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...
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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...
Five types of badly written knowledge base articles
A knowledgebase article is like an apple. A fresh, crisp apple makes a wonderful snack, bakes a delicious pie, and brightens a green salad. But a mushy, flavorless apple makes a dreadful snack, bakes a tasteless pie, and ruins a green salad. To improve the dish it’s...
GrowthDot Interview: Effective Service Conversations – with Leslie O’Flahavan
Effective service conversations - the basics of writing to customers with Leslie O’Flahavan I loved being interviewed by GrowthDot's Natalia Zhontsa, who asked me 11 provocative questions and somehow got me talking about a dead airline passenger, customer service,...
The Fine Print: What to Write When You Must Explain a Policy to a Customer
Your customer should’ve read your company’s policy before purchasing your product. They kinda lied when they clicked the “I accept” box without reading a word of the fine print. Now, they’re requesting a return, refund, or exception that your policy doesn’t allow....
Remote Workers Need Better-Than-Average Writing Skills
Whether you and your team are working remotely a couple of days per week or you’re remote all day, every day, you’ve probably found that being remote has made you better at some tasks than you were when you worked in an office. Maybe you’re better at actively...
What to Write When You Must Tell a Customer “No”
While it’s never easy or much fun to tell a customer “no,” you can write it the wrong way—causing write-backs, harming satisfaction, destroying rapport—or the better way. The better way doesn’t mean saying “yes” or making exceptions for super-persistent customers. The...
