Your Tech Writer is the Key to Better Customer Relationships

Tech Customer Satisfaction

When you ask someone why they love a software product or technology service, you probably won’t hear them say, “It’s that awesome documentation.” Instead, they’ll talk about how easy it is to use the software, or how intuitive the user experience is, or how product support can always answer their questions quickly. The funny thing is, behind all of those “great product” perks is an unsung product team hero: the tech writer.

The quality of your documentation–both internal and customer-facing–is directly related to how customers perceive your product and your company, and that perception drives the value of each customer relationship. From the initial sale, through customer use and support, a tech writer bridges the gap between your internal teams and the end user by providing clearly written, informative documentation that educates the user without getting in their way. The result is a happy, empowered user who succeeds while using your product.

Driving Customer Loyalty Through Communication Excellence

Customer relationships are defined by the loyalty a customer feels toward your brand and product. An engaged and supported customer feels empowered to use your product, ask for help when they need it, and share their experiences with others. Unfortunately, an unsupported customer also feels empowered to share their negative experiences, so it’s in your best interest to strive for the level of communication excellence that leads to great customer relationships.

According to a 2020 American Marketing Association (AMA) study, four key factors drive the customer relationship: dependability, emotional connection, superiority, and social media presence. Here is how a tech writer can help you improve each of these drivers:

Dependability: Customers want to know that they can depend on your company to deliver great products and to support them in understanding and using your technology. A tech writer who provides excellent customer-facing documentation gives the customer the ability to be more self-sufficient from the start. When that customer has issues, excellent customer support backed by strong technical communication further improves the customer’s perception of a dependable product and company. Customers who are supported in this manner feel empowered to use your products, and they’re more likely to become repeat customers.

Critical deliverables for dependability include complete and accurate references, user guides, wikis, how-to guides, FAQs, customer support training documents, and internal/API documentation.

Emotional connection: Customers tend to be loyal when they feel like they can relate to a company. Strong technical marketing content goes beyond product information to also reflect company values in tangible and relatable ways across target audiences. Your tech writer should understand both the product and the people who use that product to forge the emotional bonds that improve customer relationships.

Important ways to create emotional connection include thought leadership pieces,  moving website and blog content, value-based messaging, engaging email nurture campaigns, and exciting press releases.

Superiority: Truly excellent tech writing considers the highly competitive market while providing clear communication of brand differentiators. A skilled tech writer provides actionable information so prospects and customers can make confident decisions, and avoids gimmicky language and empty marketing jargon that can drive tech buyers away. In tech markets, providing a clear understanding of why your product is superior to competitors is imperative for enticing both first-time and repeat buyers.

Effective superiority tactics include whitepapers, roadmaps, blueprints, use cases, customer testimonials, case studies, and competitive analysis reports.

Social media presence: Tech buyers are a tricky group of customers. They want to know what a product can do, how it can help, what value they’ll get, and when the next updates are coming, all without talking to your sales reps. That means they skim your website, read your blog, and follow your social media accounts before they make contact. Companies with a strong social media presence backed by capable technical marketing writers keep prospects and customers engaged, share the company’s story, and continually build and nurture customer relationships with high-value information. When managed well, social media provides an opportunity to create a vibrant and positive online community of customers, partners, and prospects. User communities can evolve to become social and professional hubs where your customers can ask questions, offer each other support, swap success stories, and more. Some of those who join might become brand ambassadors, and provide valuable testimonials, reviews, and referrals.

Beneficial communications for social media presence include social posts, videos, community engagement forum moderation, and blog post comment moderation.

The Tech Writer’s Role in the Customer Relationship

When you include a great tech writer on your product team, you can use effective communication to create a seamless experience for your product community. Such a community includes your developers, your sales and marketing team, and ultimately, your prospects, customers, and partners. It’s the modern tech writer’s job to fully understand how software or technology products work and to explain them in ways that each audience member can understand. In the case of customer relationship building, that means the tech writer has to inform and educate the end user and anyone who supports the product. As a result, technical communication excellence is integral to the customer lifecycle.

You’ll know you’ve crafted quality customer relationships when your customers:

  • Enjoy a low-stress buying process fueled by sales reps who succinctly explain product benefits and features, answer technical questions, and close more deals with more efficiency.
  • Have a high perceived value of your technology or software, often from initial use.
  • Easily renew their subscriptions, expand their installed base, and purchase additional products from your company.
  • Become less price-sensitive, and appreciate and rely upon the quality they expect from your company rather than choosing a lower-priced competing offer.
  • Form collaborative relationships with your company, inform your future product and feature strategy and become true partners.

An Engineer Is Not a Tech Writer

You’ll notice that none of the bullet points above directly mentions technical writing, but your technical communication is key to achieving those customer relationship goals. Companies often rely on their engineers to produce communication deliverables for both internal teams and customers, but those documents frequently suffer from the curse of knowledge. Your engineers know all the details about your products better than anyone, but they tend to underestimate the context gap between themselves and non-engineers.  Read The Context Gap to learn more about why this is the case.

Need a Tech Writer?

Are you now wondering if your technical documentation is helping or hurting your customer relationships? Take a look at our article, Tangible Benefits of Communication Excellence. You’ll see how a great tech writer can help you achieve some surprising benefits, including improved customer relationships.

If you have a product that could benefit from better technical communication, talk to us. Expert Support is THE technical writing company. We recruit, hire, and train technical writers who know software. Our writers produce documentation that helps you market and sell your products, improves customer satisfaction, reduces your support costs, and more.

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