Clear documentation for faster onboarding and fewer support tickets

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.

I took the course to build on my experience as a technical writer, as I’d never had any formal training. I learned a lot! The course was enjoyable and well-organised, with easy-to-follow lessons and quick, helpful feedback that made the experience even better.

Overall, it’s sharpened my skills and improved my confidence. I’d recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about technical writing or to experienced writers looking to brush up on their skills and ensure they’re following current best practices.

The course is very well structured, and each part builds further on the previous part, making it easier to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. It helped me realize that there is no such thing as one single method or process to build API documentation. There are many variables to consider but the course really offers a guideline for writers to be able to take away and tailor it to their needs.

I especially liked the real life examples and learned that looking at as many API’s and developer platforms as possible is a good way to gain insights.

Since I took the course, I feel more confident to take on any future API documentation projects.

I will be keeping an eye on the Cherryleaf course offerings to see if any additional courses are available to help me build my writing skills.

I’m happy to share that I’ve obtained a new certification: Using Generative AI in Technical Writing from Cherryleaf!..everything is explained from a tech comm perspective so it’s a bit easier to see how AI might be used.