Documentation feedback

[Beth Agnew]

Make friends with your marketing department, the sales people, and the 
customer support people -- anyone who talks to customers on a regular 
basis. The marketing department is valuable to you because they are 
supposed to be asking customers what they need and what they want. They 
might have a focus group (small group of customers) you could talk to, 
or to whom they could put questions on your behalf. They might also help 
you with a survey, and they would certainly (or at least they should) 
have a customer database. They should know who the "friends" of the 
company are among the customers, meaning the users of your product who 
are most pleased with it. Talking to customers who are already kindly 
disposed toward your company and products is a good first step, because 
they will tell you the truth and care about what you are going to do 
about it. Marketing should help you contact a few customers to get the 
information you want.

The sales people should be able to tell you what customers are asking 
for in the marketplace. Ask them to ask about documentation. How 
important is the documentation to their prospects. Have they ever lost a 
sale because the documentation didn't seem to meet the customer's needs 
(it happens)? Do they know they can use the documentation as a sales 
tool? When they start mentioning documentation to the customers, the 
customers will often have an opinion about the things that bug them 
about manuals. That's an opportunity for you to do some prevention as 
well as education.

Customer support should be able to tell you what problems customers are 
having with the documentation. That is, if they are asking customers 
whether they've tried to find the answer in the docs before calling tech 
support. I always try to get customer support to tactfully remind 
customers that the manuals have most of the answers they need. If you 
can get access to the typical problems customers are calling in with, 
you can then cross-check with your documentation to ensure these issues 
are explained clearly enough and in sufficient detail. That's indirect 
feedback, but just as valuable.
--Beth

Sarah Bouchier wrote:
> What do you find is the best way of getting feedback from customers on
> your documentation?
>