Riding the Wave of the Convergence of User Experience and Technical Communication

By Pam Noreault | Senior Member

The focus on user experience (UX) is white hot and it’s not going away any time soon. We are in the “age of the customer,” where bad customer experiences go viral on social networking sites and company revenue quickly takes a hit. The Internet gives us the power to research what others think about everything. Yelp and Amazon are prime examples of applications that gather opinions and aggregate the results. Undoubtedly, technical communication is part of the total user experience. However, if customers rule then companies must converge the user experience design (UXD) and technical communication disciplines so they are under the same umbrella.

Learn the Approaches and Find Opportunities

Undoubtedly, customer engagement and UX work together and are differentiators when it comes to creating content that engages customers in an ongoing conversation so that they are able to do their jobs more quickly and efficiently.

As a writer, you might flinch at having to spend time doing customer research and engaging customers because it adds time to your delivery schedule. You might also have no idea where to start and what to do with the information you gather. This article provides ideas on how to get started and how to act on the information that you uncover.

You can get started by taking advantage of opportunities within your company. Regardless of what you currently know, you can do something to move in the direction of customer engagement. After all, doing something is better than doing nothing.

Engagement Approaches

There are many things that you can do to engage customers and begin your user research journey. The key is to get the conversation started, foster it, and keep it going. Most importantly, stop talking to and start listening to customers. Keep in mind that it’s not about asking customers what they want—it’s about understanding how they work. Start with one or more of these approaches:

Surveys
Observations
Interviews
Contextual interviews (observe users doing their jobs)
Card sorts (users organize topics into categories and help you label these groups)
Usability tests
Customer communities/partner programs/focus groups
Prototyping
Task analysis (observe users in action to understand how they perform their tasks and achieve their goals)

Engagement Opportunities

It can be hard for many writers to get access to their customers. It might not be easy, but it is absolutely necessary. You can start by looking for opportunities that already exist in your company. Consider the following options:

Form partnerships with product management, marketing, sales, sales engineering, and customer support
Form partnerships with UXD, if you have a UXD team in your company
Review LinkedIn and other forums related to your company’s line of business for useful information, conversations, and opinions
Monitor Twitter to see what your customers are tweeting about
Monitor your own company’s tweets
Find Facebook chatter about your company and its products

Any area of your company that interacts with customers is fair game. If you get nowhere with those partnerships, get creative. Think about using social networking sites to mine information. Join LinkedIn groups for your industry and post questions and surveys to obtain information. Seek input from users who are not your customers but who represent the same personas as your customers.

Create a Customer Engagement Strategy

Your customer engagement strategy does not have to be a daunting task. No strategy fits all situations, so create a small strategy for each specific situation. It should document:

What types of engagement you are going to do
When you are going to do it
How you intend to use the information you gather
How you plan to keep the conversation going

Strategy Example

For the two major releases of our software product this year, I am going to complete five customer interviews, observe the same five customers using our product, and pull all of the user assistance-related support cases that have been opened in the past year. Then using the information gathered from these customer engagement activities, I can improve my deliverables to better meet customer needs and determine new deliverables that will better meet customer needs. To keep the conversation going, I am going to share the improvements I made as well as my new deliverables with these five customers.

Measuring Success and Reporting Results

If you measure and report your success, you are more likely to gain support for customer engagement and user research going forward.

Measure your success:

Measure “activity time” (how long it takes for a customer to complete a task using your product)
Send out customer satisfaction surveys
Measure the reduction in support calls around specific issues you addressed
Ask customers to tout the positive experience in any way they can (case studies, testimonials, email/call to your manager, email/call to customer care manager, tweet, comments in company or social media forums, etc.)

Report your results:

Decreased activity time
Increased customer satisfaction with your deliverables
Reduced support calls around the issues you addressed
Positive PR from customers (there’s nothing better than positive PR!)

Final Word

The wave of convergence for the UX and technical communication disciplines is happening. Companies expect technical communicators to know their users/customers.

If you want to ride this wave, but feel you need more training/education, consider:

Obtaining a UX certificate or degree
Taking online classes that focus on user research, measuring customer satisfaction, or accessing customer needs
Attending free webinars on intelligent content, user research, measuring customer satisfaction, or accessing customer needs
Networking and partnering with UX professionals

User documentation, embedded user assistance, and support content are part of the total user experience, and technical communicators need to be part of a larger UX team.

So get out your surf board, catch this wave, and ride it to success!