Why startups focus on knowledge sharing culture

Information is a vital part of success in any business.

But it’s especially true when talking about startups that are still refining their processes and developing the product on the go. Startups collect a vast amount of knowledge in the first years of building the business, and the ability to access, share, and learn from that knowledge is often what determines how successful the company can be. Adopting a knowledge sharing culture can help achieve business success.

What’s more, startups can enhance your customer experience through educational and helpful content that solves problems and improves the efficiency of your support teams.

And that’s where a customer service knowledge base can be so valuable. By systemizing the knowledge around your product, brand, and common challenges, you can create more positive experiences for your customers while simultaneously saving more time for your team.

To drive home the importance of a knowledge sharing culture, let’s look at some of the main benefits it can offer below.

Quickly deal with common issues

One of the biggest roadblocks to a startup’s success is not using the available time on productive activities. Unfortunately, even startups with limited resources spend a lot of time dealing with repetitive or common issues, despite the fact that they can be eliminated.

Using a knowledge base, you can set up a system of resources that provides specific guidelines on solving common issues, which provides benefits to companies that use it on multiple levels.

For one thing, your support team can use the knowledge base when directing customers to specific answers. This way, instead of having to solve each issue individually, support agents can save a lot of time and help more people throughout the day.

But then there’s the secondary benefit that might be even more important, which is that the knowledge base can be used by your team as well. For example, as you go through projects or work on improving the product, certain challenges will arise on multiple occasions. And having a reliable resource for dealing with each issue will save a ton of time on communication and internal problem-solving.

It can also be helpful when onboarding new employees, who can have access to a robust knowledge base where they can fast track their learning and become integrated into the team much faster.

Develop good practices

Another important benefit of a knowledge sharing culture is that it nurtures an environment where good practices can evolve. When employees have a reliable process for sharing and accessing information, various issues and bottlenecks tend to be resolved faster, and working approaches tend to be embraced on a larger scale.

Over time, having a process for sharing knowledge can completely reshape how your startup operates, creating a compounding effect that builds on small improvements until they result in big changes.

Make more informed decisions

Making decisions is an integral part of succeeding as a startup. And having a knowledge-sharing culture can help ensure that your employees always know which decision to make.

There are thousands of choices that a business has to make, and many of them have to be made on the spot by your employees. By providing them with a way to share and access knowledge, you increase the likelihood of them making the right choice.

Having more information at your disposal is always beneficial, and that’s precisely what you can provide through a systemized knowledge base that provides insights about data, processes, and past situations that could be relevant.

Ensure continuity

Employee turnover is an unavoidable part of running a business. And when you’re just launching a startup, it’s likely that quite a few of the initial employees will be replaced or that you will experience periods of rapid growth when the number of people on your team expands quickly.

During these transitional periods, having a knowledge-sharing culture will ensure that the know-how of your company and products doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

In addition, if you create a reliable resource for accessing information, you won’t be dependent on a few veteran employees to share knowledge and can rely on streamlined resources for providing the same essential knowledge to all new employees.

Bottom line

Knowledge sharing isn’t an easy process. When starting from scratch, creating a robust knowledge base that your employees can use may seem like an impossible task that would require too much time and resources.

But the good news is that you don’t have to create it in a day. And over time, your knowledge base will become more comprehensive, branching out from core topics into all aspects of your business. And that’s when you’ll be able to reap the rewards for as long as your business exists.