Bridging the Gap between Documentation and Customer Support

There are two presentations scheduled for this meetup.

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Presentation 1:

Bridging the Gap between Documentation and Customer Support -- by Neal Kaplan

User assistance (documentation) is basically self-service customer support. Both documentation and customer support are critical to the success of any company, and they work better when they assist and improve each other. How can you tap the knowledge of support agents to improve the documentation, and how can you make the lives of support agents easier in return?

Neal Kaplan has worked closely with customer support and customer success teams for years. He's gone from thinking of them as “the RTFM, turn-it-off-an-on-again folks” to being their biggest advocate and fan.

How can a documentarian work with customer support?

• Review support tickets manually
• Set up automated notifications
• Review difficult cases and solutions with customer support agents
• Learn about your customers
• Review ticket metrics, and measure how they change as you add more documentation
• Have them write

Join us for a lively presentation and discussion about the best ways to integrate support and documentation.

About Neal Kaplan

Neal Kaplan is a tech writer/doc manager working for a data analysis startup in Redwood City. He has a blog at https://customersandcontent.com and is presenting at the upcoming WTD conference in Portland. If you want to chat with Neal, you can usually find him on the WTD Slack forum.

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Presentation 2

Move Fast And ... Document Things? Lessons learned in building documentation culture at a startup -- by Ruthie BenDor

At startups and other fast-moving organizations, the imperative to ship provides a convenient excuse to skip writing the README. But should we accept this as the cost of moving fast? Or can we reframe how we communicate the value of documentation so that the message resonates in startup-land? Can we adapt how we practice the art of documentation so that it happens even when nobody has time?

About Ruthie BenDor

Ruthie is a lead web engineer at Automatic Labs, working to empower drivers with knowledge about themselves and their cars so they can be safer and drive smarter.

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Date and Location details

Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2016.

Time: 6:30 - 8:30pm (The presentation starts at 7pm.)

Location: Interana Inc, 305 Walnut St #300, Redwood City, CA

Parking: There's a two-tiered parking garage next to the building and some bike racks as well.

Building access: The building is locked after 5pm, so someone will be stationed at the entrance to let people in and lead them up to the elevators to the third floor, where the meetup will take place.