Technical communication impacts many important business issues. This presentation covers these issues and provides ways to start measuring the dollar value we add.

1. The Power ofTech
Comm
How andWhereWe Impact the Bottom Line
Sharon Burton

2. Thank you for attending!
▪ Sharon Burton
▪ I solve post-sales customer experience problems
▪ Research how people feel about product instructions
▪ Support clients in creating better product instructions
▪ And fixing the workflow
▪ Teach communication at various universities
▪ These slides will go up on SlideShare tomorrow
▪ sharon@sharonburton.com
▪ Twitter: sharonburton

3. Where is the data from?
▪ I’m pulling data from different places
▪ Including my own work
▪ I have references at the end for you

4. How it’s always been
This may sound familiar

5. Technical Documentation
No one reads the
product
instructions
Customers will
just call support
anyway
A Good ProductTM
doesn’t need docs
▪ We fought to be in engineering
▪ They didn’t think of us as part of
the product
▪ Often, no one knows how docs
get done
▪ No one told us about
upcoming projects

6. Technical Documentation
Can this look
prettier?
We can’t tell them
that
Why won’t a
brochure be
enough?
▪ We moved to Marketing
▪ They didn’t think of us as part of
the product or the marketing
collateral
▪ Often, no one knows how docs
get done
▪ No one told us about
upcoming projects

7. We’re in theWildWest
It’s all changing as I speak

8. Content is king
And Queen
And the whole
royal court
▪ Marketing has discovered
content
▪ Customers want content
▪ We have that
▪ We have lots of that
▪ How do we connect what we
do to what the company
needs?

9. Sales
It starts here

10. Sales funnel
▪ The way sales come into
your company
▪ Marketing gets the top
of the funnel
▪ Sales gets the bottom
▪ Your sales people live
and die here
▪ Product instructions are
being used by sales as
tools
Leads
Customers
(conversion)

11. Sales funnel
IBM: Product
content affected
purchase decision
89%
▪ Make product instructions
available to people in the sales
funnel
▪ Shows
▪ How the product works
▪ How easy the product is to use
▪ General perception of
“suitability of purpose”
▪ Impacts the CAC

12. Getting customers is expensive
It costs 6–7 times
more to acquire a
new customer
than retain an
existing one –
Bain & Company
▪ CustomerAcquisition
Cost (CAC) is the cost of
convincing people to buy your
product or service
▪ Basically, it’s the total cost of
sales and marketing divided by
the # of customers you got
▪ B2C is typically less, B2B is
typically more

13. Sales cycle
▪ B2C
▪ Household decisions
▪ Consumer products
▪ Often short
▪ Commodities
▪ Big ticket items
▪ Longer
▪ Cars
▪ Low risk
▪ B2B
▪ Business decisions
▪ Solve business
problems
▪ Long, often several
years
▪ More specialized
▪ Very big ticket items
▪ High risk

14. Tie us to the sales cycle
Find out where
your docs are
being used
▪ How many times are docs
involved in a sale?
▪ What is the average sale?
▪ Ask the customer if the docs
influenced and how much?

15. Post sales
Our work starts after the sale is made

16. Keeping customers
A 5% increase in
customer
retention can
increase
profitability by
75% —
Bain andCo
▪ Customer churn is customers
leaving from the back door as
you welcome new ones in the
front door
▪ Customer churn is one of the
most expensive things you can
have
▪ An entire industry exists to
analyze churn

17. Clear instructions feel good
71% think the
company cares
about them
7 out of 10

18. Customer churn
IBM: Affects
product
satisfaction
92%
▪ Customers who can use the
product use the product
▪ They don’t leave and purchase
someone else
▪ Clear product instructions
reduce customer churn

19. Wouldn’t purchase again
About 50%
wouldn’t purchase
from the company
again
Half your
customers

20. Return rate
Returns have
increased 21
percent since
2007, according to
an Accenture
research report
(Dec 2011)
▪ 5% of returns are related to
actual product defects
▪ 27% reflect “buyer’s remorse”
▪ 68% of returned products are
“NoTrouble Found”

21. Defective or broken
About 25% feel
the product is
defective
1 in 4

22. Customer LifetimeValue (CLV)
The probability of
selling to an
existing customer
is 60 – 70%.The
probability of
selling to a new
prospect is 5-20%
—Marketing
Metrics
▪ Existing customers are already
engaged with your products or
services
▪ They have a lower cost to keep
▪ They should buy more stuff
▪ Higher monetary value to the
business

23. Clear instructions and lifetime value
IBM: Clear
instructions add
to the product
quality
97%
▪ Increased perception of
product quality
▪ If this is good, more of this is also
good
▪ Who wants to buy low quality
products?
▪ Who can afford that?

