Would Confluence be suitable for a user help center ?

[Céline Daumesnil]

We would like to offer our customers a help center with articles and tutorials.
We are already using Confluence as a collaborative resource center between our employees and for internal projets.

Do you think Confluence might be used for that different purpose ?

[Kristian Klima · Accepted solution]

Hi @Céline Daumesnil 

Confluence is like an smartphone, you can turn it into pretty much anything ('there is an app for THAT') :) 

I have a strong penchant for turning Confluence into a very powerful and flexible product documentation CMS - including versioning, workflow controls, backups, conditional content, access control and CRM and analytics integration. 

You can find the outline of my favorite product documentation apps in this thread.

Thanks @Daniel_Domene_Kolekti for pointing to my company's site :) 

[Daniel_Domene_Kolekti · Accepted solution]

Hi @Céline Daumesnil,

You absolutely can use Confluence for a customer-facing help center! It's a popular choice for many companies because of its versatility. I actually wrote about this here not long ago.

From experience, here are some tips to consider when adapting Confluence for this purpose:

• Organisation: Well-defined spaces, clear labelling, and a robust search function are essential for easy navigation.
• Content Structure: Think about how customers will search for information. Use templates for consistency, break down information into digestible chunks, and incorporate visuals.
• Knowledge Base Apps: There are apps on the Atlassian Marketplace designed specifically to improve Confluence's capabilities as a help centre. These can help with things like creating FAQs or decision-tree style guides (disclaimer, one of our apps for better articles and tutorials!).

If you're looking for inspiration, there are many examples of companies successfully using Confluence for their help centres. I like this one from one of the Community leaders @Kristian Klima : https://docs.emplifi.io/platform/latest/home/ 

Good luck with building yours!

[Céline Daumesnil]

Thanks for your answer, helpful 😀

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_ · Accepted solution]

Confluence is an excellent choice for a help center @Céline Daumesnil 

It's built to be a collaborative environment with a focus on content, so it has all the necessary features to make knowledge-base spaces shine. Atlassian Marketplace provides even more solutions if you have a particular content use case or need additional features like diagramming, charting, or changing the default design.

[Sarp Egemen · Accepted solution]

Hi @Céline Daumesnil 

Exactly!
Atlassian already does this with Jira Service Management. It is already a feature where the knowledge base is a Confluence space for the support portal.

However, you don't need Jira Service Management to achieve this. In Confluence, you can simply share a directory or just a page as public access, or even create a new public space and use it as your help center.