Zendesk Guide Best Practices: How to Make the Most of Your Help Center
- Eryn Chesney
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Enabling your customers to quickly and easily find answers on their own is one of the best ways to improve their experience with your brand.
Most customers prefer self-service over reaching out to support, so giving them the right tools to do so eliminates a major friction point and enhances their overall experience.
A well-structured knowledge base empowers users by providing them with instant access to relevant information, reducing frustration and allowing them to resolve issues without waiting for support.
Not only does this improve customer satisfaction, but it also increases efficiency within your support team, as they can focus on more complex and high-value interactions rather than repeatedly answering the same common questions.
If you’re using Zendesk for your customer support, you already have a powerful platform at your fingertips to build a comprehensive help center, but it will need some key customizations to maximize its effectiveness.
By following these Zendesk Guide best practices, you can create a customer-centric knowledge base that truly serves your users and also streamlines your operations.
Why Is a Help Center Important
A well-structured Zendesk Guide help center helps customers find answers independently while also equipping your customer service team with valuable content to support them.
By making self-service more accessible, you empower your users to find solutions on their own, which can reduce frustration and increase confidence in your brand.
While building a robust help center may seem daunting, it’s a worthwhile investment.
A well-thought-out knowledge base can significantly reduce the volume of support tickets, freeing up your team to focus on more complex inquiries.
Over time, this means lower operational costs, improved efficiency, and happier customers who don’t have to wait for a reply to get the assistance they need.
Top Zendesk Guide Best Practices to Make the Most of Your Help Center
Brand your Zendesk Guide theme
Your help center should feel like a natural extension of your brand, not a separate website.
When customers visit, they should still feel confident that they’re engaging with your company, reinforcing trust in your brand. A branded design also feels welcome and familiar for users.
There are a ton of Zendesk Guide templates in the Zendesk Marketplace to choose from, which you can then customize with your brand’s logo, colors, fonts, and imagery.
A visually cohesive experience makes navigation more intuitive and prevents users from feeling like they’ve been redirected to a third-party site.
Small details, such as using your brand’s tone of voice in the help articles, can also make a significant difference in making your help center feel integrated into the overall customer journey.
Use a simple design
When designing your help center, remember that less is more. This is one of the knowledge base best practices valid no matter your platform.
A clutter-free, easy-to-navigate interface ensures customers can quickly find the information they need without distractions or confusion.
Prioritize a clean layout with clearly labeled sections, logical categorization, and an intuitive search function so a user can quickly query articles with a keyword.
Use white space strategically to break up content and make articles easier to digest.
The goal is to create a seamless and frustration-free self-service experience that encourages customers to rely on your help center as a first stop for their support needs.
Format your articles for readability
A well-formatted article is easier to read, scan, and navigate.
Use clear headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to structure your content in a way that allows users to quickly locate critical information.
Take the time to define content quality standards for anyone on your support team who will be creating or managing content to ensure consistency across all articles.
Standardized templates for how-to guides, troubleshooting steps, and FAQs help maintain uniformity and make it easier for customers to consume information.
You should also consider including elements in articles like:
Bolded keywords for emphasis.
Callout boxes for critical information.
Numbered steps for step-by-step instructions.
A well-structured help article ensures that even complex information can be easily understood by all users, regardless of their level of familiarity with your product or service.
Communicate complex information in simple terms
Technical jargon and complicated explanations can alienate users, making it harder for them to find the help they need.
Instead, use simple, straightforward language that anyone can understand.
When writing help articles, imagine you are explaining the process to someone completely new to your product, and default to using the language your customers would choose.
Avoid assuming prior knowledge, and take the time to provide context when necessary.
However, be as concise as possible—too much information can overwhelm the reader. Striking the right balance between simplicity and completeness ensures that users feel supported rather than confused.
Create a FAQ page
A well-organized FAQ page can significantly improve self-service success rates.
Start by compiling the most common questions your support team receives and provide clear, detailed answers to them.
If you notice repeated inquiries about the same topics, your FAQ page is the perfect place to address them.
Customers should be able to scan through questions and quickly find the information they need. Organizing FAQs by category or topic can further enhance usability.
Zendesk Guide makes it easy to create and update an FAQ section, ensuring that your help center evolves alongside your customers’ needs.
