By Saul Carliner | STC Fellow
In the third quarter 2014 issue of Technical Communication, Adnan Qayyum, Juan Carlos, Sanchez Lozano, and I reported on a study that showed that technical communication managers felt that the metric on which they were most closely assessed was not usage analytics, usability test results, or reductions in calls to the help line.
Rather, it was word of mouth about them and their staffs.
In other words, despite decades of work in finding meaningful metrics to demonstrate the value of technical communication, perhaps the most important one is staring us in the face and does not necessarily relate to our work, but the experience of working with us.
In practical terms, this suggests that, although award-winning work is certainly appreciated, as is generating tens of thousands of hits and reducing calls to the help line, what matters most to the organizations that sponsor our work is the day-to-day experience of working with us.
That’s why Qayyum, Sanchez Lozano, and I concluded by suggesting that communicators spend less effort on tracking metrics and invest more energy in tracking perceptions of their work.
Although they did so for different reasons, other researchers have essentially reached they the same conclusion. But they go a step further; they suggest focusing on providing outstanding customer service.
In this article, I explain why researchers and other experts are increasingly viewing professional communications as a customer service, then suggest the essential skills of customer service to master, and close by suggesting how to assess the success of your customer service efforts.
Technical Communication Is a Customer Service Business
On the one hand, the technical communication literature emphasizes the important role of writing for users; in the end, people must successfully use the materials we produce to achieve an important goal.
On the other hand, users rarely pay directly for our services. For those of us working externally, clients hire us by the project to produce technical content. For those of us working internally, an internal group hires us: perhaps a product development group, marketing group, technical support team, Information Systems/Information Technology function, or engineering team. This other group authorizes our budgets and the budget transfers that pay our salaries.
This situation is not unique to technical communicators; it is one faced by all professional communicators and instructional designers. As a result, researchers are exploring the nature of customer service in this field. Katzen (2015) defines a service as the “use of knowledge and skills for the benefit of another entity.” In our field, we use our knowledge of the art and science of communication to help our clients share important information with a particular audience.
In doing so, we employ the services of others. Most of us are skilled in writing but less so in visual communication, so we often hire illustrators and graphic designers to assist us with high profile projects. Similarly, when the challenges of using an authoring tool exceeds our expertise, we often hire technical experts to help us.
Similarly, we provide services for paying clients who, in turn, have several stakeholders. Typical stakeholders in a client organization include (Carliner, 2000; Robinson & Robinson, 1989):
- Sponsor, the person who can authorize or stop payment on fees for our services but with whom communicators have little interaction
- Ombudsperson, who is the primary contact in the client organization and makes resources available
- Subject Matter Experts, who provide insights about some or all of the material to be communicated
Although the client only succeeds when users can perform the intended goal of the communication product, client needs and priorities usually differ from users’. In fact, advice for dealing with SMEs often focuses on bridging this difference, but usually focuses on the needs of the users, sometimes at the expense of the needs of the SMEs.
When technical communication was almost exclusively a service provided internally, interest in client service was limited. But with the significant expansion of contracting and consulting in the field since the late 1980s, the rise of agency-based work in other branches of Web communication, and the growing realization that even internal workers provide a service, interest in models of customer service has grown in recent years (Kim, 2015). This growing sensitivity to clients also inspired Gonzales, Potts, Hart-Davidson, and McLeod (2016) to redesign a Content Strategy course to incorporate the client perspective. They are hardly alone in this effort.
The Essentials of Technical Communication Services
Although work in the nature of service in technical communication is just beginning, our colleagues in other branches of communication and training have explored this issue. For example, Maclean and Scott (2011) identified a number of skills needed to successfully deliver instructional design services, including project management, client management, planning, leadership, communication skills, teamworking, budgeting, and costing.
In its newest Competencies for Performance and Learning Professionals, a list of the essential skills needed by professional instructional designers and trainers, Canada-based Institute for Performance and Learning specifically identified five competencies as essential to excellent customer service. With little modification, these transfer to technical communication.
