Re: Managing Expectations

[Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

I'm currently doing a distance MA in Technical Authorship and they keep
hammering this point - analyse the audience, what do they expect to get
from the lit etc.  Our problem is that we don't sell our product direct to
the customer, it's through installers.  Our only feedback is through Tech
Support (lots of calls on one thing then we try and improve it) and our
Training dept which trains the installers.  Often the Tech Support is
answered by RTFM!!  In addition, we get the problem of "familiarity breeds
contempt".  A new product we recently released was significantly different
(installation, operation etc) to our other products.  We got a lot of calls
from installers with assorted problems because they hadn't read the lit -
other products work/are wired like this so this must be too!! We had one
new installer who hadn't used our products before and so had no
preconceptions, followed what was said in the lit and had relatively few
problems.

I really feel that in this area we cant win -  at least not all the time!

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International

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