Design a tailored user experience
A successful help center isn’t just a collection of articles—it’s a thoughtfully designed resource tailored to your users’ needs.
Consider how different customer segments interact with your knowledge base and personalize their experience accordingly.
For example, if you serve a global audience, offering translated content is essential. The Zendesk Guide Translation App simplifies this by automatically translating articles into multiple languages, ensuring that non-English-speaking users receive the same level of support.
Beyond language, think about how different types of users might require different types of content.
New customers might need onboarding guides, while advanced users might look for troubleshooting tips. Structuring your help center to accommodate these varying needs ensures that everyone finds value in the content you provide.
Use AI to identify content gaps
A knowledge base isn’t static—it requires ongoing updates and improvements.
However, manually identifying content gaps can be challenging. This is where AI tools like Zendesk AI and Swifteq’s Zendesk Analytics App come in handy.
These tools analyze search data and article performance to surface insights about what customers are looking for and whether they are finding it.
If users frequently search for a topic that isn’t covered in your help center, that’s a clear sign you need to create a new article. Similarly, if an article has a high bounce rate, it might need better formatting or clearer explanations.
Using AI-driven insights helps ensure your knowledge base stays relevant and continues to meet the needs of your customers.
Enhance user experience with navigation tools
A large knowledge base can quickly become overwhelming without proper navigation tools.
Thankfully, there are a few simple features you can utilize to help with that.
These are not default within Zendesk Guide, but can be implemented through deploying custom code or Zendesk extensions.
Table of contents
Incorporating a table of contents will vastly help with the reader's ability to scan a large knowledge base to quickly find relevant info.
It also provides structure to all the content you’re hosting and allows users to quickly scan a menu to locate the articles needed to self-serve.
Side navigation
Providing users with static side navigation allows for easy browsing between topics and categories within your help center. Without it, a reader can easily get lost.
An intuitive navigation menu ensures there is always an easy path back to your help center homepage or other articles, reducing frustration and improving the likelihood that customers will spend the time needed to browse content and the answers they’re looking for.
Incorporate a video gallery
Not all users prefer reading help articles—some may find it easier to learn through video tutorials.
A dedicated video gallery can complement your written content by providing engaging, step-by-step instructions in a refreshing visual format.
Consider creating short explainer videos for things like common processes, troubleshooting steps, and feature overviews.
These can make complex topics more digestible and improve knowledge retention for your customers.
Establish a process for ongoing maintenance
A help center is only effective if it remains up to date and you can’t set it and forget it with your support content. Outdated articles, broken links, and irrelevant information can quickly populate and will only erode customer trust and lead to frustration.
Establish an internal routine for auditing your Zendesk Guide to ensure accuracy.
A tool like the Zendesk Help Center Manager simplifies this process by allowing you to quickly find and replace outdated information, fix broken links, and duplicate sections as needed.
Promote your help center
Lastly, after all that work to create a robust help center, it’s only useful if customers know it exists and can easily access it at the moments where they might need support.
Map out your customer’s journey and strategically place entry points to it where it makes sense.
For example, if your customers typically have questions about how to get started once they’ve created an account with you, you may want to include links to your onboarding documentation right on the customer account dashboard or homepage.
Common areas to promote your knowledge base content can also be:
In website menus and footers.
On post-purchase emails.
Within support chat widgets.
On contact forms or community forums.
By making it easily accessible, you encourage self-service, reduce support inquiries, and improve customer satisfaction.
Taking Zendesk Guide to the next level
The most successful companies recognize that self-service isn't a secondary channel—it's increasingly becoming the preferred first point of contact for customers seeking solutions.
By investing in your Zendesk Guide with thoughtful branding, intuitive navigation, clear content, and regular maintenance, you're creating a resource that continuously delivers value long after implementation.
While Zendesk provides a solid foundation, truly exceptional help centers leverage additional tools and customizations to address specific business needs.
At Swifteq, we've developed specialized add-ons that enhance Zendesk's native capabilities, helping you build a knowledge base that not only meets customer expectations but exceeds them.
Ready to transform your help center into a powerful engine for customer success and operational efficiency?
Book a free demo today and discover how our solutions can take your knowledge base to the next level.
Written by Eryn Chesney
Eryn is an experienced e-commerce CX leader with a strong background in writing and content marketing. She’s passionate about empowering support teams and using the invaluable insights they collect to drive business success.