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Subject:Re: Are manuals and ... From:Andreas Ramos <andreas -at- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 17 Mar 1994 11:02:20 -0800
Dear Bonnie,
were we separated at birth? Did you read my e-letter over my shoulder?
On Thu, 17 Mar 1994, Bonni Graham wrote:
> 1) If you can get your hands on tech support's call log, flag all the calls
> containing questions that could/should have been answered in the doc. Take
> this list to your supervisor (or, more effectively, tech support's). Make it
> clear to this person that you can DEFINITELY raise first-call statistics by
> including this information in the manual (and PLEASE be sure to index it when
> you do...) and teaching tech support to guide people to the manual. The more
> we doc to the question, the better a manual we'll have. But we can't know
> what the questions are unless we have help from tech support.
Absolutely. Sit with techsupport. Become friends with techsupport. Borrow
their manuals. See where the thumbprints are the dirtiest.
Many techsupport people have answered the same question so many times
that they have written one-pagers, which they hand to each other and fax
to customers. Ask your techsupport for these.
>
> 2) If you work for a company that produces a product that has 3rd party books
> out there, point out to marketing/sales/the CFO that that book is generating
> dollars that could be going in YOUR company's pocket, if only you had the
> time to produce the books properly. For example, the product could include,
> free of charge, a basic reference guide. BUT, you could sell a tutorial --
> if people will spend the money at a bookstore, they'll spend it with you, if
> you market it properly. Money does, indeed, talk.
THis is a great idea. I tried this at one company; they couldn't percieve
it. 400,000 registered customers,and there were NO 3rd party books; just
publish ANYTHING and it'd sell 20-30,ooo copies. But no, they couldn't
see that. But it's still a great idea.
yrs,
andreas
_____________________________________________________________________________
Andreas Ramos, M.A. Heidelberg Sacramento, California
