Cleverific gets 200 articles back under control

Meet Cleverific

Cleverific makes order editing and post-purchase upsells for Shopify merchants. Laura has managed the company’s knowledge base for five years. The product ships “at the speed of light,” but the documentation workflow had not kept up.

“I’ve been managing our knowledge base for 5 years, and we ship new features at the speed of light, so I was falling badly behind on writing new articles.”

This was not a team starting with no content. Cleverific had around 200 articles. The problem was that the content had accumulated without a system for keeping it findable, consistent, and current.

200 articles, all maintained by hand

The knowledge base lived in HelpScout Docs. It had served Cleverific for a long time, but each article still carried the history of when and how it was written. Formatting varied. Related articles were not always easy to find. When the app changed, Laura had to discover every affected page herself.

“Keeping that many organized and current was entirely a manual effort on my end. Formatting varied depending on who wrote an article and when, and finding the right one wasn’t always quick, for merchants or for our own team.”

A feature update meant searching through the knowledge base, fixing formatting, checking cross-links, and trying to remember whether another article needed a change. Because Cleverific ships quickly, the work could take days per feature;or weeks after a larger release.

“Every time we shipped a new feature or updated the UI of our app, I’d have to find every related article by hand, update the formatting myself, and remember to fix any cross-links to related pages.”

Ferndesk handled the backlog in prompts

After migrating to Ferndesk, Laura did not have to open 200 articles one at a time. She could ask Fern to work across the knowledge base. Ferndesk reformatted the existing content, reorganized categories and subcategories, and showed her which articles were still missing.

“Ferndesk is truly awesome. I’m mind-blown by what it can do, it reformatted all 200 of our articles and reorganized our subcategories in a couple of prompts.”

A help center is only useful when customers can navigate it. Cleverific went from “pages and pages of articles nobody could ever find” to a knowledge base with clear structure and a consistent presentation.

“We went from pages and pages of articles nobody could ever find to a knowledge base that’s actually sorted into clear categories and subcategories, gorgeous, sleek and easy to navigate.”

Fern also identified gaps in the content. Laura no longer had to guess what to write next or wait for another support question to expose a missing guide.

Days of documentation became minutes

The reorganization alone saved about a week of manual work. More importantly, the new workflow gives Cleverific a way to keep pace with releases. Ferndesk can update and restructure related content from the product context, while Laura reviews the result and spends her time on work that needs her judgment.

“Before Ferndesk, updating docs after a feature shipped could take weeks… Now I can reformat and restructure across our whole 200-article knowledge base in a single prompt. What used to be days of work is down to minutes.”

The time is now available for merchants, QA, and the team instead of untangling old documentation.

“That time back means I can actually keep pace with our release schedule instead of documentation trailing weeks behind.”

Cleverific did not need another place to park articles. It needed docs that merchants could find and that Laura could keep current while the app changed. Ferndesk gave them that workflow.