For some time, companies have known that customers visiting their website are impatient to find the information they want. But now customers are bringing that same impatience to their search for technical information or “how-tos” that tell them how to use the products they bought. Traditionally, those “how-to” guides or “technical docs,” as they are often called, were found either online posted as a PDF on a company’s website or on a CD that a company shipped with its product. Such “technical docs” are produced by many types of companies including almost any high tech, consumer electronic, heavy industrial equipment, software or medical device company.
But the impatient customer will have none of that anymore. They don’t want a big PDF document that they have to scan. They have a specific question that they want answered right away. This is the generation who is accustomed to Google search and YouTube. They expect to type a question in Google or the company website and quickly find just that answer. They don’t want to read about features of a product they didn’t buy. They also want the information at their fingertips on any device. They expect to see a video about what to do and not necessarily have to “read” an explanation. And they want to give feedback and maybe even share some information with others who have bought the product. Companies are seeing similar expectations in the smart savvy buyer who is also interested in reading technical documentation before making a purchase. They know that the technical information is more reliable than the marketing hype.
These familiar social trends are making the traditional “technical document” a thing of the past. Companies paying attention to these trends are fundamentally remaking the process by which they produce and engage customers with product information. They are abandoning the monolithic and static PDF “document” in favor of dynamically assembling technical information on-the-fly in response to a customers search for information. To be able to respond to customers in this way, companies are abandoning the process of writing large monolithic technical documents. Instead they are shifting to a new methodology of writing product information in “topics” that are stored in a database. With the information structured and componentized, it is now possible to combine and assemble just the right information in response to the customer’s question and context.
Companies that have adopted this methodology called “structured content” or “topic based writing” are already seeing some huge benefits in both efficiency and customer engagement. On the efficiency side, they are finding they can cut the cost of content development and localization by 30-50% simply by being able to write content once and reusing it many times. Since content is now in components, it can be repurposed in many different ways and in many different outputs across the organization, without additional effort.
These efficiency gains are impressive enough by themselves and sometimes amount to millions of dollars in savings on a yearly basis. But these savings pale in comparison to the benefits of helping a customer find the information they need. A frustrated customer who can’t get a product to work correctly and can’t find the information to resolve the problem may return the product and share their experience with others. Word of mouth itself is deadly. If the company is lucky the customer will call the company’s support line, but companies sink tens of millions of dollars into call center support, which is itself often a frustrating experience for the customer.
Enabling customers to find just the right information they need is thus strategic at many levels. It can mean a better out-of-the-box experience for the customer and an ability for the customer to “self-service.” This represents huge cost savings in the call center and more importantly an improvement in customer experience.
To be able to deliver against this vision of “smart product content,” companies have to go on a journey in which they move from a technical documentation mindset to a “product content” orientation. There is a product content maturity model that they can follow on this journey. The first step is becoming aware of the problem with monolithic technical documentation. The second major step is moving to a structured content writing methodology. Once they have moved into to a structured content methodology, they have the foundation in place to deliver just the right product information to the customer, on any device at any time.
About the Author
Howard Schwartz, Ph.D., is SVP of Content Technologies for SDL’s Structured Content Technologies division and has been responsible for the go to market strategy for the division and a lead for SDL in developing the company’s DITA and XML business strategies. Howard has 15 years’ experience advising companies on the implementation of technology and best practices to streamline various parts of the global content lifecycle.