10 Internal Knowledge Base Examples to Transform Your Support
- Catherine Heath
- 3 hours ago
- 14 min read
Imagine this: a customer contacts you, you have a question to ask a coworker, and there’s always someone sitting at your shoulder, ready with the answer.
If only this were the case. However, an internal knowledge base is the next best thing.
Information silos cost precious time, reduce productivity, and create frustrating experiences for both employees and customers.
According to Gartner, 47% of digital workers struggle to find information they need to perform their jobs effectively.
An effective internal knowledge base solves this problem by centralizing organizational knowledge, making it searchable, and ensuring critical information isn't locked away in email threads or individual team members' minds.
In this guide, we'll explore:
What an internal knowledge base is and why it's essential for your team.
The concrete business benefits of implementing an internal knowledge base.
A detailed, step-by-step process for creating your own knowledge base.
Ten leading internal knowledge base examples to consider for your organization.
A few best practices for maintaining and growing your knowledge base over time.
What Is an Internal Knowledge Base?
An internal knowledge base is a single, centralized repository of information that helps your employees in their day-to-day tasks. An internal knowledge base is private to your company.
It might require login credentials or a specific IP address to access.
There’s an abundance of knowledge within your organization, but most of it’s stored in the heads of your employees or in their own personal documents. An internal knowledge base captures this knowledge and makes it available to anyone in the support team.
It’s where your employees can turn for frequently asked questions instead of hunting through different systems or asking coworkers.
Internal Knowledge Base Use Cases
There are many ways that you can use an internal knowledge base to serve your employees.
Step-by-step guides and FAQs.
Internal knowledge bases can tell your employees how to do something, perhaps showing them how to use your product in detail.
Providing this technical assistance to employees can save your support team a lot of time.
Product information.
General information about your product can be stored in the knowledge base, keeping employees up to speed with different releases and product versions.
Even if your employees are not part of the product or development team, they can share in the excitement of a new launch.
Standard operating procedures.
Repeatable processes can be documented in your knowledge base and shared internally, helping employees do their jobs better and with fewer mistakes.
Human resources matters.
Any policies relating to human resources, whether that’s recruitment and hiring, parental leave, or benefits packages, can be stored in the knowledge base for easy access.
Onboarding documents.
Onboarding new hires is a lengthy process, but all the necessary documents can be made available in a robust knowledge base.
This will significantly improve the onboarding process since new employees know they have a resource to consult when they have questions.
Troubleshooting instructions.
If your company offers a technical product, you can offer troubleshooting instructions to your
support team and significantly improve service.
Training materials.
To help with ongoing learning and development, store training materials in your internal knowledge base for easy access.
The Benefits of Having an Internal Knowledge Base
Internal knowledge bases offer concrete benefits to your team and business:
Enhance employee productivity. Instead of spending one-fifth of their time searching for information, internal knowledge bases provide answers instantly and free up your employees for tasks that add more value.
Higher retention rates. Knowledge sharing results in an increase in employee engagement, leading to higher retention rates in your employees who are happier in their jobs.
Deliver superior customer support. Offering an effective knowledge management system like an internal knowledge base leads to an increase in customer satisfaction scores because your support team has the tools they need to deliver superior customer service.
Improved internal communications management. Internal knowledge bases facilitate discussions through comments and can be integrated with other communication tools like community forums, messaging platforms, and more.
Information privacy. Private knowledge bases keep your internal information secure and accessible only to parties to whom you grant access, ensuring proprietary knowledge is safe and regulatory compliance is met.
Smoother onboarding. Cut down the time it takes to onboard new employees and help them become productive members of your team by giving them access to all training materials and documents in the knowledge base.
What Features Should an Internal Knowledge Base Have?
There are some of the top features that all internal knowledge base tools should offer your business.
Powerful search
Employees need to be able to search the knowledge base quickly and easily, or adoption will suffer.
Choose a solution that allows employees to search the knowledge base with natural language, giving context-rich answers by searching the bodies of articles and returning the most relevant information.
AI is your friend here, which is forgiving of search terms and able to find results without having the exact keywords.
Collaboration workflows
Publishing workflows enables users to write their documentation within the knowledge base platform, improving efficiency and productivity. This removes the need for additional tools.
Allow authors to collaborate on writing, editing, reviewing, and publishing documentation with different roles and assignments for each contributor.
The tool should flag when a particular article needs updating to keep your knowledge base fresh and up-to-date.
Internal knowledge bases are one of your organization’s key assets.
