November 2024 Meetups

November 14: Coffee Hour with Experts - Search Experiences

Highlights from this coffee hour:

• Katherine Wedgewood (Liaison), initiated the discussion by asking how participants help users find the content they need, including strategies for search optimization within the expert system.
• Kalyn Howard (Westerra) shared that her team enabled top-level navigation, allowing users to see main content categories and filter results. For new hires, her organization provides an introductory training on using the knowledge source and collaborates with senior employees to keep resources updated. Kalyn emphasized the importance of tagging content by ownership to streamline the search process.
• Stephen Naso (Liaison) inquired about content structuring for better searchability, asking if participants have tips for arranging information to support easy navigation without relying solely on the search bar. He noted his curiosity about structuring and tagging strategies that make pages more intuitive for scanning.
• Katherine Wedgewood (Liaison) discussed her team’s approach of consistently structuring pages across products, which has improved navigation and searchability for both internal staff and external clients. This method allows users to rely on predictable header names and search terms.
• Jessica Betterly (Sylogist) described her team's use of customer search terms to refine tagging and optimize content for user search habits. By periodically reviewing search reports, her team adds relevant tags to content, helping users locate specific information.
• Kalyn Howard (Westerra) added that she uses the expert dashboard to set specific articles as top search results for common search phrases. She ensures keywords are relevant by reviewing tags and titles based on user feedback, making search results more user-oriented.
• Morrissette, Samantha (ThermoFisher) discussed implementing a faceted search structure by product category, guiding users to search within specific instrument or product categories. This approach simplifies the process for users who need fast access to particular resources.
• Stephen Naso (Liaison) explained faceted search as a solution for filtering search results within top-level categories. He shared how his team restricts search scopes to prevent unrelated results from appearing, making it easier for users to locate relevant help content within specific applications.
• Kalyn Howard (Westerra) expressed interest in using Salesforce for ticket deflection but mentioned her organization is still aligning on this integration. She shared her experience with demoing AI-driven chatbots and noted that integrating such tools would enhance user support.
• Ardan Sharp (Liaison) provided an example of using Salesforce integration, which incorporates an expert component in the Salesforce Community interface, filtering help content by specific client categories.
• Stephen Naso (Liaison) elaborated on the effectiveness of his team’s chatbot, which uses an API to pull content from expert and reduce live support chats by guiding users to help articles. This “set and forget” model significantly cut down live chat inquiries, showing that chatbots can complement user search experiences effectively.
• Katherine Wedgewood (Liaison) concluded that integrating search insights and user feedback, especially with tagging and chatbot feedback, helps create a responsive, user-centered search experience.