When it comes to creating reliable, easy-to-use software, development managers and architects place much of their emphasis on design, coding practices, and comprehensive testing. Those efforts are essential, or even required, to produce a valuable product and reduce the overall support costs to your company. However, even the best-designed software can suffer from poor technical writing and editing, which can cause your support costs to skyrocket. Your users are only as empowered as your documentation allows.
Our library article, Tangible Benefits of Communication Excellence, covers six ways your technical communications can make or break your product. In this post, we’ll dive deeper into the first of those tangible benefits, exploring how your technical writing and editing quality directly affect support costs.
Technical Writing and Editing Excellence is Good for the Consumer
Every support call has several associated costs. From the time it takes your agent to answer questions to the level of frustration your user or customer experiences, support calls increase your operating expenses and reduce your profit. And worse, users left with unanswered questions or lingering confusion after a support call start to doubt your product, eroding customer loyalty. While it might seem tempting to blame poor product quality for the quantity and effectiveness of support calls, much of the time, poor technical writing and editing are the driving force behind both.
When a user has access to excellent product documentation, they spend less time and effort in these activities:
- Learning how to use your software or technology product through natural, intuitive guides and in-app help.
- Finding relevant information and explanations when they run into issues.
- Becoming proficient with your products.
- Increasing their own productivity.
- Achieving power-user status.
Technical Writing and Editing Excellence is Great for the Company
Technical communication excellence doesn’t stop at product documentation. In fact, it starts long before. Your internal teams, including your support teams, rely on your technical writing and editing effectiveness to do their jobs.
When your helpdesk receives those inevitable calls, the quality of your documentation directly affects the amount of time the agent spends on the phone and dramatically impacts the quality of support provided. If a call gets escalated to Tier 2, your internal documentation, including design and implementation specifications, API documentation, and technical roadmaps can help your support engineers accelerate fixes and meet tight SLAs.
Focus on Call Quality and Watch Call Volume Plummet
“Okay,” you say, “I get it. Good documentation leads to lower support costs, but where do I start?” That’s a question we often get. Creating an effective documentation suite for your software solution can feel overwhelming. However, if you’re focusing on decreasing call volume, look no further than the frequently asked questions.
By analyzing support calls, you can see your most common problems. For example, are your users confused about installation and configuration options? Do they often ask how to find or use specific features or screens? The topics that receive the highest volume of inquiries shine a bright spotlight on the parts of your documentation that might lack clarity. Perhaps you need to edit your user’s guide, provide in-app help tips, or both. But as you add clear, concise, and easily accessible information that answers those low-hanging fruit FAQs, you’ll create self-sufficiency in your users and ultimately reduce the number of support calls.
But more importantly, as you reduce the noise, you improve the quality of your support calls. Instead of clogging up the queue of incoming calls about simple issues that better documentation eliminates, users who do call in have higher-value problems. These gnarlier issues are more likely to have uncovered meaningful product or code defects, which can directly inform your development efforts and lead to greater overall product quality in the long run.
The Surprise Benefits of Great Technical Writing and Editing
As your customers and internal users become more self-sufficient with your product, their attitudes shift. They feel enabled and empowered. The funny thing is, they won’t attribute these feelings to your documentation. Instead, they’ll see the product itself as usable, intuitive, and well-designed. Most customers don’t want to have to call support, and they get great satisfaction and perceived value from a product that they can learn on their own.
When well-educated customers do come across a bug or need to call support, they are better able to ask pointed questions that lead to better, faster answers. They’re able to have active conversations with your support staff. And if you’ve armed your helpdesk with great documentation and tools, they can engage well beyond a script, creating active dialogues that lead to continual product improvements.
Want to Get Control of Your Support Costs?
Technical writing and editing are often overlooked, pushed to the end of a product development effort, or underestimated in tangible value. You might have writers and editors on staff, but they can feel defeated, powerless, and overwhelmed in the face of nonstop delivery cycles. That’s where Expert Support can help. We have an extensive network of technical writers and editors who are ready to help do the following:
- Support your development effort, no matter where it stands in the development cycle.
- Supplement your existing team with technical writing and editing services.
- Improve your in-house technical communication skills through consulting or training services.
We make it our mission to understand your product and explain it through meaningful, effective technical documentation. And we can also help you analyze and improve your documentation so you can spend less time answering user’s questions and more time driving innovation into your next product release.
Learn more about how technical writing and editing produces tangible benefits in our article, Tangible Benefits of Technical Communication Excellence. When you’re ready to get started, let’s talk.