by Leslie O'Flahavan | Nov 15, 2024 | Whitepapers & Tools
The Quality Review Tool presents seven industry-tested standards for e-mail quality and explains what constitutes excellent performance on each standard. Use the Quality Review Tool to score customer service agents’ e-mails, coach agents, improve writing skills,...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Nov 15, 2024 | Whitepapers & Tools
We developed this social media writing guide for the Centers for Disease Control. While the examples will be most relevant to health communicators, the guidance about writing for social media is practical for any organization that wants to provide high quality social...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Nov 15, 2024 | Whitepapers & Tools
Months before the hectic holiday shopping season, we decided to conduct an experiment to find out which online retailer does customer service e-mail best. We sent the same e-mail query to seven big-name retailers that sell a certain toy croquet set we were interested...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Oct 1, 2023 | Featured, Writing Matters Blog
I’m not sure whether it’s a turf battle, a sibling rivalry, or a custody fight, but whatever is going on between the Customer Service Team and the Marketing Team is hurting customers who reach out for help via social media. Granted, social channels are unpredictable....
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Sep 1, 2023 | Featured, Writing Matters Blog
If you work in customer care, you’ve been talking about chatbots for about a decade. Your organization may have been using a chatbot for almost that long. You’ve heard or participated in all the chatbot debates, and likely heard the following: “Chatbots ruin the...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Jul 1, 2023 | Featured, Writing Matters Blog
To help customers get up to speed with a product or service, companies offer many types of documentation: user manuals, video tutorials, in-product help, even good old FAQs. Why? Because customers need heaps of help when they’re just starting to use the thing you’ve...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Jun 18, 2023 | Featured, Writing Matters Blog
You want to help your customers, you really do. So you write a gorgeous 75-page User Manual, which answers every conceivable question your customer might have about using your product or service. And then you learn the ugly truth. Nobody reads the User Manual, even...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | May 14, 2023 | Featured, Uncategorized, Writing Matters Blog
Maintaining a knowledge base full of well written articles is as difficult as keeping a preschool playroom tidy. Here’s why. Some KB articles are created to meet an emergency need, and they’re hurriedly, even poorly, written from the day they’re published. Other KB...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Apr 28, 2023 | Featured, Uncategorized, Writing Matters Blog
I’m not going to lie. Writing a great knowledge base article is a lot of work. Your writing must be precise, concise, and easy-to-read. You must know your topic really well, and then you must try to un-know it, so you can think like your reader—who wouldn’t be reading...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Mar 15, 2023 | Featured, Writing Matters Blog
A badly written knowledgebase article is like the tainted clam in the linguine. It probably won’t kill you, but you aren’t going to feel very well after eating it. What did that bad clam cost you? Well, you wasted $24.95 on a meal, and no one wants to throw away...