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Implementing a Self-Service Knowledge Base: Strategies and Advice

Nancy Van Elsacker Louisnord

Self-service and the concept of “Shift Left” are some of the phrases you will hear the most in the modern service management industry. The reason being is that you want to provide your users with the most important knowledge that you can to help them solve their issues and problems themselves, saving you time to focus on more important priorities. It’s a common problem, sort of a chicken and egg approach, but when you help your internal teams better meet their needs through such efforts, you also want to make sure that what is best for your service department also is best for your users.

What do I mean?

Self-service is the gold standard for helpdesks across the spectrum of IT, facilities and HR.

Automate where and when you can, but don’t leave your users trapped in an endless maze of autonomous circle flow pages containing redundant information. Self-service is the gold standard for helpdesks across the spectrum of IT, facilities and HR.

And managers love it because it helps reduce the workload of their team.

And their teams often love such approaches because it helps them focus on solving issues rather than spending hours on the phone or dealing with walk-ins and unscheduled appointments.

Unburden the Burdened

However, despite such automation, you must ensure that you don’t let your users and customers carry the whole burden. There is a fine line here because you should not assume that just because you have a self-service portal set up, and added some level of automation on their part, you can’t leave everything to the customer. For example, in my own environment at work, I’ve seen plenty of examples of support sections on websites that — although they give tremendous access to knowledge and community support — there are no options for contacting actual service desk staff.

A simple way to think about this is this: What do I do if all that knowledge doesn’t answer my specific question? The first thing I do is get frustrated. After that, I might attempt to bring the problem to someone who has the power to force changes. If you’re in the service desk, that’s not the kind of feedback you want to receive, especially if it comes from on high from the executive members.

This is the mortal sin of self-service. Even trying to help users to self-solve their own issues doesn’t mean you can leave them alone in the dark. It can be helpful to suggest answers for users, perhaps even when they are writing a ticket or when searching. And, ultimately, users should be able to contact your service desk.

Keep Your Knowledge Base Up To Date

Additionally, once you set up the self-service portal, you must maintain it. You can’t just set it and leave it. Also, processes, equipment and best practices change over time. You must reflect these changes in the knowledge base. The best way to do this is to keep an open register or an operational task list where each knowledge item is linked and anyone updating the knowledge base can let the rest of the team know an item is now up to date, or check what items may need a quick update.

What is Best Shift Left Practice?

A major bonus of having a knowledge base is the accessibility of more technical knowledge for the service desk staff. The same benefit pertains to users. There’s no reason the knowledge base should not be opened directly for users. Let them use it to try solving some of their own problems and if they can’t, let them get in touch with the service desk. Your service desk staff will have access to vast amounts of more technical knowledge that they can use to help their customers (the users).

At the core of this is that even though self-service is the new flagship for most service desk software, the “service” element should be key. At the end of the day, all the technological improvement in self-service is still aimed at improving the service that you can provide to your customers.

You want to win at self-service? Doing it in a way that improves your service, rather than restricting users to FAQs pages and community support, is key.

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Implementing a Self-Service Knowledge Base: Strategies and Advice

Nancy Van Elsacker Louisnord

Self-service and the concept of “Shift Left” are some of the phrases you will hear the most in the modern service management industry. The reason being is that you want to provide your users with the most important knowledge that you can to help them solve their issues and problems themselves, saving you time to focus on more important priorities. It’s a common problem, sort of a chicken and egg approach, but when you help your internal teams better meet their needs through such efforts, you also want to make sure that what is best for your service department also is best for your users.

What do I mean?

Self-service is the gold standard for helpdesks across the spectrum of IT, facilities and HR.

Automate where and when you can, but don’t leave your users trapped in an endless maze of autonomous circle flow pages containing redundant information. Self-service is the gold standard for helpdesks across the spectrum of IT, facilities and HR.

And managers love it because it helps reduce the workload of their team.

And their teams often love such approaches because it helps them focus on solving issues rather than spending hours on the phone or dealing with walk-ins and unscheduled appointments.

Unburden the Burdened

However, despite such automation, you must ensure that you don’t let your users and customers carry the whole burden. There is a fine line here because you should not assume that just because you have a self-service portal set up, and added some level of automation on their part, you can’t leave everything to the customer. For example, in my own environment at work, I’ve seen plenty of examples of support sections on websites that — although they give tremendous access to knowledge and community support — there are no options for contacting actual service desk staff.

A simple way to think about this is this: What do I do if all that knowledge doesn’t answer my specific question? The first thing I do is get frustrated. After that, I might attempt to bring the problem to someone who has the power to force changes. If you’re in the service desk, that’s not the kind of feedback you want to receive, especially if it comes from on high from the executive members.

This is the mortal sin of self-service. Even trying to help users to self-solve their own issues doesn’t mean you can leave them alone in the dark. It can be helpful to suggest answers for users, perhaps even when they are writing a ticket or when searching. And, ultimately, users should be able to contact your service desk.

Keep Your Knowledge Base Up To Date

Additionally, once you set up the self-service portal, you must maintain it. You can’t just set it and leave it. Also, processes, equipment and best practices change over time. You must reflect these changes in the knowledge base. The best way to do this is to keep an open register or an operational task list where each knowledge item is linked and anyone updating the knowledge base can let the rest of the team know an item is now up to date, or check what items may need a quick update.

What is Best Shift Left Practice?

A major bonus of having a knowledge base is the accessibility of more technical knowledge for the service desk staff. The same benefit pertains to users. There’s no reason the knowledge base should not be opened directly for users. Let them use it to try solving some of their own problems and if they can’t, let them get in touch with the service desk. Your service desk staff will have access to vast amounts of more technical knowledge that they can use to help their customers (the users).

At the core of this is that even though self-service is the new flagship for most service desk software, the “service” element should be key. At the end of the day, all the technological improvement in self-service is still aimed at improving the service that you can provide to your customers.

You want to win at self-service? Doing it in a way that improves your service, rather than restricting users to FAQs pages and community support, is key.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...