We’re coming to the end of the year. That means it’s time for strategic planning and budget discussions for the new calendar year. It’s no secret that money is tight this year for most businesses, including those in the software industry. When money gets tight, budgets are cut. And while some cuts are prudent, money for essential services—like hiring technical writers—often ends up on the chopping block.
If you find yourself defending your technical writing budget, or if you’re asking for additional funds to hire a technical writer, this blog post is for you.
The Critical Importance of Expert Technical Writers
Leadership teams often make the mistake of assuming that their expert technologists are also the best resource for documentation tasks. However, technical writing and engineering are very different disciplines. Technical writing goes beyond understanding technology. Good technical writers know how to present technical information for different audiences. They understand how technology works, why readers need it, and how they should use it. While many people can communicate well, and many others have a deep understanding of technology, it’s rare that someone can straddle those two disciplines to produce clear, concise, and accurate documentation consistently.
That’s where your technical writers come in.
Technical writers are a rare breed of communicators who can come up to speed with technology solutions quickly, empathize with audiences, and translate tech speak into language customers understand. The result is documentation that can be used by new team members, business users, and customers to quickly learn what they need to know to use your products effectively. Whereas excellent technical writing boosts understanding, poor documentation can cause frustration, lead to increased support costs, and even make you lose revenue.
Next time someone in your organization suggests you cut your technical writing budget, you can use these talking points to defend your strategy.
1. Hiring a Dedicated Technical Writer Accelerates Product Delivery
With heightened competition, self-service software, and increased demand for differentiating features, you can’t afford to slow your developers down with documentation tasks. Their time is better spent developing features and products that meet customer demands and help you outpace your competition. By hiring technical writers, you can ensure that critical documentation work gets done without impacting your delivery schedule.
2. Technical Writers Can Uncover Software Issues Before They Hit Production
A technical writer’s job is to understand both the big-picture and granular views of your software. As your writers create development notes, internal documents, API documentation, user documentation, and more, they often uncover errors, missing features, inconsistent naming conventions, and other issues that can then be fixed at an early stage of development. The sooner writers engage with products in development, the more value they add in terms of product quality and time-saving consistency.
3. Excellent Customer Documentation Accelerates the Purchase Decision
Nearly all software solutions are served up on demand, and typically include free trial periods. If a prospective buyer hits a wall and can’t figure out your software, your chance of converting that trial to a sale is slim, and your documentation can make all the difference. Technical writers understand how to create engaging and accurate communications that lead new users through the first stages of understanding a product. With the right free-trial experience, you can accelerate a customer’s purchase decision.
4. Technical Writer Expertise Extends Beyond User and Product Docs
When you have a technical writer on staff or retained on contract, you have someone who can help you with communication across your teams and your larger organization. Business challenges often come down to poorly communicated needs or expectations. With a writer at your side, you can learn to hone your own communication skills to decrease costly miscommunications.
5. Excellent Product/API Documentation Reduces Support Costs
When a customer can figure out answers to questions on their own, they don’t contact your technical support team. That means your documentation is the secret sauce for reducing your call and email volume and improving the quality of messages that do come in. If you have excellent documentation, then customer support can focus on solving actual problems. The calls you receive identify issues, inform future development priorities, and result in incremental product improvements. And over time, all of that can give your product a competitive edge while reducing overall spending on support.
6. Great Technical Writers Keep Customers Coming Back
When customers find your software easy to use, or they can find answers to their questions quickly and easily, not only will they use your product, but they become more likely to buy again or purchase upgrades. With these up-leveled customer relationships, you’re more likely to get great online reviews, and you’re more likely to score referral business.
7. Don’t Forget the User Experience Design
Technical communication isn’t always about words on a page. The flow of your user interface is a type of communication in and of itself. Expert user experience (UX) writers and designers can help your engineers design an elegant, effective, and intuitive interface.
Technical Writers Pay for Themselves
The value that technical writers add to your engineering and product development teams might seem difficult to quantify, but as shown above, there are several tangible benefits to achieving technical communication excellence. Taken collectively, these benefits add up to a significant return on investment for what you pay for a technical writer. The salary or contract cost of writers can be quickly offset by significant business savings, new customer revenue, customer retention, and improved development accuracy and speed.
Want to learn more about the tangible benefits of technical communication excellence?
Expert Support Has Technical Writers Who Are Ready to Work
When you defend your budget, it’s time to hire a technical writer. Expert Support’s team of writers are experts in the field. Many of our writers come from technology backgrounds. And all have worked with teams like yours to produce clear and accurate documentation. Our services include:
- Technical writing and editing
- Customer-facing documentation
- UX writing and design
- Technology marketing and content creation
- Technical communication consulting
- Training and professional development
See our services page for more details, or contact us today. We’d love to discuss your technical writing needs.