Business Background

SMARTSEER is an AI-driven decision-making system that helps businesses connect the right products with the right customers. Their AI-powered software analyzes user behavior to understand preferences and interests, personalizing website content to deliver the best possible user experience. The startup primarily works to the travel industry.

Business Requirement

As a 10-member startup, SMARTSEER wanted to professionalize its customer support by creating a centralized platform for hosting all customer-facing documentation, including installation guides, user manuals, and troubleshooting resources. This would ensure that customers could instantly find the information they needed.

Stefan Henß, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer at SMARTSEER, explains,

Our software integrates with customers’ websites and back-end systems to analyze user activity and personalize the experience. We also offer a variety of tools, analytics, dashboards, and development support, which can be quite complex.

Customer support noticed that many customers repeatedly asked the same questions, prompting the need for a knowledge base.

Initially, SMARTSEER’s documentation consisted of individual documents created by a customer manager, product manager, or software developer when a customer requested specific information. However, this approach posed several challenges:

• Files shared via email quickly became outdated.
• It was difficult to track who had shared which files and with whom.
• The documents were hard to compile because they were in different formats, such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or PDFs, depending on the creator.

SMARTSEER also attempted to host its documentation on Confluence, which was already used for internal purposes, but ran into several issues:

• Adding new user accounts for each client was cumbersome.
• There was no way to restrict access, meaning anyone with access could view all documents, including internal ones.

These challenges led SMARTSEER to search for an alternative solution for hosting an online knowledge base.

Business Solution

After researching various knowledge management tools, SMARTSEER chose Document360 to host its documentation. Although they are still in the process of migrating content, they quickly realized why Document360 was the perfect fit for their needs:

• Collaborative workflows: Since SMARTSEER doesn’t have a dedicated technical writer, all team members contribute content, which is loaded as drafts. Subject matter experts then peer-review the drafts before publication. This feature allows multiple people to work on a document simultaneously.
• Support for multiple formats: Document360 enables easy import of documentation from various formats, including PDFs, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs.
• Organized structure: The category section on the left makes documents more organized, while sub-categories, which go three levels deep, and internal links help customers browse and discover useful information.
• Up-to-date content: With only one version available to customers, they always know they are accessing the most current information.
• Professional templates: Customizable templates ensure that all articles follow a standardized, professional format.
• Seamless access: Single sign-on (SSO) and JSON Web Token (JWT) allow customers to access the private knowledge base effortlessly. If any client needs to grant access to new staff, SMARTSEER can do so within minutes.
• Customization: Custom CSS and HTML options let the team tailor the site to match their brand guidelines without needing external assistance.
• Quick customization with WOW site: Document360’s WOW site feature gave SMARTSEER two design options for the homepage, allowing them to make minor modifications and go live quickly.
• Effective search functionality: The platform’s search feature helps customers quickly find the information they need.

Kidist Cherkos Dawit, software engineer at SMARTSEER, commented,

Integrating Document360 into our platform using JWT was a great solution. The ability to choose between two homepage designs made the process even smoother. With a few minor tweaks using the site customization option, we were able to go live in no time.

Business Impact

Since moving to Document360, SMARTSEER has seen an increase in platform usage, with more customers engaging with their knowledge base.

Stefan says,

The number of external users and the views on many of our articles has been continuously increasing.

They have also received positive feedback from customers, who now assure the team that they have all the information they need.

Stefan adds,

Hearing a customer say our guides provide everything they need is a big shift from customers frequently calling with questions.