24. Reduce confidence in the product
About 24% report
they don’t feel
confident about
the product
1 in 4

25. Out of box experience (OOB)
The averageU.S.
consumer spends
20 minutes trying
to make a device
work before giving
up and returning it
to the seller—
2006 study by
Dutch scientist
Elke den Ouden
▪ The feelings when you open
the box
▪ Printers have set up docs right
there
▪ Apple product are pretty
▪ Can reduce customer support
▪ Give people that feeling of
competence
▪ Or totally destroy it with bad
instructions

26. Use product instructions
About 91% of
customers use the
product
instructions

27. Corporate iniatives
Other places we belong

28. Customer experience
81% of companies
…delivering
customer experience
excellence are
outperforming their
competitors —
Peppers and
Rogers, 2009
Customer
Experience Maturity
Monitor
▪ Customer experience is the
outcome of all of the touch
points that your customer has
with your organization *
▪ The perception that customers
have across all of their
interactions with your
organization *
▪ It’s a customer-centric view of
your company from every
touch point
* From Customer Experience Overview, 2011, BruceTempkin
and Jeanne Bliss

29. Customer experience is a big deal
Product
instructions are a
critical part of the
customer
experience. If
customers can’t
use the product, it
impacts the
bottom line —
Sharon Burton
▪ Product instructions are the
central to the post-sales
customer experience
▪ Technical communication is a
subset of customer experience
▪ We have so much in common
▪ Tech comm is concerned with
the post-sales part

30. Customer Journey
The process a
customer goes
through while
interacting with
your company
Only the customer
knows if it was
good or not
▪ Typically though of in column
phases, for example
▪ Awareness
▪ Interest
▪ Desire
▪ Action
▪ Can have customer rows
▪ Activity
▪ Motivations
▪ Questions
▪ Barriers

31. Activity • Setup
• Install
• Create first thing
• Save
• Output
Motivations • Get started with
product
• Feel confident about
feeling confident
• Every day use/work
• Make life easier
• Not feel dumb
• Feel confident
• Just tell me
• Not get in trouble
• Feel confident and
ready to explore
• Ready for details and
concepts
• Make use/work easier
Questions • How do I?
• What do I need?
• Why won't it…?
• Now what?
• How do I…?
• The previous product
did…?
• Why is…so hard?
• Where did I see…?
• Surely this must…?
• Why did… happen?
• How do I undo that?
• Can I?
• Remind me how I…?
• If…, then…?
• Why do…this way?
• Is there a better way
to do…?
• Why did… happen?
• How do I undo that?
Barriers • Wrong information
format
• Wrong domain of
knowledge
• Not enough/too much
information
• Bad or wrong
information
• No information
• Lots of words or
videos
• Many different
sources
• Poor keywords for
search
• Wrong vocabulary
• Information simply
not available in docs
• Don't know the right
special words to
search
• Multiple sources of
content
Customer
journey
Out of Box Experience
(OOBE)
moved thru quickly
Common/basic tasks Common advanced or
common infrequent
tasks
PowerUser tasks

32. Activity • Setup
• Install
• Create first thing
• Save
• Output
Motivations • Get started with
product
• Feel confident about
feeling confident
• Every day use/work
• Make life easier
• Not feel dumb
• Feel confident
• Just tell me
• Not get in trouble
• Feel confident and
ready to explore
• Ready for details and
concepts
• Make use/work easier
Questions • How do I?
• What do I need?
• Why won't it…?
• Now what?
• How do I…?
• The previous product
did…?
• Why is…so hard?
• Where did I see…?
• Surely this must…?
• Why did… happen?
• How do I undo that?
• Can I?
• Remind me how I…?
• If…, then…?
• Why do…this way?
• Is there a better way
to do…?
• Why did… happen?
• How do I undo that?
Barriers • Wrong information
format
• Wrong domain of
knowledge
• Not enough/too much
information
• Bad or wrong
information
• No information
• Lots of words or
videos
• Many different
sources
• Poor keywords for
search
• Wrong vocabulary
• Information simply
not available in docs
• Don't know the right
special words to
search
• Multiple sources of
content
Customer
journey
Out of Box Experience
(OOBE)
moved thru quickly
Common/basic tasks Common advanced or
common infrequent
tasks
PowerUser tasks
~67% of your
customers
live here

