[DO NOT DELETE] Kitchen Sink Post

This is a Kitchen Sink Post, it is only used for testing components and is not indexed!

What does a kitchen sink do?

In reality, maintenance is not glamorous enough for a TV show. Nobody is getting a special slide in the company town hall meeting celebrating maintenance work. It often goes entirely unrecognized — unless it’s not done.

Knowledge base maintenance is absolutely critical to quality customer support, but it is too often under-resourced, neglected, or entirely forgotten. However, with a little thought, planning, and ongoing effort, we can build a sustainable system to address maintenance. Here’s how to get it done.

Why kitchen sink maintenance matters

A knowledge base should not be a dusty old history book. It should be a living set of documents with genuine practical benefits, and that requires maintenance. The primary reason knowledge bases matter is because they are the engine of customer self-service. A customer who doesn’t have to wait for a reply from the support team is on their way more quickly and has removed some of the support team’s workload.

That only works when the self-service resources are accurate, helpful, and easily found and understood. Keeping self-service documentation in that state is what knowledge base maintenance is all about.

If your customers try to self-serve but find that the documentation doesn’t answer their questions or is inaccessible or inaccurate, they’ll soon learn not to bother. Similarly, your own support team will not rely on the knowledge base to answer their own questions.

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Why should I use a kitchen sink?

Whether you call it documentation or your wiki or help content, a knowledge base should do what it says on the tin: store knowledge. It contains information intended to be useful to the people (and, these days, the machine learning AI algorithms) that consume it.

Although the initial writing of those documents can be a huge effort, at that point the work is far from over. Maintaining a knowledge base includes:

Where do kitchen sinks come from?

Although the initial writing of those documents can be a huge effort, at that point the work is far from over. Maintaining a knowledge base includes:

• Regularly reviewing documents for accuracy and completeness.

• Updating documents to reflect changes to the subject of the documentation, such as new features or changed behaviors.

• Improvements and updates to navigation and knowledge base structure to make them more findable and accessible.

• Removal of information that is no longer relevant or correct.

• Reviewing customer and support team feedback and adjusting documentation accordingly.

• Expansion and addition of help documents to provide better coverage of the topic area.

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Kitchen Sink Reading

Customer Service

What is a Support Ticket (& Why We Don’t Use That Term)

Customer Service

How to Create a Jira Ticketing System

Customer Service

The 11 Best Issue Tracking Software for Customer Support Teams

Let that one sink in

You know maintenance is good for your team, your customers, and yourself. You understand it needs to be done and deserves your time and attention. All that remains is getting it done.

Make your own life as easy as possible by creating an environment conducive to knowledge base maintenance. Schedule it, report on it, and make it visible. You’ll feel better when it’s done.

That sinking feeling is finally gone

You know maintenance is good for your team, your customers, and yourself. You understand it needs to be done and deserves your time and attention. All that remains is getting it done.

Make your own life as easy as possible by creating an environment conducive to knowledge base maintenance. Schedule it, report on it, and make it visible. You’ll feel better when it’s done.