In research for my presentation today on the emotion factor in technical documentation, I came across a recent case study in the US where changing the writing style had resulted in a 13% increase in readership. It took me a few days to realise that a 13% increase must have quite an impact on the… Read more »
Category: ROI
3 strategic ways to reduce the number of support calls
The cost of providing support to users can be huge, so what can be done to reduce the number and duration of support calls? Here are three strategies to consider. 1.Pre-empt the calls In same way that Japanese car companies improved the quality of their products to reduce the after-sales costs, you can take steps,… Read more »
Support call cost reduction calculator
We’ve added a simple online calculator to the Cherryleaf Web site for calculating the potential savings in support costs derived from having online Help. See our Support call cost reduction calculator page. We’re also developing a more comprehensive spreadsheet to help you measure the value of documentation. Contact us if you would like a copy.
Technical authors, documents and getting lost
Via Twitter, someone responded to one of my messages with the statement, “maybe, if you need a manual, it’s a poor product”. I don’t think that’s the case, and my reply on Twitter was: “A map is to a city, what a manual is to an application.” Let me explain. Imagine you need to visit… Read more »
The ROI of documentation and support
In two conversations this week, the issue of “how do you measure the value of documentation?” has come up. The benefits of user documentation (reduced support calls, increase in the perceived value of the product, happier customers, better customer retention, increase product usage etc) can be identified, but it can be hard to measure them… Read more »