Supercharging self-service communities with AI-generated knowledge

Instead of sifting through endless piles of content, AI consolidates and structures information from every corner of your community — user-generated posts, support documentation, or external resources — into a single, organized, and easily navigable hub. No more hunting for answers; AI ensures that users find exactly what they need.

But AI doesn’t stop at just organizing. It takes it to the next level. With incredible precision, AI categorizes and classifies data, extracting and enriching metadata to create consistent tags and better searchability. The result? A streamlined, intuitive experience where users can find relevant content without the clutter.

AI's capabilities in managing complex tasks are truly impressive. It can automatically create large-scale taxonomies, ontologies, and even knowledge graphs. What used to require hours of manual work can now be accomplished instantly.

GenAI takes the hassle out of sifting through long discussions, articles, or forum threads by automatically summarizing them into concise, easy-to-understand highlights. This allows community members and support agents to grasp key points quickly.

AI-powered extractive summarization (which pulls out the most relevant phrases and snippets) identifies the most pertinent pieces of information. On the other hand, abstractive summarization (which generates entirely new summaries) allows for clearer understanding and faster action.

But summarizing content is just one part of the story. Guardrails, such as well-designed prompts, confidence scores, and clear thresholds, ensure GenAI delivers reliable, fact-based summaries that are grounded in truth.

AI takes the guesswork out of identifying content gaps in your online community, making the process faster and more efficient. Rather than manually searching for missing pieces, AI scans your existing content and immediately highlights areas that need more attention, ensuring your knowledge base remains comprehensive and up-to-date. It’s like having a digital assistant who knows exactly where your content is lacking and can pinpoint exactly what needs to be added.

What’s even more powerful? AI compares long-tail search queries with your existing content, revealing hidden gaps and offering actionable insights. Whether your team creates new content or AI generates it, these recommendations ensure you always provide users with the most relevant and timely resources.

Businesses can generate fresh, relevant content directly from community feedback, FAQs, and trending topics. Whether it’s articles, troubleshooting guides, or knowledge base entries, AI ensures that content is timely, up-to-date, and aligned with the community's most urgent needs.

GenAI takes it further by analyzing content gaps and offering recommendations for new content or campaigns. It can also help personalize messaging or rephrase content to cater to different audiences, ensuring a tailored experience for every user. Whether you're partially or fully automating content generation, GenAI scales the process across communities, marketing campaigns, sales outreach, and internal business functions.

AI can analyze community interactions to identify top contributors and subject matter experts, enabling users to connect with trusted sources on specific topics. This builds trust within the community and directs users to qualified individuals for complex questions.

Keeping expert information current can be challenging because experts often self-identify, and their information can quickly become outdated. AI addresses this issue by monitoring various signals, such as job titles, organizational roles, user profiles, content ownership, and participation in key projects. 

Additionally, AI promotes proactive engagement by identifying when content needs updating. It highlights outdated or incomplete entries in the knowledge base, encouraging experts to refresh the content and ensure that the community has access to the most accurate insights.

AI can help scale community management — a challenging task for many organizations — by automating processes and making managing large and active communities easier. With AI’s ability to track user interactions and identify trends, community managers can quickly pinpoint areas for improvement, such as topics with declining engagement or new conversations that could spark interest.

AI plays an essential role in keeping the community active and engaged. Tools like automated surveys, real-time interaction prompts, or personalized messages help keep users involved.

Employees can query the knowledge base using natural language, creating a conversational experience rather than a traditional search. Whether you're inquiring about specific documents or interacting with the content, AI facilitates a smooth and engaging experience that brings the knowledge base to life.

The introduction of AI assistants tailored to specific documents or collections, and a versatile query tool creates a seamless way for employees to quickly find the information they need. This intelligent search saves time and uncovers valuable insights that can inspire innovation and enhance business outcomes. The result? Increased operational efficiency and empowered employees who can take action more swiftly.

Self-service customer QA and chatbots or conversational AI are closely related but serve different purposes.

Self-service customer QA typically refers to automated systems that help customers find answers independently, using knowledge bases, FAQs, and search functions. It relies on pre-written content, such as guides and articles, that customers can browse for solutions.

Self-service employee QA aims to empower internal teams, particularly in departments such as HR and IT, by providing quick access to answers regarding tools, policies, and processes. For instance, an employee can utilize self-service QA to update personal information, submit or modify an IT ticket, or access HR policies without contacting a support agent.

In contrast, chatbots and conversational AI offer more dynamic, real-time engagement. They facilitate personalized, ongoing conversations, allowing deeper interaction than the static, on-demand content provided by self-service QA.

Tracking the right performance indicators is essential to truly understanding AI’s impact on self-service. These key metrics help measure the effectiveness of AI-driven solutions:

• Response time: AI in self-service offers speed, with solutions like chatbots addressing queries quickly. Shorter response times generally increase customer satisfaction as users get immediate answers. However, accuracy is equally important; AI systems must continuously train and refine real-time data and user feedback to provide correct, contextually relevant solutions. This ensures that customers get fast responses and receive the right information.

• F1 score: The harmonic mean of precision and recall, providing a balanced measure of both the accuracy of the positive predictions and the AI model's ability to identify relevant instances.

  • Precision: The proportion of true positive predictions (relevant answers) out of all the predicted positive results.

  • Recall: The proportion of true positive predictions out of all actual positive instances in the dataset.

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT): Monitoring customer satisfaction helps assess how well AI meets user needs. Surveys or sentiment analysis can indicate whether issues were resolved and the process was user-friendly.

• Resolution rates: A high-resolution rate shows the AI's effectiveness in solving problems independently. This metric reveals the scope of issues the AI can handle.

• Cost reduction: AI self-service tools lower operational costs by eliminating the need for live agents. Tracking savings in agent time and cost per interaction measures AI's financial impact.
  

AI and GenAI have transformed knowledge management and self-service in customer support, altering how businesses interact with their customers. These technologies help automate responses, personalize experiences, identify content gaps, and more, allowing for the development of more efficient and scalable solutions.

These applications illustrate how AI enhances customer engagement, from proactive support to smarter self-service options. Now is the time to adopt AI-driven solutions to optimize your strategy. To dive deeper into the tools that power these use cases, check out our blog on using AI to generate community content and engagement.

Embracing these innovations today will make your business successful in tomorrow’s digital landscape.

Khoros leverages the capabilities of leading generative AI models through an open and flexible approach. It combines generative AI with unique data, effective orchestration, and multichannel engagement tools to create rich conversational interactions. This results in an always-on, closed-loop system that continuously learns, improves, and delivers quick benefits to every customer.

Our award-winning enterprise software makes it easier for complex brands to engage with customers at scale across all digital, social, and brand-owned channels. Whether for service and support, communications, or sales, the solutions powered by advanced automation and AI unlock more consistent, personalized, and helpful omnichannel interactions between brands and their audiences. 

Ready to elevate your customer engagement? Let us help you unlock the full potential of AI and automation to drive personalized, seamless experiences.