Is Product Knowledge Still Relevant for Customers in the GenAI Era?

Even since the software shipped, it has always been accompanied by documentation to help the customer if they face any difficulties with the software. Many regulatory and standard bodies, such as ISO, IEC, CE, and so on, emphasise the need for user manuals to be accompanied by software or hardware products. This helps companies obtain certification, enabling them to sell their products. In the old days, documentation was part of the desktop software and stored as a .chm file. Once the help menu is accessed or the “F1” key is pressed, the help content appears. This documentation helps customers find information about configuring a particular software feature or knowing how to use a particular product to its fullest potential. In desktop software, the help content is bundled into the product and available as in-app help.

Modern software is available through web browsers, and thus, in addition to in-app help, the content is freely available for search engines to index to increase knowledge distribution and discoverability. To help customers discover the information quickly rather than searching for it, many software vendors have introduced chatbots inside their product/help content. Given that many software solutions are centered around solving a business problem in a specific domain, using the software requires domain knowledge and technical know-how.

Empowering Users with Product Knowledge

Product knowledge is defined as rudimentary knowledge required to use software to accomplish a business activity, execute business processes/workflows, generate reports, and so on. Product knowledge accumulates technical knowledge and domain expertise. Many software vendors provide product knowledge to their customers through

• Customer education: Offering webinars, tutorials, and so on
• Product marketing artefacts such as short videos, blogs, and so on
• Help content in terms of user guides, manuals, and so on
• Intuitive interface inside their software

Key Channels for Sharing Product Knowledge

Product knowledge is an ongoing initiative by software vendors to educate their customers on existing product features and upcoming new features. This helps their customers to utilize the full capabilities of the software and continue to get value from the software product. The timeline of how the product knowledge is being disseminated to customers is as follows:

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How Vendors Drive Customer Engagement

Customers also attend conferences and events hosted by software vendors to understand new use cases and how software is evolving to meet their future needs. Also, software vendors introduce modern technologies so that their customers can leverage them to increase business efficiency and throughput.

Software vendors also create communities for their customers to exchange ideas and share best practices. This knowledge-sharing forum increases product knowledge of their customers and drives product adoption. These types of customer education initiatives turn customers into product advocates.

How GenAI  Agents Transform Product Experience

In this GenAI era, customers’ behavior is undergoing a paradigm shift. Customers wish to accomplish tasks or goals rather than pressing buttons on the UI screen in the software. Modern customers prefer to ask a chatbot a question and get answers quickly rather than browsing help content.

Table: Characteristics of traditional customer vs modern customer

If a chatbot can provide an accurate response to a customer’s “how-to” question, with the help of AI agents, agents can execute a response on the UI with minimal input from the customer. The customer does not need to have product knowledge. The beauty of a chatbot is that it can perform semantic matching of topics based on the customer’s questions. This means that customers do not need to know the business terminology or any product feature names. With synonyms, chatbots can understand the intent, translate into business terms, and provide the right response.

Once the chatbot responds to a “how-to” question, an AI agent can take that response and execute all the steps mentioned in the response. The customer can be kept in the loop to see what an AI agent is doing in the software UI to build trust. If the AI agent needs input from the customer during execution of these steps, it can pause and nudge the customer for the input. In the future, once the AI agents gain trust from the customer, they can execute steps in the background and “get things done”.

The AI agents have the power to completely reimagine the product experience. Since the AI agent uses the output of the chatbot, which is powered by knowledge base articles, it is easier to prove the value of documentation.

The Automated, Customer-Centric Future

Product knowledge is at the customer’s disposal anytime they need it. However, having the product knowledge to operate software will fade away quickly with the rise of GenAI chatbots and AI agents. AI agents will be pervasive in the modern software stack soon, which will change the product experience drastically. The documentation will be behind the scenes and will be used extensively by the AI agents to get the truth and accomplish the goals of your customer. This space is evolving rapidly, and the future interface will be exciting to watch.