A knowledge base can help to keep prospective buyers and established customers informed, but to work it needs to be informative, concise, and consistent. To help your organization put its best foot forward, we’ve put together five knowledge base article template examples specifically for business use.

What is a knowledge base?

A knowledge base is an online repository of information. It usually focuses on a company’s products and services, but may include broader informational content related to the organization’s field. The articles in a knowledge base should serve to answer common questions or explore essential topics in detail.

For example, a financial close software provider’s knowledge base might include articles with headlines like:

  • Getting started with [brand] financial close software
  • Finance tool integrations for [brand]
  • Financial standards your business should know
  • How to reconcile accounts in [brand] software.

Why knowledge base articles matter

Sometimes, touching base with customers and providing ongoing support isn’t enough. Many customers prefer self-service options, and having a knowledge base is key to this approach.

Image from Tidio

As well as catering to these customers, having a strong knowledge base brings with it the following benefits:

Improved accessibility

Knowledge base articles give customers the resources to answer their own questions. All they need is a basic search function. Specific kinds of content, such as beginner’s guides, can help make seemingly complex services or software much less intimidating. And, with a mix of written articles, infographics, and video tutorials, you can cater to a range of people.

Brand accessibility is essential for landing new customers or clients, especially when it comes to tech. Less tech-savvy people may be put off if there isn’t an obvious way of getting to grips with your platform. A clearly established set of learning resources helps to onboard new buyers.

Reduced pressure on customer support teams

Providing self-service knowledge resources also helps to reduce the strain on your digital customer service and support teams. In theory, each issue you can answer through knowledge base articles should reduce the number of people queuing online or over the phone.

Not only does this cut down the average queue time for people who still need support, it also gives your team more breathing room to handle more complex queries. That means they’re more likely to resolve issues and satisfy customers.

Reduced customer frustration

There are few things more annoying than an inexplicable issue with something you’ve paid for. Even if customer support can eventually solve the problem, the process of getting there can feel like unnecessary hoops to jump through.

Angry customers may take their frustrations out online, which always carries the risk of negative publicity and backlash. A library of effective knowledge base articles give irate customers an easy path to the answer before their frustration hits its peak.

5 knowledge base article template examples

The articles in a knowledge base can cover any number of topics, depending on what products or services it’s for. But if you’re just starting to build your base, these five examples make a great starting point. Just remember: much like with sales pitch examples, knowledge base content needs to be engaging as well as informative.

1. FAQs

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) may be the most common form of knowledge content you’ll find. The main advantage of FAQs is that they centralize major queries in one place, so that people don’t have to waste their time (and patience) searching around for individual answers.

Common examples of FAQs include:

  • How do I reset my password?
  • How do I delete my account?
  • What is the returns policy?

Here’s a basic template for how FAQs should look:

  • Title (e.g. Frequently Asked Questions)
    Short intro to establish the topic
      • Table of contents
  • FAQ 1
      • Clear and concise answer
      • Further detail or examples as needed
      • Links to more in-depth articles
  • FAQ 2
    • Clear and concise answer.
    • Further detail or examples as needed
    • Links to more in-depth articles
  • Further FAQs (as above)

RingCentral’s Knowledge Base

2. Guides and tutorials

Whereas FAQs provide simple answers to common questions, guides and tutorials are much more in-depth. Even relatively simple tools or services can benefit from some how-to articles, and they’re a necessity for more complex offerings.

Here’s a brief template for how a step-by-step guide might look:

  • Title (e.g. Getting started with [brand] software)
    • Introduce your service, as well as the specific features covered in this article
  • Step 1 (e.g. Creating a profile)
    • Establish a clear starting point for readers to follow along
    • Clearly outline the process (in this case, setting up a username and password, confirming the account via email, logging in, etc).
    • Illustrate the process with screenshots
  • Step 2 (e.g. Exploring Your dashboard)
    • Continue on from the previous step
    • Break areas and features of your service into sections
    • Detail each part of your platform with examples of usage
  • Further steps (as above)
    • Maintain a consistent throughline.
    • Keep breaking things down into manageable chunks and using screenshots
  • Conclusion
    • Summarize the advice you’ve given
    • Tease what’s possible with full mastery of your products or services
    • Link to other resources as needed

3. Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting articles are arguably the biggest timesaver for your customer support team. They allow customers to take matters into their own hands, which can resolve simple issues on the user’s end faster than even responsive and timely support channels. Focus on the most common issues, and provide clearly actionable steps. A typical troubleshooting guide looks like this:

  • Issue-based title (e.g. How to pinpoint reporting errors in [brand])
    • Introduce the problem and its potential impact
    • Briefly mention your service’s diagnostic capabilities (if applicable)
  • Troubleshooting tools
    • Provide more detail on the troubleshooting tools and options that users have
      Include screenshots for clarity
  • Common causes of the issue
    • Detail the problems most likely to cause the error
      Relate these root causes back to specific troubleshooting methods where applicable, including screenshots
  • Resolving the issue
    • Highlight user-end options for restoring functionality
    • Establish any problems that will require contacting your support team and provide a method to do so
  • Conclusion
    • Recap the common causes and most effective solutions
    • Reaffirm that your support team is always more than happy to help

RingCentral’s knowledge base

4. Product comparison

As the name suggests, product comparisons break down how competing products and services stack up against one another. These might be direct competitors to your own product, or relevant tools for people in the industry. For example, if your product is a CRM, you might rank different contact center reporting software providers.

In general, product comparisons usually look like this:

  • Title (e.g. Choosing the best HRIS)
    • Introduce the type of product and its role
    • Describe what you’ll be rating products on (cost, customer support, etc)
  • Essential product features
    • List important features and their impact on product functionality
  • A numbered list of products
    • Brief intro
    • Product features and selling points
    • Best use cases
    • Limitations
    • Pricing
  • Conclusion
    • Reaffirm the most important capabilities for the product in question
      Reiterate which product(s) performed the best

5. Case studies

Case studies allow your knowledge base articles to tackle any number of issues, from challenges in your industry to the effectiveness of your products in an external setting. Good case studies use data to establish why what you’re doing works.

  • Detailed title (e.g. How [business] used [brand] to increase conversions by 60%)
    • Intro that summarizes the aims and findings, much like the abstract of a research paper
  • Background and challenges
    • Provide detail on the area of study, including relevant data and research findings
    • Outline difficulties that either affect the business or necessitate your product
  • Workplace solutions or product-based solutions
    • For workplace problems, outline best practices to help employees succeed
    • For product-based solutions, highlight which features helped
  • Final outcomes and conclusion
    • Establish the benefits and ideal outcomes of using your solution
    • If possible, use data to compare solution-assisted outcomes with unassisted outcomes

RingCentral customer stories

How to create an effective knowledge base

These knowledge base article templates should help you get started, but it takes more than that to craft genuinely effective content. As such, make sure that you:

  • Be straight-forward and specific: Brevity and clarity are vital for engaging knowledge base articles. Any jargon should be properly explained, if not removed entirely.
  • Optimize discovery: Search engines, keywords, and article spotlights are just a few of the tools at your disposal to make sure customers always see your most relevant or recent content.
  • Make improvements based on feedback: Take the time to poll readers. What you may see as optimized content could be too stiff, too technical, or not high-level enough. After all, industry experts don’t always have the best understanding of what counts as rudimentary knowledge.

Knowledge bases aren’t just for customers

If the idea of having everything you might need all in one place sounds good, consider building an internal knowledge base too. This might contain templates for an employee review, a breakdown of SOPs (standard operating procedures), or troubleshooting tips for your most used software. Ideally, this should be hosted on the company intranet or on your communications platform, keeping it both confidential and accessible.

Helping people help themselves

The knowledge base article template examples we’ve provided should help you build up a body of articles to keep customers informed. But remember, they’re only a starting point. Take the time to figure out exactly what customers are looking for—are there certain customer questions your chatbots get asked a lot? Common pain points that come up in discussion with your support team? These are all opportunities to create detailed knowledge base articles that can be referred to, helping your customers help themselves.

FAQs

How do you make sure articles are seen?

Your knowledge base should be easily accessible from your home page. Make sure to include a search function, and use tags and keywords so users can filter articles by topic. In addition, you can highlight specific content by sharing it in your email marketing or on your social media.

What should you do with old articles?

As your knowledge base ages, content will naturally become outdated or irrelevant. That said, don’t just delete them. Updating old articles not only keeps info recent, but also gives them renewed life in search rankings.

How many articles should a knowledge base have?

The answer is simple: as many as you need. While you shouldn’t artificially inflate a knowledge base with chaff content, a large library helps ensure that you’re prepared for any problem. If it’s something your customers have asked, then it’s something worth answering.

Originally published Jun 04, 2025