1. Demonstrating Familiarity with Client Organizations
This competency emphasizes the expectation that communicators demonstrate a strong awareness of the client’s organization and operating context. Specific issues that communicators need to develop awareness of include:
- Mission and vision of the client’s organization
- The products and services the client offers, with special knowledge of the product or service on which the communicator works
- Work and decision-making processes in the client’s organization
- The work units (departments, functions, divisions) with whom the technical communicator interacts
- The organizational culture of the client organization as well as the work unit with whom the technical communicator regularly interacts
Most significantly, clients expect technical communicators to uncover this information on their own. Clients do not expect to spoon feed it to technical communicators and become frustrated when communicators demonstrate ignorance of much of this. That said, clients do recognize that a new communicator needs time to become familiar with the organization.
2. Supporting Clients in Making Effective Decisions
This competency emphasizes two things: that technical communicators have an obligation to provide well-founded recommendations to client and, at the same time, recognize that the client—not the technical communicator—has final decision making power. This is akin to a doctor providing a patient with excellent medical advice, such as if the patient continues to be overweight, the patient increases their risk of heart disease, but the doctor must recognize that the patient ultimately decides whether or not to continue with their high-fat, high-sugar diet. Specific approaches that technical communicators should take include:
- Suggesting two or more options to consider whenever possible
- Providing sound, research- and practice-based explanations of the pros and cons of each option presented
- Supporting clients with whatever option they choose, as long as doing so does not violate laws or professional ethics, even if the communicator might have made another choice
3. Developing Agreements with Clients
Successful client engagements rest on carefully clarifying and managing the expectations of all parties. This competency focuses on clarifying the expectations of all parties as early as possible, resolving differing expectations before proceeding, and ensuring that the progress of the project matches expectations. Specific issues that technical communicators need to address include:
- Clarifying expectations regarding a project—not tasks and audience, but also the “look and feel” of the type of communication product sought by the client and their role in the process of developing it.
- Uncovering and addressing below-the-surface assumptions about the project
- Gathering information about similar projects in the past, because the best predictor of how the client will behave on a current project is the client’s behavior on similar project in the past
Although directly asking clients about expectations and assumptions might seem to be the best approach, most clients are not in the technical communication business and are often unaware of their expectations and assumptions, so asking is only partially helpful. Communicators need to surface these expectations and assumptions to ensure that agreements are more complete and the finished work is most likely to meet client expectations.
4. Managing Changes throughout a Project
Despite great plans, the real success of a project rests on their execution. Although most communicators hope that projects proceed according to plan, that often does not happen.
As Fredrickson (1992) notes, the real success of a project rests not in its going well but in recovering from mishaps that arise. Therefore, project-related communication plays a central role in managing changes: not just written but also interpersonal and organizational.
5. Interacting Effectively with Clients
In fact, interpersonal and organizational communication plays a central role in forming client impressions of technical communicators. This type of communication relies little on our writing skills, which clients assume will be outstanding.
Rather, it focuses on how we engage with clients. Specific skills include (but are not limited to):
- The manner and extent to which we seek input from clients and engage them in the design and development of the materials they commissioned
- The manner in which we explain technical communication matters to clients—clearly and professionally without speaking tech-comm-ease nor coming across as condescending
- The manner in which we manage conflicts with individual stakeholders and among them
Most important to interacting effectively is acting as an ambassador for your group.
Issues in Providing Customer Service in Technical Communication
Katzen (2015) notes that a customer service actually has two parts:
- The finished product of the work
- The act of providing the service
So often, technical communicators primarily focus on the first: the finished product of the work, as well as the drafts that precede it.
But the act of providing the service and all of the interactions that occur within that context also shape perceptions of technical communication.
In other words, a client might receive a report with metrics saying that a new online user assistance system generated a 10% increase in traffic or the number of calls to the helpline shrank by 15%, but might not be impressed because the experience of producing the content that produced these results was so contentious that the client wonders whether the results were worth the cost.