You need the ability to change the appearance and branding of your knowledge base to match your company’s style guide, either through manually changing colors and fonts or implementing CSS and Javascript for even more customization options.
Customization makes it obvious that your knowledge base is officially company property and fosters a better experience for your users.
Analyzing your knowledge base performance is critical for continuous improvement and growth. Understand how your internal knowledge base is performing with in-depth analytics, which should be a core component of your knowledge base.
Identify your most popular articles, popular and unpopular articles, broken links, and demographic information about your users. Many internal knowledge base tools also integrate with popular analytics software such as Google Analytics for added insights.
If you use Zendesk, you may want to consider a powerful analytics tool like Help Center Analytics from Swifteq.
Security
Your internal knowledge base will likely contain extremely sensitive and proprietary information, so it’s important to have control over access to your content.
Your solution should have highly robust security in place to protect your knowledge base from unauthorized access through regular audits, two-factor authentication, and data encryption to keep your data safe.
This will preserve your business’s reputation by avoiding potential threats.
Save your technical authors time with generative AI. Many internal knowledge base examples now offer generative Artificial Intelligence to help you with the creation of your content, turning outlines into full articles, for example, or translating your content.
AI can help you write drafts, simplify complex content, generate titles and metadata, and more. This makes it quicker to create content and serve your users more effectively.
How to Create and Structure an Internal Knowledge Base
Set goals
First, establish clear, measurable objectives for your knowledge base with a detailed project plan. Ask yourself:
What specific problems are you trying to solve? (E.g., reducing onboarding time by 30%, decreasing repeat questions to the support team, ensuring compliance with industry regulations.)
Who are your primary users and what information do they need most urgently?
What existing documentation can you migrate, and what new content needs to be created?
Document these goals with specific metrics, whether that's reducing time spent searching for information, improving customer satisfaction scores, or decreasing onboarding time.
Identify topics and content
Create a comprehensive content inventory by:
Conducting stakeholder interviews. Talk to team leaders to identify their most pressing knowledge needs.
Analyzing support tickets or help desk requests. Look for frequently asked questions and common issues.
Reviewing existing documentation. Catalogue what you already have across shared drives, emails, and collaboration tools.
Organize your content into a logical hierarchy with 3-7 main categories and relevant subcategories. For example:
Products & Services
Product Features
Pricing & Plans
Technical Specifications
Policies & Procedures
HR Policies
Security Protocols
Compliance Requirements
When you have multiple authors working on your content, templates will help you to standardize each article so that you have consistency in the knowledge base.
Templates will help your team write with one voice. You can have multiple templates for different types of content, such as policies and procedures, frequently asked questions, and troubleshooting guides.
Create a template that you can send to each writer and show them how to approach writing an article. It can include:
Title format. Clear, descriptive, and searchable (e.g., "How to [Task]: A Step-by-Step Guide")
Article structure. Introduction, body content, conclusion
Formatting guidelines. Headings (H1, H2, H3), paragraph length (3-5 sentences max), bullet points for lists, numbered steps for procedures
Tone and voice. Define whether content should be formal, conversational, technical, etc.
Create the website
In order to publish all your content, you’ll need to pick the right knowledge base software.
There are many solutions available on the market (more on the best internal knowledge base software later), but you’ll need a tool that fits your price point, meets your needs in terms of features and number of users, and fits with your existing workflows (think integrations).
Once you’ve chosen a knowledge base tool, it’s hard to change it later, so it’s a good idea to pick one that offers solid exporting in case you want to move your content in the future.
When trialing your knowledge base software, think about usability to increase the adoption rates of your users.
Create the website
Now, it’s time to build your internal knowledge base website. Here’s where you’ll use the categories that you came up with earlier.
Many tools will allow you to create layers of categories and subcategories that you can use to organize your content.
You’ll likely need elements like:
A prominent search bar (typically top-center).
Clear navigation menu.
"Recent articles" or "Popular articles" section.
Quick links to the most-accessed content.
Feedback mechanism on every article.
"Need more help?" options for when users can't find what they need.
Customize the design
Make the knowledge base yours by customizing the design to be in line with your brand guidelines. Many solutions come with templates that allow you to quickly use a well-researched design and change the colors and fonts to suit your brand.
You can also use CSS and JavaScript to customize your knowledge base, which gives you more flexible options and more control over the design.
Publish knowledge base articles
You’ve been working on your content, and now’s the time to publish your knowledge-base articles. You don’t have to publish all your articles at once: start off with a simple section such as Frequently Asked Questions in case you need to work out any bugs.
