Gone are the days when customer service and technical support staff can say, “We have the technical knowledge; we don’t need to know how to write.” To support your customers, you need to know how to write e-mail and self-service content that is predictable, clear, and easy to follow. If you can write well, the online help you provide will become the backbone of self-service initiatives, not a graveyard for small bits of information.

This course features hands-on practice in writing self-service content that truly enables customers to help themselves: knowledge base articles, FAQs, and templates for “canned” e-mails.

About writing knowledge base articles, you will learn:

• how to develop guidelines for writing articles, so that your knowledge base will be uniformly effective, no matter how many people contribute articles
• how to explain the importance of writing well to all knowledge base contributors
• how to write knowledge base articles that help both technical and non-technical users

About writing FAQs, you will learn:

• strategies for organizing FAQs so that customers can easily find what they need
• how to choose the appropriate question word for the FAQ so customers can identify the FAQ as the answer to their question
• how to write FAQs that provide a complete answer
• how to write FAQs that help both expert and novice users

About writing  templates for “canned” e-mails, you will learn:

• how to write useful canned answers that completely resolve the customer’s problem
• when to send a canned response and when to compose an original response
• how to customize canned answers without rewriting them entirely

Course length: one day