Turning 'not helpful' into a fix
· 1 min read
'Not helpful' is free, honest feedback, and most of it goes nowhere. Turn that click into a fix.
In brief
Someone just clicked not helpful. What happens next? In most organisations, nothing. The click is counted, it goes into a report, and nobody reads the report. Meanwhile the article stays exactly as it was. The next person reads it, gets stuck in the same place, and rings the service desk anyway. Not helpful is one of the most honest signals you will ever get. Someone tried to help themselves, and we let them down. They told us, for free. This article argues that a signal with no owner is just noise, and that every not helpful click should land with a named person who can act on it. Keep the process small and specific: send it to the article's owner, ask the reader one short question about what was missing, and give the owner a sensible time to respond. Then close the loop. Fix the article, retire it, or explain why it stays, and where you can, tell the person who flagged it. Watch the pattern, not just the clicks. Three not helpful votes on the same article in a week is not bad luck. It is a fault report. The goal is not a better score. It is fewer people stuck in the same place twice.
Someone just clicked "not helpful". What happens next?
In most organisations, nothing. The click is counted. It goes into a report. Nobody reads the report.
Meanwhile the article stays exactly as it was. The next person reads it, gets stuck in the same place, and rings the service desk anyway.
"Not helpful" is one of the most honest signals you will ever get. Someone tried to help themselves, and we let them down. They told us. For free.
A signal with no owner is just noise
Every "not helpful" should land with a named person who can act on it.
Make it small and specific:
- Send it to the article's owner.
- Ask the reader one short question: what was missing?
- Give the owner a sensible time to respond.
Then close the loop. Fix the article, retire it, or explain why it stays. And where you can, tell the person who flagged it.
Watch the pattern, not just the clicks
Three "not helpful" votes on the same article in a week is not bad luck. It is a fault report.
The goal is not a better score. It is fewer people stuck in the same place twice.
Next step
When did your last "not helpful" turn into a fix? Join the conversation on ESM's Exchange: https://exchange.esm.institute
Tags: knowledge management, service management, self-service, ESM
Join the Exchange free
Join free to unlock the complete knowledge library.
Founder membership is free for life
More from Esm
How should the service desk handle a Microsoft 365 outage it cannot fix?
4 min read
Deploying AI is the easy part: who runs it once it goes live?
5 min read
How do I compare help desk tool pricing before rolling it out across several departments?
4 min read
When the author leaves, who owns the article?
2 min read
Test after every change, or find out from users
1 min read
Designing a knowledge portal people want to use
1 min read
Related articles
How should the service desk handle a Microsoft 365 outage it cannot fix?
Treat a supplier cloud outage as your own major incident: log it once, tell people early on a channel that still works, update on a rhythm and review your dependency afterwards.
Deploying AI is the easy part: who runs it once it goes live?
Only a third of large enterprises have met the business case for their main AI programme. New research points to a gap in who runs AI after launch, and what leaders can do.
How do I compare help desk tool pricing before rolling it out across several departments?
Compare help desk tools on a full year's cost for your real agents, approvers and requesters in every department, not on the headline monthly price.
When the author leaves, who owns the article?
Articles keep being read after their authors move on. Make sure the care for them does not leave too.
Test after every change, or find out from users
Knowledge changes fail quietly. A short, repeatable test after every change finds the problem before your users do.
Designing a knowledge portal people want to use
Most knowledge portals are built for the people who run them, not the people who arrive with a problem.