Have you ever been kicked out of a good story by a small detail?

​But sometimes I find myself in a book that fails to make the world of that story believable. It might be too many grammatical errors or something that is inconsistent. I might keep reading if the plot or characters are interesting enough, or I might give up on it if I think the quality of the writing gets in the way of the story. Either way, my experience as a reader does not match what I was looking for when I picked up that book.

When creating eLearning, you are building a world for learning. Teaching software or system skills via eLearning can be a great way to teach users how or what to do with that tool to get the outcome they need - solving the problem that led to using that tool in the first place. It’s a great way to provide practice for specific skills in a safe or guided way. 

But as the eLearning designer and developer, you have to be meticulous in recreating that tool’s environment for the eLearning to have a hope in being effective. And to do that, you need to capture the right screen shots in the right way. 

First, let me say that if you have access to Captivate and/or Storyline, you have options to make screen recording easy in preparation for developing eLearning. However, there are pros and cons to automatically generating these simulations, which we'll save for a discussion for another day.

What about when you need to capture images directly because you aren't using the simulation features of the authoring tools, or you have Subject Matter Experts helping you set up scenarios and capture the right screens directly?

I'd like to share a process for capturing screen images to ensure consistent results that help build your software eLearning world.

What size are your screens? What size will your eLearning project be? You need to answer these questions before you get started. Ideally, you would determine a consistent size for the images before you begin authoring your eLearning.

You want to make sure the size and zoom are the same in every screen in the same activity. The aspect ratio is an important part of this equation. For example, if the eLearning is using a 16:9 ratio (or standard HD widescreen to match most displays these days), you might want your images to be 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels or something smaller with the same ratio of height to width.

As a developer, I know this and I know how to set up my screens to make it work right, using tools I have available (i.e., usually either Camtasia or Captivate). But on a recent project working with SMEs who didn't have those tools, we learned that it can be quite challenging to standardize the size of the window when different SMEs are capturing screens for different scenarios.

When I capture my laptop monitor with screens maximized to fill the whole space, the images are a 16:9 ratio, which look great even when scaled down and fill the HD widescreen project without any adjustments. However, my external monitor is off from that slightly, so maximizing the window does not get the screen size results I want.

So you may have to do some creative problem solving to find the best size for your screens and eLearning project. What is most important, is that once you find the right size, to use the exact same settings when capturing screens within each task. If it's slightly different from one lesson to another - your learners will most likely not notice. It's that one click to the next change that needs to be precisely the same size, zoom and aspect ratio.

Before you start capturing screens, make sure you know what you need to capture. Think like a technical writer to try to identify every different iteration of the screen, working through all of the minutiae for the task you want the learners to practice. It may be best to capture all of the screens for one lesson or task in one capturing session to minimize the risk that something is off slightly from one screen to the next.

When capturing menus, the eLearning will need to show before the menu is selected, the drop down menu open, and the results of the selection. So you may need more screen shots than you think. Some of this can be corrected with editing in Snagit, but it may be easier to capture more than you need and just not use the unnecessary ones.

Here's a checklist for your capture session process:

Then you can use the images in your eLearning project just like any other image file. I hope this process helps you build effective eLearning! Let me know in the comments if you have other suggestions I didn't cover.

In May, I attended Zendesk's one-day conference in Dallas titled, "The Future of Customer Experience". 

One statement that really resonated with me, as a developer of customer-facing educational content and self-service resources, is something said by Jason Maynard, who is the VP & GM of Zendesk Guide and Data Products. He said "Self service is a fixed cost that pays dividends as your business grows."

​The session reported on three typical approaches to launching a help center: 1. the agile improvers, 2. set and forgetters, and 3. patient planners. You can read an elaboration of these approaches here. Having worked with a number of software companies, I can see how the agile approach seems natural and appropriate for developing self-serve content, since many software companies are already using an agile approach to updates. Zendesk's own research bears out that the agile group does best when looking at how well self-service content deflects help center tickets.

I found the Zendesk conference and articles to be very focused on the support audience. And for good reason. I recently read a case study through another tool, MindTouch, about an 86% ticket deflection rate. In that case, the company already had help before (the reported case study), but the help was not easy for customers to use so it wasn't getting the desired results.

Help isn't always enough, but using a well-planned single-source approach to content development benefits not only support, but also can be leveraged for other educational content, like marketing, sales, onboarding and customer success, and throughout the customer's lifecycle. 

So for this post, I'd like to offer a few suggestions for creating helpful help, so that the effort and fixed cost that you put into developing your self-service content is as efficient and effective as possible and can easily be reused for other educational purposes.

I don't want to trivialize the work that technical writers like myself do, nor minimize the value of collaboration with subject-matter-experts who may not be as good at writing. But because I'm also very interested in learning, I hope to start a conversation about how to help people be better, more effective workers - not just the people creating the help content, but the readers who rely on it as well.

