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Re: Ideas for Help 2.0

Subject: Re: Ideas for Help 2.0
From: Rick Stone <rstone75 -at- kc -dot- rr -dot- com>
To: jimmy -at- breck-mckye -dot- com
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:30:26 -0600

LOL, in the call center where I used to work and where I cut my teeth on developing help systems, I can see where pure analysis of search terms would have helped tremendously! (not)

One typical call and case in point...

I'm calling because my printer is offline.

Hmmm, have you tried pressing the On Line button?

No, all the buttons are lit up just fine and it's printing.

What's the problem?

It's offline, just like I tried to tell you! Where the ticket says Name: it's blank. Where the ticket says Address: it's printing the Name!

Ahhhh, offline means misaligned!

Here's another:

I'm calling because my tickets are jammed.

Okay, let's move to the printer. Remove the stock. Clean the burster bar and put the stock back in.

No, I've already done that!

And it's still jammed?

No, I told you already. It's jammed up! No tickets are printing.

Ahhhh, jammed up means I need to restart the printer queue on the mainframe so they begin printing again.

Such are the nuances of developing good and useful help... Rick :)


On 1/11/2012 10:46 AM, jimmy -at- breck-mckye -dot- com wrote:

In the next ten years, I expect improved reporting on how people use
help will have far more effect on how we produce that help than any
changes on the back end or improvements to authoring or presentation
tools.

On a related note, I think anyone rolling out web help needs to look into using web analytics - even free, off-the-shelf solutions like Google Analytics. Hard data about what people are reading - and more importantly, what people are reading and leaving without needing to re-search for more help - is the sort of evidence no stakeholder can argue with.

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Re: Ideas for Help 2.0: From: Nancy Allison
Re: Ideas for Help 2.0: From: jimmy

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