Building Bridges Across an Expanding Universe Case study for a content collaboration council Mysti Berry, Principal Technical Writer

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Mysti Berry Principal Technical Writer @MystiContent www.linkedin.com/in/mystiberry

Before we get started…  How many groups create customer content at your company?

Doc/Dev/QA Training Support Marketing Sales Customer Success Groups

Legal Customer Readiness

 How many do you interact with directly? How often? Who curates their content?

Product Management

 Why we had to do something  Our first project  How well it worked  How we continued  Results to date

 Customers need content that’s findable, helpful, and accurate  Not every group knows how to do all three

 Sample mission statement  Sample agenda  Ideas for how you can start

The Case Study Why it matters Handouts and Takeaways

Case Study: Collaboration Council to the rescue!

Ø Cooperation across groups can be lightweight.

Ø Cooperation across groups helps groups.

Ø Cooperation across groups helps customers.

Why we had to do something

Why we had to do something

Some small customers got lost Groups created and published content in different places. Sometimes hard to send a customer to the right content Content was published, but not always updated or removed.

Example: importing data (in the help portal)

Where should a beginner start?

Example: importing data (in Salesforce, outside the help portal)

Salespeople combined existing content, saved as PDFs, and gave to customers. Ancient content lingered on the Web. Customer cases often resolved by sending customer a link to existing content. Lesson: good content was sometimes hard to find.

Example: importing data (Google results)

Non-Salesforce content shouldn’t ever be in the top results for an important search like “import data Salesforce.” If they are, it means too many customers aren’t finding and clicking on our great content.

Our first project

How we started

A customer success VP funded an FTE, Michael Kirschner. Michael gathered together reps from Doc, Training, and Support. We committed to a lot: Ø Short deadline (3 months) Ø New type of doc with old tools Ø Some developer, UX time Ø Mad HTML skills from Doc

Michael’s first steps

Michael’s team audited content and removed the old stuff.

Support audited and removed duplicate knowledge articles as part of another initiative.

Our unnamed team designed a brand new deliverable type with no new tools or processes, designed to help customers find content related to a goal like “import data.”

Our new deliverable: the quickstart

Ø Content gathered according to customer need, not by which team created the content.

Ø Only one paragraph of new content

Ø Include content from anywhere!

Quickstart details Ø Help, training, and support content delivered in one portal, authored in three different environments.

Ø UI team created a new CSS, and the portal team created a new article type, which required a bit of back-end development work.

Ø Documentation wrote the HTML based on sample from UI team.

Ø Curation is still a challenge.

How well it worked

VPs and customers agreed—we filled an important gap

Ø The number of relevant customer cases decreased.

Ø Customers used our new quickstarts.

Ø Other groups sent their customers links to the quickstarts.

We noticed other benefits to meeting regularly

Ø We learned a lot about each other’s roles, challenges, and cadences.

Ø We shared valuable information that otherwise would have stayed in one group.

Ø We learned that different groups define success differently—and we’re all correct.

How we continued

Birth of the Content Collaboration Council

We decided to keep meeting and looked for problems to solve.

Our process: Ø Chose a name and agreed on attendees.

Ø Met for an hour once a month, to keep requirements lightweight.

Ø Started by defining our mission (three sessions).

Ø Started by having each team member present their content challenges and opportunities.

Ø Made time for informal sharing and questions.

Ø Chose a facilitator (Doc!) who committed to a year.

Results to date

Ø Doesn’t waste time putting PDFs together. Sends customer a single URL. Ø Technical Sales knows who to ask for missing content, and other teams get precious customer input. Everybody wins!

Ø Advertised new customer success communities across the company by sharing with our council. Ø Clarified how writers should contribute to forums (they don’t need us to hover, but we didn’t know that!)

Ø Made some headway toward sharing examples. Ø Improved access to changes before they’re released Ø Investigated how localization might be improved for training.

Technical Sales Customer Success Training

What we achieved  Opening doors to communication on a rocket ship is challenging.

Ø Learned how customers use our most valuable deliverable, the Release Notes. Ø Coordinated a major change in help/support portal for search. Ø Identified the next likely “ask” (need for metadata and taxonomy that can support all content-generating groups).

Ø Doc easily solved a content problem for Legal using quickstarts, just months after they were invented.

Ø They’re using our style guide.

Technical Documentation Legal Marketing

More achievements  Avoided a lot of duplication of effort in creating videos and walkthroughs! Plus…

One ongoing challenge: curation

Only a few quickstarts are explicitly owned, and therefore updated regularly.

Current solution Internal or external customers send us requests to update, and we follow up (make the change or route it to the correct person).

Future goal Find owners and automate steps in the review cycle so that quickstarts are always as fresh as possible.

Ø Tell your boss that it’s an industry best practice. Ø Pick one or two groups with the most overlap and need. Ø Give yourself time to learn each others’ language, cadence, and challenges. Ø Pick a small, easy win to start, for example: “Reduce duplicated content between Tech Doc and Support.”

Slideshare download

Getting Started Sample Agendas Sample Mission Statement

Handouts and takeaways  Start your own Collaboration Council!

Slideshare download

What we learned

Ø Cooperation across groups can be lightweight.

Ø Cooperation across groups helps groups.

Ø Cooperation across groups helps customers.

Thank you Mysti Berry Principal Technical Writer @MystiContent www.linkedin.com/in/mystiberry