​​I'm planning a training session and/or online course to elaborate on these suggestions. I'd love to hear your comments on location, format and any additional topics to include. 

Donna Weber started with a quote I love and had heard before from Tara-Nicholle Nelson, author of The Transformational Consumer: "Most companies are very focused on getting new companies into their funnel. It's...unsustainable as a business model to spend so much money generating new disengaged customers."  Donna reports that well-trained customers have a higher NPS and are 20% more likely to renew, among other benefits, but that many companies are using hope as a strategy instead of creating an orchestrated post-sales journey. She says that great content is not enough, you need to connect the dots for the customer and set expectations about where sales, marketing, training and professional services fit. Instead of existing in separate silos, combine assets and frameworks to make it as simple as possible for customers to be successful.

This panel discussion included:

• Brian Kocsy, Senior Director, Customer Success at DataStax
• Khalid Sahikh, Customer Education Leader at DataStax
• Adam May, VP of Services at ServiceRocket
• Bryan Busse , Global VP Customer Success at Elastic

The panelists discussed how education is viewed within their organizations and the role of their training teams. They discussed what types of information they communicate to executives within their organizations, like revenue, NPS scores, referrals and product stickiness. The metrics are changing, with a confirmation that trained customers have higher renewal rates (as well as fewer support calls). An interesting takeaway from this discussion is the concept that teams have better alignment by having training develop content for sales, considering their common goals.

Dick Braune,  Director Education Development for BMC Software and CEdMA Services Trustee, reported the findings of the 2018 CEdMA Business Survey. Respondents included 70 member companies, with insight into several areas of how different aspects of education are being handled by different companies, such as profit and loss vs. cost center business models, education operating margins, and the role played in Customer Success organizations.  As expected, self-paced content is driving additional education revenues at higher percentages than in previous years. The impact of education again shows that customers with training renew more frequently and churn less often.

Lynn Marie Viduya and Veronica Ruff, both of BlackLine, explained how they have leveraged learning paths to support various training programs in both freemium and premium training for customers, partners and employees. BlackLine U learning paths include general (freemium), premium training, certification, and employee learning paths. The free eLearning includes two learning paths (for user and admin), while the premium training leverages eLearning for CPE and unlimited custom learning paths.  After implementing the new learning paths, BlackLine saw an exponential increase in customers taking eLearning on BlackLine U, as well as over 200 partners certified on the product via self-study.

Okta presented their certification solution, which won the CEdMA innovation award. The core of their innovation is the Discrete Option Multiple Choice (DOMC) methodology, which is patented by Dave Foster, PhD and Chairman and CEO of Caveon. Using DOMC in their certification testing provided several benefits, including:

• items are easier to read
  
• the validity of the test scores is increased
  
• the probability of getting a correct answer by the process of elimination is reduced
  
• the format prevents item theft and cheating

Okta used Scorpion as the tool for question item authoring and SEI as the test driver to serve up DOMC items. This solution is transparent to test takers. Their secured approach has resulted in a 215% increase in customer + partner certifications, with certification in their product now showing up on salary surveys. 

Alyce Gershenson explained how Talend leverages front-line experts for knowledge base content creation. Everyday, they have new articles that are available immediately to an internal audience. Articles recommended for external audiences have an additional process for publishing to ensure quality.  Talend learned some difficult lessons about rewarding contributors and eventually found the balance of motivating contributors for quality content. Ultimately, KB articles don't replace the "official" documentation - they provide more flexible information like use cases. But these articles are seen as a good alternative to training in some cases. 

Jillian Alexander, VP of Knowledge Services and Delivery at Kinaxis, explained how they implemented their partner enablement vision to provide a scalable and complete continuous learning program that drives early adoption and easy access to knowledge, skills and certification globally. In phase one, they found that the solution they built was not being accepted.  They took their lessons learned to improve their offerings in phase two, which resulted in an increase in partner certifications, course completions and total reach. 

Zarogina Azocar, Certification Program Manager of Alfresco, provided some tips on how they used games in a certification exam preparation setting. Accepting that they couldn't cover all of the content required for preparing for the certification exam, they instead implemented a workshop aimed at serious attendees who were responsible for gaining knowledge on their own time. The workshop included a few games to provide an engaging exam preparation experience.

Darryl Quinn, Director of Global Education Services for Alfresco, discussed some of the challenges they had with virtual machine (VM) environments for student hands-on labs. They built an integrated, automated solution even though their new learning management system (LMS) didn't natively support managing the VMs. The new solution includes auto-expiration of VM sessions with region-based VMs that integrate back into the LMS.  

