Why I’m migrating my content to a knowledge base built with Intercom

An illustration of a person moving objects from one box to another

In this article, I want to share with you why I’m migrating all my Service Design content in a knowledge base built with intercom.

It’s now a few months that I’m experimenting and reflecting on the next step for how I make my Service Design content accessible.

Here are the previous blog post from my experiments:

What I've tried and where I want to go

Here is what I’ve learned from these experiments:

Knowledge bases are a natural fit

A knowledge base is the most natural tool for what I’m trying to achieve. Knowledge base software come with a few features that make a lot of sense in what I’m trying to achieve.

A screenshot showing one of the first experiments of a knowledge base with my content built with Help Scout

  • Search: Excellent search that goes through all the content

  • Quantity of content: Can work with a lot of content

  • Feedback: Let’s people share feedback if a knowledge piece was useful or not

  • Useful reports: the knowledge base is made for customer support so it shows when there are holes in the system, like people not finding content in a search.

AI chat tools are a great addition to search

I’ve also played with tools like SiteGPT that allow people to ask a chatbot that behaves a bit like ChatGPT any question. Then the bot answers based on the content I've trained him with.

A screenshot showing an experiment called ask AI that let's people ask service design questions to a bot

The benefit for me with this type of tool is that a lot of the time, the bot has the answer as I have a pretty good amount of content, but when it doesn't it's even more interesting for me! It shows me what are the other questions I have to answer in my library of Service Design Questions and Answers.

So, what’s the end goal I have in mind?

I’d love to create a sort of tiny bible of Service Design, where you can find starting points for almost any question or topic related to Service Design.

Intercom is the best mix of both

So why did I choose intercom to do this? Here a few reasons:

Great interface:

The interface, for the end user, of the knowledge base is super easy to use and very clean.

A screenshot showing the intercom knowledge base I use to create my tiny service design bible

Made for loads of content:

The admin interface is really made to handle a lot of articles, so it makes my life easier!

A screenshot showing the admin interface of intercom with a lot of articles in it.

Plus the interface is also pretty well done for end users as I can have three levels of categories so that I don't overwhelm people with all the content I have on the first sight.

Fin the AI bot:

Intercom has a bot that's called fin that you can activate. Basically it does what SiteGPT did in my experiments, but without having to pay a second bill or having to maintain a second system. This feature allows people to ask a chatbot questions and then "Fin" answers based on the content it finds in the knowledge base. The great tiny detail is that it always links back to the original articles, so that people can go further.

A screenshot showing the Swiss Innovation Academy with the chat bubble open that shows an answer from the bot to the question: What is a service blueprint

I can integrate the knowledge base on my Podia website

On the Swiss Innovation Academy website I can add the knowledge base in the little chat bubble that is on the bottom right of the screen. So from anywhere people can get an answer to their question.

A screenshot showing the Swiss Innovation Academy with the chat bubble open and the tab "Help" open that shows the categories of my knowledge base.

But intercom isn’t perfect

The biggest flaw of the intercom is its pricing structure. The most basic tier is around $ 80$ per month, which is a lot, but still manageable for my goal. But then when you want to add any feature, the pricing goes crazy. It quickly jumps to a few hundred dollars.

The tool is clearly made for bigger organisations than a nerd who wants to share all that he has learned.

But Daniele, you're crazy you're giving out all your content out for free.

Yes. And yes. I strongly believe that it makes sense that people can access all my content, even the stuff in my paid books, from that knowledge base. So when they search something, they don't see the content from one book but from many alongside all my free content.

And if people feel that they want to go further, have a better reading experience with an epub or physical book, or just want to support my work, I'm sure they'll buy a book or course.

But yes. I might be crazy.

What does it mean for the future of the Swiss Innovation Academy website?

Over the next months, I'll transition most of my content to intercom and therefore will keep the website that runs on Podia as a proper store instead that highlights the paid stuff. Therefore I'll need to redesign the website so that it better shows the knowledge base.

Where am I in the transition?

Slowly but surely I'm building my searchable database of all my Service Design content I've created over the years.

I've already imported 173 articles so far in Intercom, the tool I'll use to run this new project.

There's still a lot of work to do as I still have to add:

  • 20 years of service design history

  • all my 300+ service design principles

  • all the 400+ service design definitions

and much more.

So there is still a long way to go, but I'm already very happy with the first results.

Written on Friday 28th of July 2023 by Daniele Catalanotto