Similarly, if the content fails to produce the intended results as measured by metrics or, more commonly, no one tracks metrics, but the client has a positive experience with the technical communicators and develops a strong trust in their work, the client will have a positive impression of the work.
Tracking the Effectiveness of Customer Service
This is why traditional metrics matter less than perceptions. But how can we measure the effectiveness of providing customer service in technical communication?
If you’re thinking “conduct a survey,” resist the impulse because the survey will ultimately prove useless.
Certainly one could devise a survey to assess satisfaction. But the data would probably not be trustworthy. First, many of us work for just one or two clients. Although different people work in the client organization, only a few play a central role in choosing to work with us. So the opinions are not equal. Furthermore, recognizing that the population is small and that the results will come back to you (even if a third party conducts the survey), clients have little incentive to provide honest feedback.
So two approaches exist. One is scary but important; the other is probably more reliable but the opportunity rarely arises. Both are necessary.
- The scary approach. Meet with the ombudsperson in the client organization to gauge a project. Hold check-in meetings after each major milestone to find out what is working and what’s causing concerns. This is scary because it is asking for direct and honest feedback, something many of us actually fear because we’re concerned that it’s all negative. By asking what’s going right, however, the conversation should be more balanced and should provide valuable input on strengthening specific aspects of customer service.
- The reliable approach. As I proposed in a third quarter 1997 issue of Technical Communication, the most important measure of the technical communication service is assessing client satisfaction or, put more bluntly, whether the client voluntarily chooses to engage you and your group on a future project. For an organization providing a third-party service, you can find out quickly especially if the client hires you for a project soon after the completed one. But because an appropriate project for you and your group might not immediately arise, a proxy measure is whether the client actively refers others to you. (Intention to provide a referral does not count.)
For an internal technical communication group, that occurs when you receive funding for the next year, because the funding indicates whether the internal clients want to continue working with the staff technical communicators.
In the end, generating ongoing business is our raison d’etre. Ideally, reductions in help line calls, user visits to and satisfaction with Web content, and successful grant and business proposals should contribute to positive client impressions. But nothing assesses their impressions more directly than repeat business for external communicators and continued funding for internal ones.
References
Carliner, S. 2001. Emerging Skills in Technical Communication: The Information Designer’s Place in a New Career Path for Technical Communicators. Technical Communication, 48.2, 156–175.
Carliner, S. 1997. Demonstrating the Effectiveness and Value of Technical Communication Products and Services: A Four-level Process. Technical Communication, 44.3, 252–265.
Carliner, S., A. Qayyum, & J. C. Sanchez-Lozano. 2014. What Measures of Productivity and Effectiveness Do Technical Communication Managers Track and Report?. Technical Communication, 61.3, 147–172.
Fredrickson, L. 1992. Quality in Technical Communication: A Definition for the 1990s. Technical Communication, 39.3, 394–399.
Gonzales, L., L. Potts, B. Hart-Davidson, & M. McLeod. 2016. Revising a Content-Management Course for a Content Strategy World. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59.1, 56–67.
Institute for Performance and Learning. 2016. Competencies for Performance and Learning Professionals. Toronto, ON: Institute for Performance and Learning.
Katzen, H. Jr. 2015. An Inquiry into the Nature of Service Economics. Journal of Business and Economics, 6.3, 415–423
Kim, M. 2015. Designing for Participation: An Inquiry into the Nature of Service. Viewed at https://www.slideshare.net/kimmiso/miso-kim-defense-on-designing-for-participation. Accessed 23 January 2017.
MacLean, P., & B. Scott. 2011. Competencies for Learning Design: A Review of the Literature and a Proposed Framework. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42.4, 557–572.
Robinson, D. G., & J. Robinson. 1989. Training for Impact. Training & Development Journal, 43.8, 34–43.
SAUL CARLINER is a Professor of Educational Communication and Technology at Concordia University and frequent contributor to STC publications. He chairs the Intercom Advisory Committee and is a Fellow and Past President of STC.
