By: Debra Johnson
Immediate Past President —
Orlando Central Florida Chapter, STC
Manager, Technical Communication —
SunGard Public Sector
Author’s Note: In this series of articles, we were exploring the concept of “Content and Customer Experience.” In this final issue, we recap the series and address the question, “What now?”
So let’s recap…
In Part 1 of my series, I talked about how there are SIX key factors we believe in Technical Communication at SunGard Public Sector:
We believe:
- Content and user experience are interconnected
- We should be using content to get closer to customers
- We need to strategize and manage content as an asset, just like “code”
- Content professionals and user experience professionals are allies – not enemies
- Content is everything product-related
- Content is dynamic – not static
In Part 2 of my series, I talked about our role in the “Content and Customer Experience” at SunGard Public Sector.
That role is:
- To provide accurate information about our products
- To reduce any frustration and risks associated with improper use of our products
- To support our training programs and professional services with a basis of accurate information from which to train
- To capture and curate knowledge…keeping it from walking out the door
- To use innovation in media to clarify use or identify the parts of a product, letting users focus on getting their task done quickly or more accurately
- To perform usability studies to uncover problems with content and/or experience
…and that it WILL take everyone within our company…
It will take:
- Some new tools, additional resources, and removal of barriers
- All of us talking about and embracing a company-wide Customer Experience and Content Strategy that includes all content-producing areas as equal and important
- Cooperation, collaboration, innovation, and teamwork
How we move forward…
At SunGard Public Sector, TechComm wants to maximize our business value, to help reduce support costs, and to enhance the customer experience by making our customers happier, more knowledgeable, and more loyal.
As Information Experience experts, we want to make sure we are using our skills and existing tools, along with some new ones, to create, manage, and deliver content in the most effective way.
We want to index our content, tag and classify it, provide dynamic search functionality to it, then apply role-based authentication and secure filtering…all to make accessing this knowledge a more positive experience for our customers and our employees.
How we see it working…
We will:
- Deliver our product content using a dynamic publishing system
- Provide specific product content via a smart, secure portal, fully customized to our brand look and feel, with responsive design that is optimized for every device and easy to use
- Provide powerful full-text search and faceted search capabilities; applying flexible taxonomy-driven facets that would deliver targeted content to our customers
- Add a personal touch to the customer experience by providing our readers with relevant content based on their user profile, then allow them to assemble personalized publications that are relevant to them from this content
- Capture metrics about these content recommendations, so we can evaluate activity, interest, and feedback through reporting
- Provide customers contextual suggestions of related community discussions and relevant articles
- Publish this content from our existing authoring tool
We work hard to leverage our company’s content assets in order to improve our customers’ experiences. We want everyone to know they are our partners in this process, we are always working to better serve you and our customers with knowledge and understanding.
In conclusion…It’s our job to…
Enable our customers to get things done – We want to improve the customer experience by providing immediate and precise answers at all stages of their information journey.
Deflect in order to help reduce support costs – We want to do our part to lower support costs and reduce case tickets by promoting self-service and enabling customers to find answers.
Extend in order to make the most out of our product documentation – We want to leverage our existing content investment to increase sales and brand loyalty while enhancing the customer journey with SunGard Public Sector.
REMEMBER: …it’s all about the effort to achieve “a world of answers.”
