While we, as support people, know our product and our documentation better than anyone else, we can’t expect our customers to say the same. There’s a lot of information in a support knowledge base, and it isn’t always organized in the most intuitive way. Because of that, sometimes customers will ask questions that there are already answers to, or that might seem like second nature to you and your team.

Instead of using it as a moment to eyeroll in frustration and mutter something about “googling properly,” be thankful for a conversation that you know you’ll have an opportunity to knock out of the park on your very first try. Here’s a quick snippet that you can use if someone has asked you a question that can be more easily answered by documentation:

Hey there,

Thanks for emailing about this — that’s a really great question.

I can certainly see how this would be confusing, so much so that we actually wrote up a standing guide about it for our customers. You can check that out here: [link]. There’s actually a bunch of pretty useful stuff there, so if you find that link helpful, you might also want to take a look down at the “related docs” section in the bottom, too.

I hope this helps, but please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

This assuages any concerns that they might feel about being silly or not knowing the answer while still sending them the documentation, and teaching them that other docs might exist if they have further questions. It’s a win-win!