Who owns the knowledge base at your organization?

Shreelekha
Shreelekha Member Posts: 1 Newcomer
Photogenic

Hi everyone, I'm doing research around knowledge bases and curious to know who owns + maintains the knowledge base at your company. Is it CS? Or a cross-functional team?

Would love to get some details about your company and understand how this process is carried out.

Comments

  • Jordan Silverman
    Jordan Silverman Member, CS Leader Posts: 109 Expert
    100 Comments Third Anniversary 5 Likes Photogenic

    Early on it was myself as the head of CS that owned the knowledgebase. Then it transitioned to our Support Manager as we started to grow and specialize. Eventually we had a person who actually owns the knowledge base. They did scaled CS and eventually just the knowledgebase.

    As a startup scales the answer to this will change as people go from generalists to specialists.

    Jordan Silverman
    jordan.silverman@usestarfish.com
    (914) 844-5775
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordansilverman/
  • Seth Dovev
    Seth Dovev Member Posts: 9 Contributor
    Fourth Anniversary 5 Comments Photogenic Name Dropper

    Our team initially had a dedicated focus on knowledge management, certifications, and courses. However, over time, we shifted to only having one Customer Knowledge Manager who was responsible for certifications, courses, and creating new articles. Support then took ownership of maintaining the existing knowledge base articles. It seems that the level of resources and headcount greatly influences this transition.

  • rdesmarais
    rdesmarais Member Posts: 14 Navigator
    10 Comments 5 Insightfuls Photogenic

    First question I have is 'are you referring to a customer-facing knowledgebase (KB) or is it internal? In other words, who is the audience for this KB? Secondly, what content are we referring to?

    Let's assume it is a customer-facing KB. The primary contributors would be the CS team and the secondary contributors would be the Support team.

    If it is an internal KB, you'll have various departments in the company wanting to publish their own content. Ideally, every department is using the same KB portal such as Confluence or SharePoint.

  • septsuz
    septsuz Member Posts: 1 Newcomer
    First Comment Photogenic

    In the 2 different organizations where we had a customer facing knowledge base it was owned by Sales/CS at one organization and CS/Support in the other.

    Another company had the knowledge base owned by IT but the content was supported by all customer facing organizations and we had experts and leadership engaged. Out of the 3 I would say that was the most successful platform for our customers.

  • shonafenner
    shonafenner Member Posts: 8 Navigator
    5 Comments 5 Insightfuls First Anniversary Photogenic

    For us, it's mainly Product and CS. But this year, Sales has taken to it with new gusto!


    As the child of librarians, coming from CS to Product to CS Ops... through sheer force of will, I look after ours.