为什么技术文档工程师应该与技术支持代表成为好友？

转载自译言网-http://www.yeeyan.org/

对绝大部分技术文档作者来说，如何获得反馈是一个很有挑战性的话题。如果你没有可以直接与客户接触的渠道，那么，通常来讲你就只能从间接渠道来获取信息。或者，更糟糕的情形是，所有文档都得完全靠你来写，而你只能寄希望于你写出来的东西对别人会有帮助。

事实上，我们没必要把局面搞得那么难堪。

假如你可以定期和客户交流，你能想象这会对你的文档工作有多大的启发么？例如，你可以询问客户哪些产品功能令他们感到最疑惑。

走进客服部门
在大部分公司里，总会有一个团队专门负责我们在前面提过的客户接触工作。这个团队就是客服部门。如果你想要精确地了解自己的文档中需要覆盖哪些话题才能满足客户的需求，也许客服部门就是你最好的信息来源。

当然啦，还有其他方法也可以收集反馈意见，例如可用性测试以及分析公司帮助文档网站的访问流量。但是，可用性测试会驱使你只根据一小部分客户样本来做出假设。至于帮助文档网站流量的分析，你所能做的也只不过是猜测为何某些网页的访问量比其他网页要大。例如，那些访问量较大的网页，是因为话题本身的确更有用，抑或只是因为这些网页更容易被找到？

不过，客服代表们却可以精确地告诉你，哪些产品功能最让用户头疼。例如，他们会告诉你说，他们每天会接到20通客户咨询电话，询问如何设置一台打印机，但是几乎没有客户会打电话来问如何把某个文件打印出来。

客服团队还能提供信息来源文档给你。客服代表们通常会为解决某些常见问题而总结、撰写一些参考文档，以便有客户遇到这类问题时可以直接参考使用。以这些文档为基础，你可以将之用在产品技术文档中的新操作步骤和参考话题上。也许你还需要进行部分的改写工作，不过这些参考文档在技术细节上确实是恰到好处的，因为客服代表的工作就是要快速解决客户问题，保持尽量短的客服通话时长。

当你将写好的文档发送给别人检阅时，别忘了给客服代表们也发一份。客服代表的工作专长使得他们能够成为极佳的检阅者。他们既能帮你改进文档的准确性，也能帮你补充完善那些令客户头疼的常见功能描述。

同样的目标，同样的背景
请记住，技术文档作者和客服代表们有着相同的目标：引导用户。和客服部并肩作战，你将能够提供更准确，更有用的帮助文档。这些文档可以帮助减少客服部门需要应付的咨询电话数目。客户咨询电话数目的减少，意味着客服代表们将能够花更多的时间来应对那些需要额外关注的客户，而不是整天忙于接电话。这是一个双赢的方案。

那么，你已经和公司的客服成员们结为好友了么？如果答案为否的话，赶紧行动吧，是时候该开始学习如何从互惠关系中获益啦。

个人见解：

对于某些技术文档工程师而言，除了与开发人员和测试人员沟通之外，与技术支持人员进行交互同样重要。原因在于，技术支持人员是面向客户的，他们经常与客户沟通，了解客户会遇到哪些问题以及怎样解决这些问题。另外，在项目支持和实施过程中，他们也会发现一些问题并提出解决方案。与之相比，文档工程师通常没有这样的机会。所以，文档工程师需要主动并积极地与技术支持人员沟通，以收集并理解这些常见问题，以便在编写或修订文档时注意这些问题。

如果文档编写的全面且结构清晰，那么客户通过阅读文档便可以解决大多数问题，这样企业会节省客观的技术支持人力成本。前提是客户会看文档[中国客户不会看吧？]

Why customer support reps should be your new best friends

Gathering feedback is challenging for most technical writers. If you do not have direct access to customers, you’re often forced to gather information indirectly. Or, worse, you are forced to document everything
and hope that some of your content will hit the mark and make someone’s life easier.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Can you imagine how insightful it would be to talk to customers on a regular basis? To ask them what features they find the most confusing?

Enter customer support
In most organizations, there is an entire team of people who do exactly that. They are called Customer Support. And, they are probably your best resource for finding out exactly what your documentation should
cover to meet the needs of your customers.

Sure, there are other ways to gather feedback, such as usability testing and analyzing traffic to your help servers. But usability tests force you to make assumptions based on a small sample of customers.
And analyzing server traffic forces you to make guesses about why users visit some
topics more frequently than others. Are those topics, for example, more useful or were they just easier to find?

Support reps, on the other hand, can tell you
exactly what features are causing customers the most grief. They can tell you that they receive 20 calls every day from customers who don’t understand how to set up a printer, but hardly any calls about how to actually print a document.

Your support team can also help you by providing source material. Support reps often document workarounds for common problems, so they can refer back to them when talking to customers. These documents can
form the basis for new procedures and reference topics in your user manual. You might need to do a bit of rewriting, but the technical details are usually spot-on because support reps are focused on solving problems quickly to keep average call times low.

You should also include support reps when you route documents for review. Their expertise makes them incredibly helpful reviewers, and they can enhance the accuracy of the documentation as well as fill in
gaps to address common customer complaints.

Common goals, common ground
Remember, technical writers and customer support reps have the same goal:
educate the user. By working together, you can provide more accurate and useful documents. These documents will help to reduce the number of support calls the reps will have to handle. Fewer support calls means that reps can spend more time
with customers who need extra attention, instead of rushing to keep up with incoming calls. It’s a win-win situation.

So, have you made friends with your Customer Support team? If not, now is a great time to start reaping the benefits of a mutually beneficial relationship.