Software Documentation, the Customer Help Desk and Twitter – Tying it All Together
In his post, “‘Digital Natives’ and the end of traditional hotline support”, Ellis Pratt describes how the model of support has changed from the 1990’s. In the 1990’s users would seek immediate support form people who were geographically near them (usually in the same office or workspace). With the advent of social media, geography is no longer important. Users, especially younger users, are first turning to Google, Twitter, email, instant messages and other forms of social media to get answers to their support questions.
These forms of communication are almost uniformly text-based. Where does traditional software documentation fit in this new process?
Quoting from Ellis:
So what’s happened to the manual – where does that fit in?
In many cases, the manual is now a collection of Web pages. It’s moved up to the top of list, although many may not recognise it as a manual. It might not have an index, page numbers or a table of contents, but it serves the same function.
Ellis is correct. Users are looking for help on the web. If your software documentation is locked inside of a PDF file then it is essentially non-existent to today’s users.
Ellis makes some very good points in his post but I think he draws the wrong conclusion in the end:
If companies want to sell to “Generation Y” , they will need to ensure the ways they assist their users reflect this preference for text-based content.
“Generation Y”, or any generation for that matter, does not prefer text-based content. They prefer to communicate with tools that only allow for text-based communication. This is a subtle but important difference.
Putting the Customer Help Desk on Twitter and Online Chat
We quite often will provide customer support via Twitter or a online chat system that we offer via our website. These are text-only delivery systems. We can’t include images or videos. But we can provide urls.
Our ScreenSteps Desktop and ScreenSteps Live documentation has been optimized for use in this exact situation.
- The documentation is broken up into small bits that answer a single question.
- The documentation answers “How do I” questions which are the types of questions we receive in support.
- Each section of the documentation has a unique url that we can share in Twitter, chat, email or forums.
Though we are communicating in a text only format, we are providing image-rich communication that better answers our users’ questions.
For example, if a customer asked us, “How do I set up a custom domain on my ScreenSteps Live account?” our response might look something like this:
Just follow these instructions: http://bit.ly/9B1WWU
The answer is concise and easily comes in under 140 characters (you can see how we have structured our help system here).
As Ellis states in his post, “Essentially, people followed the easiest path to solve their problem.” For many users that involves asking and answering questions via text-based communication. Make sure that your help content is optimized for sharing in that format and you will dramatically improve the results you get from your software documentation.
Check out our post, “Online Help Documentation – 5 Keys To Making It Work” for more tips on how to author, format and deliver your documentation.
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June 14th, 2010 at 10:54 am
Hi Greg
You may be right, but it’s hard to have a conversation with pictures. In Europe, it’s been possible to use cellphones to send images, video even, for years yet people have stuck with text messaging.
The screensteps approach may well have its place, particularly when you can call up the relevant URL via a QR/vizitag bar code. In Japan, I understand video, and communication via avatars, using the cellphone has taken off (possibly due them using katakana, kanji and hiragana to write)
I guess it’s whether Generation Y are hooked on seeking conversations and a sense of belonging that can engender.
Oh, and you can call me Ellis :)
Regards
Ellis Pratt
June 14th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Ellis- You are right. Having a conversation with pictures is difficult but having a conversation that references concise, image-based documentation makes our conversations more concise. In our experience, pointing the user to a URL in our documentation answers their question 90% of the time. In the remaining cases, it answers 90% of their question, meaning we spend less time going back and forth via text-based communications. The ScreenSteps content doesn’t replace the text-based communications. It just makes them more efficient.
BTW – I updated the references to say Ellis :). Thanks.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Hi Ellis
Just read your complete post and like Greg I do not completely agree with your line of thoughts – sorry We are a retailer that targets both the Grey Generation as Generation Y – and all the generations in between for that matter ;-). Even Generation Y, or should I say especially Generation Y comes to those businesses that has a clear view and strategy, clear and quick answers to any of their queries – no matter in which format it is delivered as long as it gives them the instant “solution”/help/advice they want to have there and then.
And before you ask what a retailer is doing with manuals – we also “educate” the public to install our quality flooring and finish/fitting products themselves. Even wrote a book for it – using all the Q&A’s from many Generation Y prospects. And our main tool for writing this book has been ScreenSteps Desktops. The E-version of the book can be found on ScreenSteps Live (after purchasing it of course, even Generation Y still wants to pay for easy accessible knowledge that has both text and images in it).
Karin H (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
July 15th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
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July 23rd, 2010 at 10:06 am
I definitely see the end of hot-line support in the next 10 years, because they seem so inefficient and something that only older people use or those that don’t have any other options, like twitter. I think as time goes on, the process will be improved and people will trust using online/Twitter-based support much more.