Have you used Confluence as customer facing/access knowledgebase?

[Jennifer Vecellio]

Looking for a customer facing/access knowledgebase for large body of content. Being able to search is key. Wondering who has used Confluence for this and any setup tips/best practices. Looking for good/not so good feedback. Thank you!

[Philip Colmer]

We're using Confluence as a knowledgebase and we've had a few reports of users not being able to find what they are looking for. The problem seems to be stemming from two issues:

1. Users are used to Google, so they expect Confluence to just "understand" what they are searching for.

2. Related, users don't necessarily use the same words or terms as documentation writers, so search fails there.

I don't know if there is a solution to either of those points but that is our experience.

The platform is, I think, pretty good for holding the knowledge … but structure and content isn't enough. If a user can't figure out the structure because they don't know enough to figure out where to look for the answer, they are going to resort to search and if search lets them down ...

[Jennifer Vecellio]

I've found a lot of comments regarding using Confluence internally, but can't find info on using it for an external facing solution. Thanks!

[Jennifer Vecellio]

What type of feedback do you hear from your customers who are using it?

[Davin Studer]

Confluence is a great platform for this. However, the tool alone will not make you documentation great. We have teams in our organization that do a great job with the content and they like confluence. We also have other teams that have not been organized and methodical in the approach and they are the ones that complain about the products that is is impossible to find what they want.

So, whatever tool you use make sure to have a plan to keep you content organized and make sure that you have buy-in and understanding from all those that edit the content so that you have consistency.