Is your company struggling along with help files. Do you spending hours publishing and updating, when you should be focused on clear, concise content?
The 24-7 SupportSuite for online technical documentation is no more difficult than Word. It has labour-saving automated Tables of Contents, cross-categorisation, and the ability to handle rich media!
Okay, so it won’t handle SpaceX document version control for the next moon landing. But it’s affordable, easy to update, and very suited to most small to medium sized companies.
Support documentation is a fact of life
Customers who refuse to read the manual waste time and cause frustration. Their time, but also the time of your sales team who have to continue to support them. THEIR frustration, but they also annoy YOUR support team with silly queries.
Customers buy incredibly complex software and equipment, and expect to use intuition and luck to use and optimize it?
Because users are demanding, most technical organizations create and update multiple support channels. They have videos on YouTube, tech support on Github, Facebook support, issues queues …
Multiple connection points mean multiple help file updates. Customers don’t hesitate to report the same issue on several platforms, making tracking impossible.
What makes tech support documentation so frustrating?
Software Cost
Mad Cap Flare and Document 360 are expensive for smaller businesses or independent users.
Resource Cost
Help systems – even simple Word and PowerPoint files – take up a lot of business resources, time, and effort. Proprietary support software requires bigger user computers, lots of memory, and lots of storage.
Output Format Limits
A decade ago, people were happy with PDFs with links. Five years ago, photos were fine. Now customers want to manipulate 3D models! You need a format that keeps up with internet best practice.
Steep Learning Curve
It takes months of meetings to get up and running.
Poor team collaboration
it’s challenging for teams to work simultaneously on different pages.
Hard to restructure
Structures change. New products are added. You want to reuse what you have, but add new sections and update old ones. How many places did we cite that outdated phone number…
Input Format Limits
Word is a nightmare for numbering and indenting. You want to add a paragraph and now the entire document is out of sync. You feel like the software is constantly fighting you.
Inputting needs skill
Even for Word, you can’t just hire a data entry clerk. They need to know about stylesheets, Tables of Content, indexing and footnotes. When you buy a proprietary brand, it’s even harder to find a trained person.
Hard to print
Sometimes people want a hard copy. That means you have to create a website AND a print version. And keep both up to date.
Poor Support
No matter what software you buy, you are dealing with a commercial enterprise there to make a profit. Yes, their prices will go up once you are locked in. Yes, the amazing support you got as a new client will get worse.
Top 10 features of good support documentation?
- Consolidated in one place.
- Easy for users: 90% of people should find DIY help.
- Easy for the support team.
- Friendly multimedia resources, diagrams, 3D models and whatever technology invents next year.
- Google-friendly: no scouring Quora for competitor misinformation.
- Protected: share IP with VIP customers and distributors, not Google.
- Scalable: It should grow with your product line without getting into a mess.
- Accessible: mobile friendly
- Future-proof: on a platform you own and control. Cloud platform can disappear—or double in price—overnight.
- Reporting and Feedback: be aware of trends and emergencies (before they end up on Facebook!)
