpage they’re being forwarded to and, eventually, make them leave the site and look for an alternative.
Zendesk Guide customization goes hand-in-hand with brand identity. When your clients see the same logo, colors, and design across all your platforms and resources, they know they are in the right place. What’s more, every positive experience with your online help center reinforces their entire understanding of the brand, and vice versa.
Get best Zendesk practices from CX leaders right to your inbox
Improve customer experience and reduce support costs
A visually cohesive and well-structured self-service help center allows you to keep up with increasingly varied customer demands without exhausting your company’s resources. By customizing your Zendesk Guide, you ensure that your clients have the best possible user experience. That includes, among other things:
- alignment with corporate style guide;
- convenient help center structure;
- intuitive navigation through the help center;
- easy browsing through article contents;
- custom blocks and tabs on the homepage;
- visual components in articles to make them easier to read;
- prominent site search;
- user notifications;
- and much more.
In other words, everything that makes information readily accessible, in the way that best suits your brand and customers.
Since the purpose of any Guide-based portal is to empower clients to find solutions and the necessary information on their own, Zendesk help center customization and branding immediately work in your company’s favor. There are two notable outcomes:
- The more your customers trust and enjoy using your online knowledge base, the less likely they are to contact customer support, giving your team extra time to answer out-of-the-ordinary support tickets and balancing their workload at crucial moments in time.
- When interacting with your self-service help center, your clients make purposeful but organic decisions, choosing what to enquire about and how. In this way, they are just as likely to learn more about your company’s other services or products as the ones they initially looked for. This self-guided, self-paced approach with no strings attached might at some point translate into additional sales for your brand.
Enhance brand awareness and reputation
Adding a personal touch leads to better customer satisfaction, and with positive customer experiences come reviews, word-of-mouth recommendations, and referrals. The best Zendesk help centers offer consistent branding, user-friendly interface, informative and up-to-date content - and their clients are eager to talk about them!
To make a lasting positive impression on both your existing and potential customers, you won’t need to create the design from scratch. With Zendesk custom themes, you can easily get a modern, easy-to-use Zendesk help center. And whether your users enjoyed its sophisticated design or swiftly found the right article in its knowledge base, they will probably make it known and share their findings with friends, colleagues, and fellow clients. After all, a good self-service help center is not ubiquitous and isn't likely to be taken for granted.
Afterword
Once seen as a neat but optional customer service solution, a contemporary online knowledge base is a powerful multifaceted tool, whose functionality stretches beyond merely providing information. Today’s clients are savvy and know what they want – and it is in your company’s best interests to respond to their growing demands and standards accordingly. The decision to customize Zendesk might feel unnecessary, but it is this choice that will set your company apart from competitors and win you customer loyalty. Using your Zendesk Guide should be a straightforward and enjoyable process that enhances your clients’ overall brand experience. If you make it so, all the work that you put into your Zendesk help center will be worth it tenfold.
Get inspired by some of the best examples of customized Zendesk help centers we created.
Take a sneak peek at the best Zendesk practices from CX leaders before building your help center
