An Unexpected Example of Social Documentation
Unfortunately, the Entrepreneurship Gods decided that when you build a new software company that you must spend an uncomfortable amount of time in PowerPoint. I’m not one to complain, but lately I’ve been spending too much time boiling thoughts down to three bullet points of five words each. Anyway, during today’s PowerPoint adventure I was pleasantly surprised to run across this post on the web. The story that Tony describes in the blog is an outstanding example of Social Documentation at work.
Tony describes his customer support experience with Pelotonics, a web-based project management and group collaboration tool. Tony is evaluating Pelotonics for use within his children’s ministry team and ran into a problem. He looked through the company’s wiki-based documentation, but couldn’t find the answer so he opened a case with customer support. Tony goes on to write:
Within hours, I not only had an answer by email, but the company’s founder, Troy Malone, recorded a video response to my question. The response answered my question, and went on to offer additional useful information related to it–information I had not yet thought to ask for, but which will help me down the road.
Wow, that is pretty powerful. Certainly the fact that one of the founders responded personally is impressive, and it sounds like Troy Malone has made customer support a key tenet of the culture at Pelotonics. This is a great example of how positive customer points of experience have a lasting impact on a customer, and indeed can lead to a groundswell of positive after effects. Tony writes:
[The experience] was so good, and put such a stake in the ground for me in terms of productivity, that I have to share it here.
Tony is a happy user and this experience made him want to share that happiness with the internet. That’s outstanding for Tony, and even more so for Pelotonics.
Responsive Documentation
The video that Troy created for Tony is documentation. Specifically it answers a question about how to see a global view of tasks and milestones in Pelotonics. The answer wasn’t found in the documentation itself but was instead syndicated to a custom Ustream channel that the Pelotonics’ staff runs. Every day they are are standing by to answer questions. This is really cool.
Pelotonics understands that when users have a problem they want answers. The ideal situation would be for those answers to be in the documentation, but the next best thing is to get a customized response. I wonder, however, do these answers make their way back into the official documentation? Based on my initial search I don’t think the answer to Tony’s question is in the documentation yet, but I might just be missing it. If it isn’t, placing the videos into the documentation is a simple change that Pelotonics could make to ensure that this valuable video content is findable when users read the official documentation.
This Pelotonics example shows several key aspects of social documentation:
1. The answers are evergreen. They stay fresh. The continuous updates from the Ustream feed means that the documentation (if properly updated) could grow and change over time in response to customer demand for answers.
2. The content is syndicated. Pelotonics didn’t have to invest in a video on demand system or content distribution network to post rich video help content. Instead, they used the web and leveraged an existing video service.
3. Finally the answers are responsive. They are exactly what the customer wanted. The pre-written documentation represents a best guess at what a customer might need help with. This type of documentation is responsive to a real-time problem. There are several ways to do this. Pelotonics chose to use their custom Ustream video and chat channel to connect with real-time customer problems. Another way, perhaps less responsive, would be to view and analyze search analytics to see what search terms people are using to ask questions of your documentation. An even more appropriate approach might be to use Twitter as a direct, real-time connection to your customer’s problems. Whichever approach, the point is clear: one highly targeted answer to a real-time user question is more valuable than the entire documentation set.
Let us know what you think!
What Pelotonics is doing with video as a way to answer customer questions is intriguing. I’m going to try to contact them to get a more detailed view about the challenges and successes they’re finding with their approach to documentation and customer support. I’d also love to hear what you have to think about this topic. Do you publish videos as part of your documentation? How responsive is your documentation to real-time customer demand for answers? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.
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