How do you remain relevant? Danielle Campbell, head of Americas Digital Learning Services for Adobe, and Natasa Koledin, Senior Director, Global Education of Pivotal Software, Inc., described new terminology and practices for training and education to survive in today's marketplace.  By fine tuning internal partnerships, you can leverage work that has already been done and be comfortable with the fact that enablement happens with various other groups throughout a company, too. They discussed ways to scale by using industry partnerships with marketplaces like Lynda.com and Udacity. They also talked about ways that metrics being measured are also evolving. 

Ryan Kershner, Senior Manager of PTC University User Experience, shared some fun new videos they recently launched. Using a story-based approach that focuses on high-level concepts rather than specific tasks that may change with each software update, he showed how PTC has created easier engagement with more video consumption that is now a new source of revenue. Their customers love it. PTC University incorporated green screen videos combined with screencasts and used machine transcription to create closed caption files and an interactive transcript.

The Fall 2018 is scheduled October 17-18 at Babson College. The board also made an announcement that membership prices will be increasing and starting in 2019, CEdMA will move to a once-a-year conference. 

I eagerly anticipated this Spring's CEdMA Training Leadership Conference, with a theme of "Driving a Learning Journey for the Subscription World." CEdMA is the Computer Education Management Association, "the premier organization for training executives, managers, and professionals on a management path in technology companies." In preparation for attending the conference, I set up notes for each conference session in an Evernote notebook so that I could already have a place to log my thoughts about what I learned. I made arrangements for my schedule to be off for a few days. And I made my travel plans...

As I prepared to leave Dallas for San Francisco the day before the conference, I had an experience that was a perfect example of how the right customer education at the right time can impact a company's bottom line.

I missed my flight. And for a completely preventable reason. 

For those of you who don't know, Dallas has two airports. Dallas Love Field has its origins in World War I (around 1917), but starting in 1979, was governed by The Wright Amendment, which limited flights outside Texas. It just wasn't big enough to handle lots of flights. DFW Airport first opened in 1973 and is the hub for American Airlines. How these details relate to my story is that in practice, I'm used to Southwest Airlines (and almost no other airlines) flying out of Love Field, and all other airlines flying from DFW.  Even though The Wright Amendment was fully repealed recently, as a Dallasite, that news didn't seep into my consciousness enough to question my assumption that my April flight would leave from DFW.  

So I scheduled my shuttle to pick me up at my home and drop me off at DFW. Unfortunately, my Virgin Airlines/Alaska Airlines flight was scheduled from Love Field.

In some ways, I was lucky. Since I'd taken a shuttle, I didn't have to worry about my car. I grabbed a cab and headed straight for Love Field. The traffic gods were smiling on me, and we actually got to Love Field in about 20 minutes. The mistake at this point was a cost I could swallow: a $45 cab fare. 

When I checked my bag, the ticket agent informed me that boarding was starting in 5 minutes.  "I made it," I thought.

And then I got to the security line. It was not five minutes long.

There were two announcements while I sweated in the security line. "Passengers for flight blah blah blah to San Fransisco should make their way to gate blah blah blah," the announcer said. "Lots of you are missing."  I wondered if I should ask to cut in the security line, or if that would just cause problems with TSA. I decided the best plan was to be patient. I watched the clock and the progress of the line. I thought it would be close, but I would be okay.

When I got to the gate, moments after they'd closed the doors, I found out that 13 other people had also missed the flight. (The gate agent had told me that passengers went to the wrong airport EVERY DAY.)

Now, I'm not one to find someone else blame when things go wrong. I take full responsibility for my mistake as my mistake. You know what they say about assumptions. (In case you don't: "It makes an &#! of u and me.") I should not have assumed. But in all fairness, it was a fairly valid assumption. 

Everything worked out okay in the long run. I was able to get on a flight early the next morning, which worked, but made for a long first day of the conference (and I missed the first/keynote session). But I had to get ready super early in the morning, without any of the clothes, makeup, etc. that I'd packed for the conference that left without me in the checked bag.

But I also had plenty of time to ruminate on how this could have been prevented. Where in my ticket purchase or even on the check-in email that arrived several hours before my flight could I have challenged the assumption that I was flying from DFW?

I went back and looked at my interactions for the flight purchase. And the only thing I found anywhere was the airport code. Dallas Love Field is DAL, whereas DFW is obviously DFW. I should have seen it and known. I never would have goofed had it been reversed.

But honestly, that's a difference that's easy to miss, and for someone who doesn't know (maybe some of those 13 other people who missed the flight), a pretty subtle distinction to expect travelers to get right.

So where could education play a role in preventing this mistake? Again I'm making an assumption that the airline would want to prevent the mistake: while it was marginally expensive and annoying for me, I'm imagining that several people missing flights on a regular basis (if my experience is common) is less profitable than operating with full flights. Not to mention the indirect costs and potential loss of future sales.

And this is the real lesson from this story. Look at this line in the email I received to check in for my flight FROM Dallas. Pay attention to the part in yellow.

