The ScreenSteps team has been helping customers create workflow articles, and the most frequently heard comment has been, "Workflow articles make this procedure so much easier to understand."
The ScreenSteps knowledge base has an article that explains how to download the desktop editor. Since ScreenSteps customers have one of two operating systems (Mac or Windows), we needed to create an article that would show customers how to download the desktop editor for either of those two systems. It looked like this...
If you've ever tried to document a narrative for a flowchart, you're already familiar with how challenging it is to write something end-users can follow. But things have changed, and a new ScreenSteps editor has made it easier than ever to transform flowcharts into interactive tutorials that even the least techy person can follow.
The new workflow article has some amazing capabilities. You can write documentation that includes decision trees, checklists, and "click to continue" buttons. But if you're new to writing workflow articles, you may find it difficult to author because workflows require you to write your help documentation a little differently than you're used to. So, if you're having a difficult time writing workflow articles, here's a tip: Next time a customer calls in, record your phone conversation. Then, document that conversation as a workflow article – questions and all.
New Feature | workflow article
Your customer support knowledge base has two main purposes: Deflect support tickets. Decrease ticket escalation from your tier 1 support agents to your tier 2 support agents. If it's not doing those two things very well, then you may have this problem...
After you roll out your knowledge management system to employees and customers, you may encounter a lack of adoption. I've got two tips that can help with that. Why don't people visit your knowledge base? First, let's discuss a few of the reasons employees and customers don't visit your carefully crafted knowledge base: They don't know about it They don't know how to use it They can't find what they need (or what they do find isn't helpful) Those first two are pretty simple to resolve by using your knowledge base during training, onboarding, and when responding to questions. It's that third one that can be a little tricky. These next two tips relate to making sure end users can find what they need, which leads to better adoption of your ScreenSteps knowledge base.
Six months ago, the ScreenSteps team received several support tickets for setting up Single Sign-on (SSO). These tickets required phone calls or lengthy back-and-forth emails before finally being resolved. Now, we love helping our customers, but our team was frustrated that our self-help documentation was falling short for this particular operation. Admittedly, SSO can get a tad complicated—even I shuddered a little when I had to get involved with SSO troubleshooting—but isn't the point of self-help documentation that customers can perform tasks on their own without involving support? Even though we had very detailed help articles for setting up SSO, apparently those articles weren’t very helpful to the majority of customers who were setting up Single Sign-on. What was going on?
We are getting ready to release an update to the ScreenSteps template.
In the training world, it’s easy to just do what everybody else does. But there are a number of misconceptions about training that you should be aware of.
After helping hundreds of customers get started with ScreenSteps, I can safely say the three most common requests I get are: "How do I convert Word docs into ScreenSteps articles?" "How do I convert PowerPoint decks into ScreenSteps articles?" "How do I include videos in ScreenSteps articles?" In fact, converting existing Word docs to ScreenSteps articles was the first priority for Washington State Community and Technical Colleges once they purchased a subscription. (I personally transferred 600 of their Word docs to ScreenSteps.)
