In-Situ's Online FAQs

Overview

In-Situ makes water monitoring instruments and software. One of my first big projects as the company's technical communication specialist was to deliver help content in the way users preferred. After extensive research, I determined that a collection of FAQs was the best option.

The challenge

Water monitoring instruments are powerful. Some of them are also quite complex. And the people who use them include anyone from high-school graduates with no training to PhD scientists. How could we provide the right guidance to all these users in a way that scaled?

The audience

In-Situ users monitor water in lakes and streams. They conduct groundwater sampling in wells. Some of them work for mining operations and need to ensure their organizations comply with government regulations. Then there are the farmers and ranchers who need to keep groundwater safe for crops, cattle, and surrounding communities. 

Business goals

The right type of guidance, delivered at the right moment in the user journey, would reduce calls to our tech support team. It would also boost trust and turn users into promoters.

My role

As the technical communication specialist, my job was to create the strategy that would guide documentation and other help content. That meant I needed to:

• Learn about our users, including their pain points and documentation preferences.

• Explore tools that would help us meet users' documentation needs.

• Build and promote resources.

Process

Gathering requirements

• I surveyed internal stakeholders who worked closely with customers, like tech support reps and product managers.

• I was looking for what they thought were the must-have, nice-to-have, and unnecessary features.

• Through the survey, interviews with stakeholders, and conversations with users, I determined that users need self-service options for help content.

Exploring options

• Our vice president of Research & Development liked MindTouch, which turned PDF manuals into searchable content.

• Support platforms like ZenDesk also seemed promising.

• Whatever we ended up with, I wanted to be able to get feedback from users about whether or not they liked it.

• I also wanted to be able to track downloads and engagement.

Making a choice

• I found MindTouch's onboarding and authoring too tedious. It was also quite expensive.

• ZenDesk and other online support platforms were also larger and more complex than what we needed.

• Since I'd be writing and maintaining the content, I wanted something that gave me maximum control. 

  • I chose the world's most popular CMS—WordPress.

Building a prototype

• I found a suitable theme and used the Google Cloud Console platform to build, launch, and test a fully-functioning prototype.

• Stakeholders could visit the site, search for content, click around, and explore the prototype as if it were the real thing.

Launching and maintaining

• Our marketing team had been redesigning our corporate site, so I worked with them to match our new branding.

• In-Situ's web developer and I collaborated on everything needed to launch. 

• We incorporated the FAQs into the corporate site and made them accessible via the Support menu.

• I produced a video announcing the new FAQs pages and published it to our YouTube channel.

Results / impact

• In-Situ's FAQs serve hundreds of users every week and reduce the load on tech support reps. In addition, those reps use the FAQs as resources during calls with customers.

• In-Situ can track engagement and see how users rate the content. This data helps the company determine what's working and what isn't.