Technical writing services for software – fewer support tickets and increased sales

We see an ongoing role for Cherryleaf as consultants who can help to get better documents out of the vast material we have added to the system. Very importantly, Cherryleaf were able to rapidly respond to our issues with the system and help us understand.

For Samaritans volunteers, having the information available on the intranet rather than in a manual in their branches, means they can find out what they need to know at any time; the search facility and page style ensures that information can be located and read quickly and easily. For prison staff, this is the first time they will be able to see all of the Samaritans guidelines for running the Listener scheme; this will help to further develop their understanding of the scheme and will support them in facilitating the operation of the scheme in their prison. Samaritans is delighted with the result of the project.

I worked with Cherryleaf on a project for the European Community made up of a consortium of different companies and nationalities. Their communications skills were excellent and capacity to speak both fluent technical jargon and business English are truly superb

As an IT team, we had an array of support documentation for systems and services that we’d always struggled to have a consistent format, style and structure for. The course delivered by Ellis Pratt really clarified the best practices to use and answered many of the questions we had.

We were so satisfied with the service provided by Ellis that we contacted Cherryleaf to create an exemplary piece of documentation for one of our systems, with an aim to using the documentation as a template for our other services going forwards. Ginny Critcher was always punctual, polite and efficient in all her work. Where there were any doubts or suggestions, Ginny would provide insight into what the best approach would be in an eloquent and thoughtful manner.

We recently changed our authoring tooling. Cherryleaf came and did a spot of consultation to help us choose something that fit our use cases. I’d absolutely recommend their service if you want some help picking tooling.

Cherryleaf is one of the best technical authoring houses in the business, and profoundly knowledgeable, professional and approachable. Highly recommended for anyone requiring top-notch documentation or training services.

Cherryleaf did great work for us at Truphone. They came, they listened, they worked hard, they delivered.

I had some basic instructions for my new online application, Opportunity Matrix™, but absolutely no idea how to turn them into a proper Help system.

The information and guidance from Cherryleaf was always top notch, so I always knew exactly where the project was, and what the (quite reasonable) budget needed to be. I shall have no hesitation in using Cherryleaf again, and in recommending them.

I’m very pleased with the enhancements to the Help System. You created very clear topics for some areas that I find difficult to explain. You also identified a number of ‘bugs’ with the current version that have now been fixed. This just continues to improve the product.

We’re a small SaaS B2B shop in Singapore. We had a series of projects involving technical writing with Cherryleaf.
First, we needed to pick the vendor. The industry seems to be small. The options are: bigger (biggish?) vendors, freelance writers, and boutique companies like Cherryleaf.

Freelancers may offer the best value but are difficult to find and assess, and have shifting priorities. I emailed my enquiries to 4 companies. One (a major provider with most of its staff seemingly in Nigeria) never bothered to reply. Three others, including Cherryleaf, did. Two were British, one was US-based. Cherryleaf was the smallest of the three.

Cherryleaf, represented by Ellis Pratt, is an archetypal boutique. Ellis provided a useful assessment of the situation, and suggested strategy to handle another chunk of content which I did not know what to do. Essentially, it would increase the project somewhat, but it was perfectly reasonable.

The other British vendor is a bigger company with a few branches in Europe. The representative showed up semi-prepared. He knew what we wanted but had a very rough idea how to proceed. The rate probably made sense to prospects residing in the Buckingham palace, but was a bit too high for us and too opaque.

The American vendor replied with a wall of text, obviously generated by GenAI. Some of it was flat out wrong. The sales guy showed up unprepared and started by citing their big customers with the vibe “we don’t really care for small guys like you but might deign to take your project”. Their main selling points were the big names they worked for and that they use actual developers as technical writers. Can you assess how much I will have to spend? Nah, we’ll just charge you hourly and see how it goes. “But other vendors did produce a quotation.” Oh, they did? Then let me connect you with a technical writer and we’ll see. I obviously declined. When I told them that there are more projects, I was told something to the tune of “oh but we didn’t know, we thought you were a small client”. I was offered to look at their flagship projects for Silicon Valley big names and found errors on the first couple of pages. Do learn that arrogance doesn’t sell, at least when I’m the customer.

The choice was pretty clear. We picked Cherryleaf.

So far we’ve done two projects, and the experience is more or less according to my expectations. The first project was to write several small manuals for several web applications. The second one involved overhauling all our API documentation and merging it with assorted bits and pieces everywhere.

Cherryleaf writers know what they’re doing. Again, an archetypal artisan shop. They might not have experience with every piece of tech out there (so this is up to you to follow up on). They are, however, very responsive and also fluent with the tools of the trade. (I was recommended Redocly and I can’t believe how good the platform is. Thanks again, Ellis.)

There were a couple of issues but Ellis handled them efficiently, and graciously declined to charge for these portions.

The main strength of Cherryleaf is to know how to organise the content. It all looks self-evident when you look at the result, but it’s hard to come up with it on your own. Cherryleaf also knows about the new tools like GenAI, but I personally prefer human touch. (Don’t overuse GenAI, kids, it’s bad for business.)

Cherryleaf team accumulated decades of experience, take pride in what they do, and prioritise providing value over the approach of “take the money and run”. Business does not have to be impersonal, you know? It’s humans dealing with humans, after all.