Right Information at the Right Time

The right word, rather the right information at the right time, right where they are looking for, can make a positive difference to the user. Your user can be a seasoned administrator in a data center, or if you are writing for medical equipment, professional ultra sound technician, or an Ikea customer who is trying to assemble a kitchen sideboard. Understanding what they need when they come to the user guide and giving them exactly that is your success as a writer.

I started my day with listening to a SDL Webinar on content strategy and customer focus. And how VMware improved customer experience with a new content strategy. It was very clear that the presenter had a clear plan and worked on executing the plan for successful implementation. After the webinar, shared the following notes with my colleagues at work:

• Provide information to the customers in their language
• Make sure your content finds your customers (make sure content is available in all channels they frequently use) 
•  Personalize and customize the content experience to meet specific needs of your user (Products, customers and requirements are all different. Understand the differences and cater to the requirement)
• Make sure tech writers interact with customers, support folks, TMEs and PM along with Engineering and QA
•  Don’t assume what your customers need. Customers do not fit into buckets. Ask them what they need.
•  Ask customers what kind of videos will help them. Produce prototypes and circulate. Take customer feedback then produce real videos.
• Use analytics to understand content usage.
• Make sure your content is easily retrievable. Use the following:

o   Structure content

o   Improve meta date

o   Optimize your content for Search

• When you make customer contact, have a goal and meet your goals in that meeting. (Ask right questions, provide examples and prototypes)

• Sit with support folks when they are taking customer calls. Listen to the customer questions and how support is finding information.

 Sitting at my desk now, after initiating the publication process for my document and while waiting for the document to show up online, I am thinking back on the how documentation plays a pivotal role in determining the products usability. And where we should be focusing on while creating the pieces of information that we string together for a document. The means of making content reach the customers at the right time.

I think knowing our audience, interacting with them on their requirements and designing a content strategy and content delivery channel is of utmost importance in your career as a technical writer. So when you set up that meeting with your development folks to document a feature, start with this questions such as the following:

• How does the user interact with this feature?
• Is this part of a bigger process?
• What do  they need to know when they work on this feature?
• Is there something they should or should not do with this feature?

When you ask these questions and go back to the test environment and play around the product, imagining yourself as the user, you will understand the product from the user’s perspective. So when you interact with your user or customer, you are able to ask the right questions about their pain points with the product. The usability and user experience teams are trying to make every product simple and easy to use. But there will always be a level of complexity in the product that only documentation can explain. This is how documentation or content is considered a business asset.