Letter from the UK: Google’s Zero Moment of Truth and Its Impact on Technical Communicators

The STC booth at tekom 2013

I'm just back from speaking at the tekom tcworld conference in Germany, where I spoke on “The changing nature of content.”

In my presentation, I described the impact Google's Zero Moment of Truth is starting to have on organizations' content strategy and their documentation teams. To my surprise, no one in my session had heard of the Zero Moment of Truth before.

First Moment of Truth

In the 1950s and 60s, Proctor and Gamble researched how shoppers decided to purchase a product. They discovered there was a critical moment when all the advertising a consumer had seen for a brand would either pay off with a purchase or not. It was between the first three to seven seconds of a prospective customer seeing the product on the shelf. They called this the “First Moment of Truth.”

This research influenced the way organisations promoted their products. Indeed, most organizations today focus on making websites, brochures and product boxes as attractive and “sexy” as possible. Unfortunately, this also means anything related to the post-sales experience, such the instruction manual or after sales support, is often seen as less important.

Kathy Sierra famously summed up many organizations' approach to content in this slide:

Zero Moment of Truth

What Google discovered was, thanks to the Web, consumers are making decisions well before the actual moment of purchase. They called this new critical decision-making moment the “Zero Moment of Truth” (or ZMOT). This Zero Moment of Truth is the moment when a person goes online to research a product and decides whether or not to make a purchase. It occurs after the consumer sees an advert for a product, but before a purchase is made in a store.

Google found 88% of consumers research the product or solution before they buy, consulting an average of 10.4 sources. Typically they are customer reviews, any content that describes how exactly your product will solve their problems, technical datasheets, product walkthoughs (such as “show me” videos), user forums, and so on. It tends to be the technical content rather than the marketing content. It’s nearly all on the Web.

The inverted marketing funnel

This means organizations need a marketing funnel where the technical content that’s important to the prospect is at the beginning of the customer journey, not the end:

Organizations are starting to realize their technical content is becoming more important in a marketing and pre-sales context. If they don’t write any of those 10.4 pieces of content, they will have less influence over their prospective customers' buying decisions.

Citrix has been one of the first documentation teams to respond to this new development (disclosure: Citrix is a customer of Cherryleaf). In the October 2013 edition of the CIDM Best Practices newsletter, Citrix's Mathew Varghese describes how its technical documentation team is becoming an “Information Experience”  department, as they now assist people through the whole customer journey (something he describes in his article as Learn, Try, Buy, Use, and Advocate).

Are you taking a strategic view of your technical and user documentation?

The Zero Moment of Truth implies organizations need to take a strategic view of both their technical and user documentation. So far, we've found the drive to rethink User Assistance is mostly coming from the Marketing department, and those involved in product design. They’re the ones getting the attention of senior management.

What do you think?

Please share your thoughts below.

Ellis Pratt is director at Cherryleaf, a UK technical writing services company. Ranked the most the influential blogger on technical communication in Europe, Ellis is a specialist in the field of creating clear and simple information users will love.

See also: Changing times in technical communication from Cherryleaf.

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