Make your content available to everyone on the team and ensure that they know the knowledge base exists – even providing training if necessary.
Once users start using your knowledge base, you’ll see a return on the effort and time involved in creating it.
Promote continuous improvement
You’ll be able to flag your content for review after a certain amount of time, as well as analyze your knowledge base’s performance with reporting and analytics.
Use these tools to continuously improve your content over time, based on which articles are most well-received, and create new content based on empty search terms.
Continuous improvement keeps your internal knowledge base relevant as your support team evolves and as organizational needs change. Keep returning to your knowledge base and making it an active and trusted resource.
10 Best Internal Knowledge Base Examples
1. Zendesk
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You might know Zendesk as service desk software, which offers a suite of tools for managing customer support. Zendesk is so much more.
An internal knowledge base (Zendesk Guide) is included with Zendesk, integrating with the Zendesk ticketing system to make support even easier – for example, AI-powered article recommendations within support tickets.
Zendesk users have access to generative AI to help you create internal help documentation for your customer support team, such as guides, troubleshooting tips, and reference documentation.
Agents can draft new knowledge base articles on-the-go, streamlining the process of helping customers.
Zendesk’s Guide, with its user friendly interface, is designed for support teams to help more customers, as well as HR and IT team members who can add content recommendations to tickets for easier resolution.
Zendesk also has an app marketplace, so you can extend its functionality with apps like our Help Center Analytics app to get deeper insights on its performance or Help Center Manager to make bulk updates.
2. Helpjuice
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Helpjuice is a standalone knowledge base using AI search (powered by Swifty AI) that empowers users to find the knowledge they need. It’s a feature rich solution that allows HR, product and support teams to document their knowledge.
With a seamless user experience, you can rapidly reduce onboarding time with Helpjuice’s powerful editor.
Article planner makes it easy to track the publishing process with a Kanban board-like interface. Easily access different versions of articles and maintain regulatory compliance with versioning.
Integrate with many other popular tools including Zapier, Intercom and Zendesk to improve the support experience. You can use Helpjuice for product documentation SOPs, onboarding new employees, and help documentation.
3. Document360
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Document360 is an all-in-one internal knowledge base and customer service platform aimed at helping users create and manage content such as software documentation, SOPs, APIs, and user manuals. Document360 is designed for software teams to collaborate on internal documentation for their teams.
You can equip your team with a comprehensive knowledge base tailored to your organization’s requirements. Backed by generative AI it will help you create, organize and manage content at scale, from writing new articles for you, to changing the tone, to adding tags and metadata.
Eddy AI chatbot connects users to content from your knowledge base in a conversational format, so it’s not just about the knowledge base. Help more customers with Eddy.
Document360 offers advanced analytics to help you understand your knowledge base, and three editors for writers: Advanced WYSIWYG editor, Markdown editor, and WYSIWYG editor (a simple Word-like editor).
4. Confluence
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Confluence is knowledge base software that brings together your development, marketing or product management team’s knowledge in a user-friendly workspace. It uses Pages to document in formats like Whiteboards, Databases, and videos. Help break down silos and share information with Confluence.
Confluence is powerful for getting through writer’s block with the help of AI, automating repetitive tasks, and summarizing lengthy docs.
Confluence promotes organization and collaboration with keywords for Pages, attachments, and spaces, and allows editing together in real-time.
Use Confluence for your mission-critical project plans and other internal documentation for a single source of truth that improves your team’s productivity. Use templates to get you started and an AI editor to fill in the blanks.
5. Nuclino
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Nuclino is an internal knowledge base software that offers a unified space for your team’s knowledge and projects. It’s useful for organizing content in a single source of truth with all the features you need to collaborate such as creating tasks, assigning them to members and tracking progress.
For Nuclino, simplicity is key, with an extremely clean user interface that allows teams to publish essential knowledge and find what they need when the time comes.
Nuclino was designed for internal teams to document their processes, policies, and guides with markdown commands, media embeds, and version histories.
Engineering teams can use Nuclino to centralize requirements and collaborate on technical docs. Marketing teams can plan campaigns and draft content. Sales teams can consolidate playbooks and track their leads, all within Nuclino.
6. Tettra
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Tettra is an AI-powered knowledge base that integrates with Slack to provide ready-made answers for your team.
Designed for Knowledge Management, Tettra helps customer support teams onboard new reps more quickly, boost productivity and increase CSAT scores. Bring together existing SOPs, documentation and help guides for a single source of truth.
