Why should I add documentation to FAQs vs. a department website?

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• The FAQs are popular. - Over 600,000 people visit the FAQs for answers each year. Imagine how that kind of traffic could reduce your support requests or phone calls. Click here to see web analytics for the FAQs.

• FAQ Articles appear in myUMBC's search suggestions. - myUMBC's search function is heavily used by the campus community making it a great place to have answers to your most common questions. FAQ articles are included as suggested results when available, and over 40% of FAQ visitors come from myUMBC alone.

• Have answers to your most common support requests available 24/7. - Sometimes answers are needed outside of normal business hours. Because the FAQs are available online, you can provide support to the campus community whenever it is needed. No more having to wait until your office is open to get help.

• Quickly respond to support requests. - FAQs not only help users help themselves, but they also save support staff time when responding to support requests. Linking to an FAQ article in a support response enables your staff to provide detailed answers to questions without needing to retype the answer each time it's asked.

• Provide consistent support responses.  - In addition to providing consistent responses within your own office, offices across campus often get asked similar questions. A single FAQ can provide answers to multiple offices increasing both consistency across the campus as well reduce the time it takes to create and maintain your documentation. Before creating your FAQs, be sure to check if a similar FAQ already exists.

• Enable your staff. - New employees can find answers to all your most frequently asked questions with ease, saving time on training and onboarding. Having to rely on years of experience or answers from a senior employee is a thing of the past because the information is already at their fingertips.

• FAQs are easy to create. - Pre-made templates for both Collections and Articles are available to make creating FAQs fast and easy for anyone. No special access is required to add your department's frequently asked questions.

• FAQs are easy to edit. - Editing FAQs is quick and easy allowing you to keep your content up to date with only a few clicks.

• Know more about your frequently asked questions. - The FAQs are tracked by Google Analytics enabling us to know which articles are getting used most frequently. Because each article refers to a single question, we can track which questions are truly frequent enabling you to better understand support trends. (Google Analytics data is available upon request.)