A case study on why the Documentation and User Assistance team at Salesforce changed its content strategy to include more forms of interactive content.
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3. Agenda
1. Why Salesforce moved to more interactive content
2. What types of interactive content we’re creating
3. How we changed our content strategy
4. Takeaway
If you're not creating interactive content beyond traditional
documentation, you risk losing your customers.
6. What do customers need from content?
“Simplify documentation… It has always been far too lengthy
and time-consuming.”
“If I have to leave a page to do research, I am going away…
Having it right in the same place increases productivity.”
“There are a lot of videos about what you can do, but they
don’t always show how to do it.”
“All documentation focuses on how-to, but we usually start off
needing to know when-to or why-to.”
7. Why do we write content?
Increase customer adoption.
Reduce customer cases.
8. What types of content did we add?
1. Walkthroughs 2. Trailhead 3. Videos
18. Takeaway
If you're not creating interactive content beyond traditional
documentation, you risk losing your customers.
19. Thanks and more Q&A!
Contact us:
•Gavin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinaustin
•Lila – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lilagiuili
Editor's Notes
Welcome, brief intro of Lila and Gavin—we’re tech writers--and what Salesforce does for those not familiar.
Doc is Dead! Lofty statement and claim, which we’ll explain. [Doc ALONE is dead?] in that we need new types to address how users learn and interact with our content to get their work done--prioritizing interactive and visually engaging content types because they’re more effective. Same content in a more discoverable, interactive way. In this preso, you'll learn why Salesforce moved in this direction with its content and content strategy.
But first…
Keep the lawyers employed: Salesforce is a publicly traded company, and anything you see or hear in today’s preso might not apply to future releases of the Salesforce application.
Let’s have a discussion. We’ll share our content strategy, but we want audience to be part of conversation!
Disclaimer: this is not a tools talk!
About the title: 'Doc is Dead' in that we need new types--re prioritizing interactive content types because it's more effective. Same content in a more discoverable, interactive way. In this preso, you'll learn why Salesforce moved in this direction with its content and content strategy.
How many of you create help & 'guides'?
How many of you love reading those types of content or feel you get sufficient help from those types of content?
PM role play (“doc all the things!”): Doc all new features, customer feedback, bugs. Try to keep head above water on an agile/scrum development team.
Limited contact with support and marketing to know if content is useful for customers.
Follow traditional info model of concept, task, reference, and sometimes FAQ content.
Use help, videos, release notes, and guides, tip sheets, workbooks, cheat sheets, etc. What other types do you create?
Do you agree?
Different users need content to do different things, depending on their experience level and what phase of the learning process they’re in.
These quotes came from extensive user research done by the Salesforce UE team. Due to our PR team, we can’t really share with you the stats or all the customer quotes, but these summed up a lot of the findings, for not just Salesforce! Â
A few years ago, due to Salesforce’s massive success and growth, and tons of help content [or as we were planning new content strategy to accommodate Lightning Experience?] we had to step back and ask ourselves this question. We also had to ask it because trust is our number one priority at Salesforce, and we had to ask ourselves if our content was adding to our value/brand of customer trust. Now we ask the Q to you.
Perhaps another side of the question is why do you get paid to create content? What’s content’s business value?
These were our answers. And based on customer research and data, we learned that we could do a better job of hitting these two targets.
The way to hit those targets was not by changing the content so much as its format (“types”), where it’s exposed to customers, and how visual and engaging it is. The interactive content types we’re now using give us these qualities and even encouraged us to better apply these characteristics—info typed, discoverable, visual, and engaging—to the traditional help documentation we continue to write.
Now, we’ll go into explaining the types.
Still use concept, task, reference, and sometimes FAQ--but need it to be discoverable, learn, do.
For scale – Plus graphics, minimalism, voice and tone.
We make them accessible through the UI and promote them where it makes sense based on how users need to consume the content. We make them more prescriptive (use-case focused, examples) and visual (new graphics specialist). We could give one example of when we'd use a content type other than a walkthrough (a help topic or video, for example) and why a writer would make that choice.Â
We can’t give you the exact data, but we can give you some anecdotal….
Trailhead: >700% growth in active users over 6 months
Modules (learning with challenge questions to test your knowledge and make you think) vs. Projects (hands-on practice w/code verification to make sure you’ve followed a set of steps; used for events)
“Not your typical, boring technical writing.”
More videos w/ dedicated specialists
Embedded in UI
Now more interactive with links to additional resources from within video itself
Simplified the number of deliverable types we produce to narrow the options and make content easier to reuse and maintain.
Still use traditional help documentation (concept, task, reference, and sometimes FAQ)—
but we’re conscious of how we deliver content based on how users might need to consume it (discover, learn, do),
opting for more engaging interactive content when possible.
What format to use when – walk them through our flow (before/after) strategy
Optimize traditional help documentation to align with new content standards based on more engaging interactive content our customers love.
Highlight how example is:
Minimalistic (only the high-value content users need, not everything you can do with a feature)
More friendly voice and tone
More prescriptive (use-case focused, examples)
Visual (new graphics specialist)
shared content plan early on – iterative
dedicated trainings with cool themes to make more engaging
guidelines: wiki and colorful desk references [add screen shots]
About the title: 'Doc is Dead' in that we need new types--re prioritizing interactive content types because it's more effective. Same content in a more discoverable, interactive way. In this preso, you'll learn why Salesforce moved in this direction with its content and content strategy.
How many of you create help & 'guides'?
How many of you love reading those types of content or feel you get sufficient help from those types of content?