What should we teach Support staff about technical writing?

We’re going to be running a technical writing course for a client where the delegates are from the Support department. This means we have had to consider what we should teach Support staff about technical writing. We sent the delegates a pre-course questionnaire, asking them what they’d like the course to cover. I thought it… Read more »

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 »

3 ways for the Support department to get the monkey off its back

Q. What’s the biggest gripe in Support? A. Getting the unnecessary calls off their backs, so they can find the time needed to tackle the really important problems. Really, they are looking for a way to be pestered less. So what are the three key ways to relieve this headache? 1. Enable users to serve… Read more »

Reducing IT support call times

At the Documentation Managers peer group meeting we hosted earlier this week, one manager commented his organisation was aiming to increase the average time for each support call. This was because it believed it could eliminate all the short duration calls – through redesigning the software and better user documentation. What would be left would be… Read more »