33. Touchpoints
The places where
a customer
interacts with
your company in
some manner
during the
customer journey
Attended and
unattended
▪ Touchpoints include:
▪ Letters
▪ Knowledgebase
▪ Support
▪ Website
▪ Product content
▪ Exposes internal processes
▪ Attended vs unattended

34. Attended vs unattended
touchpoints
Customers
develop their
feelings about us
through their
interactions with
us – the
touchpoints
▪ Attended
▪ We can monitor what the
customer is doing/how they are
interacting with us and have the
opportunity to guide that
touchpoint experience.
▪ Unattended
▪ We can’t monitor to know what
the customer is doing and we
have no way to guide that
touchpoint experience should it
go poorly.

35. Most of our content is unattended
We often throw
something over
the wall and hope
for the best
▪ We need data for unattended
touchpoints
▪ Google Analytics
▪ Website
▪ Product instructions
▪ Other tools help here, too
▪ Might also be good to allow
ratings and comments

36. Customer ecosystem
The entire system
the customer is
involved in during
a journey
Including internal
stuff the customer
never sees
▪ Nothing happens in a vacuum
▪ Customer touchpoints are the
tips of icebergs
▪ Processes internal to your
company “bubble up” to
touchpoints
▪ Often, entire groups have no
idea of their customer impact

37. Customer ecosystems
Mapping out a
journey to an
ecosystem
potentially
identifies
unknown
customer impact
▪ Sort of like root cause analysis
▪ But deeper and more
systematic
▪ Allows people to see groups
who have customer impact
several levels up from where
they are making decisions
▪ These groups may be very happy
with how they’re doing
▪ But the customer isn’t

38. What does this mean for our
content?
▪ In most companies, we don’t
really know how content gets
created and distributed
▪ Or what is involved in that
creation or distribution
▪ And what barriers that may
create for our customers
▪ We need to know this
▪ We need the ecosystem
mapped out to show our
integration
We may be
delighted with our
content
Our customer may
not be delighted
The customer
wins

39. Measurements
How do start showing our value?

40. Customer Satisfaction Survey
Your company
cares deeply
about what the
customers think
Get docs in there
▪ Your company probably has a
Customer Experience program
▪ May be called the “Voice of the
Customer”
▪ Find them
▪ Bring them chocolates
▪ Annual survey
▪ Get a few questions on that
▪ About the value of the docs
▪ Don’t ask if it’s all spelled
correctly or if the grammar is
good

41. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
“How likely is it
that you would
recommend
[company
name/product/
service] to a friend
or colleague?”
▪ Intended behavior metric
▪ Scale 0 to 10
▪ Associates loyalty to future
behavior
Group Score Feelings
Promoters 9 or 10 Loyal
Passives 7 or 8 Generally
satisfied
Detractors 0 to 6 Unhappy

42. Calculate your NPS
% of Promoters - %
of Detractors =
NPS
Often expressed as
a number, such as
6.35
Can be a negative
number, which is
very bad
▪ Happy customers have
▪ Higher lifetime value
▪ Lower churn rate
▪ Lower return rate
▪ Cheaper to sell to
▪ A good follow up to the NPS
question is
▪ “Why?”

43. Can we use this elsewhere?
“How likely is it
that you would
recommend our
instructions [or
content] to a
friend or
colleague?”
▪ Measure the intended
behavior for your content
▪ Use the same scale and
measurements as the rest of
the NPS
▪ If your content isn’t as high (or
is higher) as the rest of your
NPS
▪ That’s something to look at

44. Customer Effort Score (CES)
"How much effort
did your request/
purchase/etc
take?“
“How much effort
did finding the
right information
take?”
▪ Customer Effort Score
▪ How hard is it to do business
with a company
▪ People don’t like doing business
when it’s hard
▪ Increased churn rate
▪ PDFs on a website
▪ Hard
▪ Scale of 1 (very easy) to 5
(giant effort)

45. Resources
Some resources to
start making the
case for your
environment
▪ Customer Journey maps
http://bit.ly/18ioSuH
http://bit.ly/1B5koC3
▪ Sharon Burton
http://bit.ly/1NdeAga
▪ Webworks
http://bit.ly/1wRXKZX
▪ I can’t release the IBM data
▪ I know. I’m bummed, too.

46. Questions?
sharon@sharonburton.com
Twitter: sharonburton