Re: Eliminating Need for Technical Support

Subject: Re: Eliminating Need for Technical Support
From: ckime <ckime -at- PEERLOGIC -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:10:01 -0700

Matthew,
I definitely think that good documentation can help *reduce* the need
for technical support. Many months after I left one company, one of
their employees called me. They started out with "Darn you" (I of
course thought, oh nooo...) and then went on to say that the company
had started charging for customer support and was contacting all their
customers in attempt to enroll them in the new fee-based support
program. Every customer she had contacted that was using the product I
documented told her that they didn't need support cos the
documentation had addressed whatever they needed to know. (BTW, it
wasn't just my doing--the GUI and testing were super to make an all
'round good, usable product.) At another company I monitored the
issues that tech support was dealing with and, after beefing up the
doc in the "problematic" subject areas, we saw a drastic reduction in
related tech support calls.

There will always be those who don't/won't/can't read the doc
(personally guilty for products I use...), and there will be users who
are trying to do "unanticipated" things in "unanticipated
environments" who will need tech support cause it's unrealistic and
undesirable to document every possible thing. But especially since
most companies charge for support these days, I think users are apt to
go to the doc (or co-worker, list, Internet, ...) to solve problems
prior to contacting tech support, so we do have a chance to influence
the support burden.

I view tech support as one of our (writers) greatest allies as they
can provide valuable insight to what your particular customers are
having difficulty with so you can make continuous improvements to the
doc. Sometimes it takes "educating" the support group 'til they
understand your agenda, but I have found most tech supporters glad to
work with writers in effort to eliminate the RTFM (read the frigging
manual, for politeness) type of calls as there are plenty enough
challenging ones to keep them in jobs.

What I'm wondering is what other "non-traditional" (other than typical
product manual and/or online help) ways can we help users help
themselves? It seems that the popularity and acceptance of Internet
access in the workplace opens even more avenues for making good info
available to customers. Anybody publishing things such as knowledge
bases or doing other types of non-traditional product information that
you can share successes/failures about with us? Many companies have
tech support sections on their Web site; are there writers working on
those and, if so, how are you involved?

Carol Kime
Austin, TX


--------------------------
Matthew J Long <mjl100z -at- MAIL -dot- ODU -dot- EDU> at email_gw

In terms of technical writing, I am just a little wet behind the ears
(where does that stupid cliche come from anyhow?), so please forgive the
following. It may contain naivity and idealism!

Do you think that it is possible that the need for technical support for
software be eliminated or at least reduced if the documentation were
written well enough?
<snip>

Anyhow, the point of my little story here is that I believe that it is
possible for *most* (not all) people to grasp the how-tos if it is
explained clearly enough in the documentation. What do you think?

Thoughts? Comments?
--------------------------

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