[This article was originally published by WordRake.] Publication date: June 11, 2024 I’m weird. I love editing. With a finished draft in hand, I’m eager to ask myself editing questions like “Is this document convincing?”, “Have I given too much detail or just...
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The “Bite, Snack, Meal” Approach Helps You Feed Content-Hungry Readers
[This article was originally published by WordRake.] Publication date: April 10, 2024 “How hungry is my reader?” When we sit down to write a web page, report, proposal, or blog post, we’re often plagued by uncertainty about our readers’ appetite for our content. Am I...
Fix These Four Live Chat Mistakes Or Lose Customers
Chat has been around forever and customers love the channel. They choose chat when they need to multitask, when they want a written record of the agent’s instructions they can refer to later, and when they prefer not to be overheard. A 2021 survey of over 1,000 US...
Customer Service, Not Marketing, Should Respond to Complaints on Social Media
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....
Your Chatbot Needs Better Small Talk
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...
How to Develop a Quick Start Guide That Prevents Calls and Emails
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...
What’s a Quick Start Guide and Why Do Your Customers Want One?
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...
Four Ways to Fix a Bad Knowledge Base Article
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...
How to Write a Great Knowledge Base Article
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...
That Badly Written Knowledge Base Article is Costing You Money
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...