Help Center

This guide shows you how to collect and utilize reader feedback on your help articles to continuously improve their quality and effectiveness.

Before You Begin

• Access to your help center platform's analytics or feedback dashboard.
• Permissions to view article statistics and reader comments.
• Permissions to edit and publish help center articles.

Steps

1. Understand the 'Was this helpful?' Voting System — Most help centers include a simple feedback mechanism, typically a "Was this helpful?" prompt with "Yes" (helpful) and "No" (not helpful) options. Users click these buttons to quickly indicate their satisfaction. A higher percentage of "Yes" votes generally indicates a well-received article, while a higher percentage of "No" votes signals potential issues.
2. Access Article Feedback Statistics — Navigate to your help center's administrative or analytics section. Here, you should find a dashboard or report that displays feedback statistics for each article, including the total number of "Yes" and "No" votes, and often a calculated helpfulness percentage. This data helps you quickly identify which articles are performing well and which ones are struggling.
3. Analyze Feedback to Identify Improvement Areas — Review articles with low helpfulness percentages. A high number of "No" votes suggests that users are not finding the information they need, or the content is unclear, incomplete, or inaccurate. Look for patterns across multiple articles to identify broader content gaps or common points of confusion.
4. Utilize the Comment Feature (if available) — Many feedback systems include an optional comment box for users to provide more detailed explanations after voting. These comments are invaluable for understanding *why* an article was unhelpful. They can highlight missing steps, confusing terminology, outdated information, or alternative solutions users were looking for. Prioritize reviewing comments on articles with high "No" rates.
5. Iterate and Improve Articles Based on Feedback — Once you've identified articles needing improvement and gathered specific insights from comments, update the content. This might involve:
   • Adding more detailed steps or examples.
   • Clarifying ambiguous language.
   • Updating outdated screenshots or instructions.
   • Adding new sections to cover frequently asked questions or edge cases.
   • Breaking down complex topics into simpler, more digestible articles.
   After making changes, monitor the feedback for the updated article to see if the helpfulness rating improves.

Verify It Worked

To confirm your efforts are successful, regularly check the feedback statistics for the articles you've updated. Look for an increase in the "Yes" vote percentage and a decrease in "No" votes. Additionally, monitor if the number of negative comments or support tickets related to that topic decreases over time.