When I talk to a technical communicators about “Customer Experience,” the conversation usually focuses on the four critical issues related to the customer journey:
– Create “step-by-step” orientation materials for new customers;
– Identify new customer “friction points” and address them with relevant messaging;
– Help customers “connect the dots” when using the products;
– Map the journey from a beginner to an advanced user (progressive enhancement).
I just took a really insightful LinkedIn Learning course from CX expert Jeannie Walters: “Customer Experience (CX) Trends.” I recommend this 2023 course for all technical communicators. Jeannie explores the latest CX trends, such as omni-channels, AI, personalization and customer journey mapping tools. As you might guess, AI does take up a lot of the conversation! Jeannie explains how AI can impact key customer touchpoints in a positive way: trust, satisfaction, loyalty, engagement, and advocacy.
But overall, this course underscores the critical role that technical communicators play as part of CX.
Here are just two examples:
Visibility: Tech writers can anticipate common user questions, which reduces customer service calls and streamlines the user onboarding process. For example, financial software users may want to know how a “Bill of Materials (BOM)” module calculates a BOM grade and recommends alternate parts. The tech writer researches this feature, crafts the answer, places it in the self-serve help center, and also standardizes this language for the customer service team.
Data-Driven Content: Our team analyze all the search terms from customers, and this data reveals the topics that users couldn’t find in the help center. We use a simple spreadsheet formula to group similar words into a single theme. This data tells us the highest-priority friction points, so we can focus new help center articles on these topics.
So how are you contributing to the CX process in your organization? Send us an e-mail with your thoughts and we’ll share it on the STC-PMC site!
Rob
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