Using existing content from Google Docs, Notion, and local files makes Tettra a simple and easy-to-populate knowledge base. Tettra’s AI bot Kai works in both Tettra and Slack to quickly surface the right content or alternatively find the right person to answer the question.
Once the answer is found, Kai can reuse it in future interactions.
Automations encourage subject matter experts to verify the accuracy of content, identify gaps, and approve edits. Purpose-built workflows ensure SMEs document their own knowledge, and audit and update content.
7. Heroic
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Heroic knowledge base is an internal knowledge base plugin for WordPress. It turns your site from a simple WordPress site to a fully functional knowledge base. If you’re a fan of WordPress and want to stay in that ecosystem, choose Heroic knowledge base for article analytics, instant search, user feedback, and more.
Heroic knowledge base was specifically designed for support teams to help them streamline their service, and provide timely and relevant product documentation. It also has a user friendly interface
Heroic KB offers predictive answers as you type, and Heroic Help Assistant allows users to interact with your knowledge base anywhere on your site.
While Heroic knowledge bases look great, you can easily customize your theme to suit your brand. Heroic natively inherits your theme’s styling to match your branding, and allows you to style each article to make it look professional and engaging.
8. MkDocs
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MkDocs is our only non-SaaS knowledge base. It is a markdown-based internal knowledge base that uses a static site generator (built on Python) to create and host your documentation.
MkDocs is designed for creating project documentation, and is particularly aimed at developer teams.
Choose from one of the built-in themes, choose a third-party theme, or build your own. Aimed at users with a slightly more technical skillset, MkDocs is simple to set up and run with a built-in dev server that allows you to preview your documentation as you go.
All of your documentation is written in Markdown and MkDocs will automatically refresh and auto-reload your browser when you save your changes. Host your internal knowledge base anywhere, from GitHub pages to Amazon S3.
9. ProProfs Knowledge Base
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ProProfs Knowledge Base is a powerful solution for an internal knowledge base, with setup taking as little as five minutes.
Aimed at internal teams such as HR or IT who want to document their company’s knowledge in an employee handbook or HR policy guide, ProProfs offers features such as a Word-like editor, import from Word and PDF, as well as internal comments, roles and permissions.
Core features of ProProfs are writing, editing, and importing articles easily, analyzing knowledge base performance with reports, and implementing password controls for security.
Customize and brand your knowledge base to make it your own, and surface the most relevant article recommendations with a powerful search.
ProProfs also allows you to create content in minutes with AI, generating content from a blank page, summarizing an article, or improving it with AI. Create article tags and titles with AI.
10 . Help Scout
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Our final help desk knowledge base example is Help Scout’s Docs, which is an internal knowledge base software that you can set up within minutes. If you’re already using Help Scout, then it’s an easy jump to use their knowledge base.
It’s simple to publish a knowledge base with no coding and integrates right within the Help Scout help desk software with features such as AI-suggested articles within tickets.
AI can also help you write your documentation quickly by changing the tone, fixing wordiness, or expanding fragmented text.
If you’re a support team that wants to improve productivity, Help Scout is a good choice. Use it to create onboarding manuals, product documentation, FAQs and troubleshooting guides, and help more customers in less time.
Build an Internal Knowledge Base That Works
An internal knowledge base is strategic investment in your organization's most valuable asset: knowledge.
By centralizing information, standardizing processes, and making critical knowledge accessible to everyone, an effective knowledge base transforms how your teams collaborate and serve customers.
Success depends on both the technology you choose and the knowledge-sharing culture you create. The most effective implementations treat knowledge management as an ongoing process rather than a one-time project.
For those of you who are using Zendesk Guide, Swifteq has developed powerful solutions specifically designed to enhance your experience.
Swifteq's Help Center Manager transforms how you build and maintain your knowledge base with features that address the common pain points we've discussed throughout this article:
Rich article exports in multiple formats (CSV, PDF, Word).
Broken link detection to maintain knowledge base integrity.
Bulk operations for efficiently managing content at scale.
Find and replace functionality across your entire knowledge base.
Ready to see how Swifteq can transform your Zendesk Help Center? Start your free trial here today. Or ask for a quick demo.
Written by Catherine Heath
Catherine Heath is a content writer and community builder for creative and ethical companies. She’s a blogging sensei — you’ll often find her writing case studies, help documentation, and articles about customer support. Her writing has helped businesses to attract curious audiences and transform them into loyal advocates.