Customer education can be as simple as including one sentence in an email to help make sure that passengers have made the appropriate plans to get to the right airport.

And in one of my favorite sessions from the CEdMA conference, Donna Weber shared her insights on how having the right content is not enough. You need to connect the dots for the customer.

In my next post, I'll be sharing other key takeaways from the CEdMA conference on additional ways that education can play a role in both your customers' success and the company's success.

I read David Allen's Getting Things Done in about 2006. I didn't implement it all at first. In fact, as a perfectionist, I mostly dropped it when I didn't have the perfect system. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept coming back to it when I felt overwhelmed by all I had to do. Though I tried different apps and approaches, it took some time before the system I use today evolved into what it is. It is by no means perfect still. But I've let go of the perfectionism enough to see the benefits I get in using this workflow to manage my tasks, complete projects, and work toward my goals. Today, I'd like to share an overview of how the tools I use fit into that workflow. The benefits are lowered stress, increased productivity, and greater creativity.

​The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology has been extremely popular over the past decade. The methodology is simple, but like some of my favorite tools, the implementation has room for lots of flexibility. Here's a super broad overview of GTD.

I have a physical inbox - usually for forms to sign or store or bills to pay - and I schedule regular time to process it. When I do, some of the items in the box also get added to Nozbe because they are tasks that need to be done and I only want my list of tasks that need to be done in one place. 

I have a reminder to check my voicemail every day, because I rarely get important messages that way, but I handle it the same way if an item in that inbox represents something I need to do. 

​The lightbulb moment for me in using GTD was in realizing this separation: capturing the thought that I needed to do something, figuring out what to do, and actually doing the task are all separate steps that do not have to happen at the same time. In fact, it's more efficient to not do them at the same time, unless the task would take 2-5 minutes or less to do.

When I process my Nozbe inbox, I think about what actually needs to be done. What project is the task related to? How long do I think it will take to complete? Is it really the next task, or a multi-task project for which something else really needs to happen first? This separation of clarification in this step, from the capturing process in the previous step, was key to reducing much of the stress that I felt about what I needed to do on a day-to-day basis. I could capture a thought without having to figure out what it meant, and I could later figure it out what it meant without having to rely on my memory that something needed to be done. 

When you clarify (process), you are attempting to make it as easy as possible for your future self (or a person to whom you delegate the task) to understand what exactly needs to be done. Answer the question "what is the exact action that this reminder represents?" Give it an action verb and move on to the next item.

I generally do my task organizing at the same time as I'm processing my inbox. The importance of the organizing phase is to get the reminder into the right context for when and where you will do the task, or act appropriately for items that are not truly actionable.  
​
There are eight possibilities when organizing the "stuff" that comes your way:

You'll want to review your calendar and next actions list as often as needed to get tasks done. When I have a very long next actions list, I like that in Nozbe, I can filter this list in different ways to help me focus. ​

I review project plans in two different ways. When I'm working on a project, I may plan out the next several tasks that need to be done. I may even turn the project into a template if it's something I'll do again. But I also need to do an overall review of my projects so that I remember what projects I have in order to reach my goals and so that nothing falls through the cracks.
​
It's also important to review someday/maybe and reference information occasionally.
​
The reviews are the part of this system that I still have the most trouble implementing. It's hard when I'm busy to set aside time - and of course, the longer I wait, the longer it takes to get through everything. But I also know that when I neglect my reviews, the uncomfortable sense of unease creeps back into my life, generating the stress of not knowing exactly if I've forgotten anything. 

​This part of the process is when you take action.  If you regularly work through the first four steps of this process, then you'll know with 100% confidence that the things on your next actions list are the things that you need to do to make solid progress toward achieving your goals. And if you've done a good job of clarifying and organizing the reminders, you can use your mental energy on creating and solving problems instead of figuring out what to do.

​Don't be overwhelmed by this process. You can add it to your life a little at a time, as it makes sense to you. I highly recommend giving Nozbe a try if you don't currently have a task management system that's working for you. I highly recommend giving Evernote a try if you want easily searchable storage for resources and drafts. Both tools are very flexible, so experiment with different ways of using them that make sense to you. 

The project I'm currently developing is for training on Office 2016 products and includes instructor guides, student training manuals, PowerPoint slides for instructor use, and self-paced eLearning, which includes some presentation-style slides, interactive practice slides, and review questions. For different projects or deliverables, like user guides and online help, I might choose a slightly different settings and outputs for this automated workflow.

I normally like to capture my images as I'm writing content to have the words that go with the picture and the picture that goes with the words. I love that SnagIt has made that process so friction-less. 

When I first started freelancing, I used Adobe Technical Communication Suite for FrameMaker and Robohelp, and I really liked the simplicity of the RoboCapture tool that came with that suite. I kept using it long after I moved on from FrameMaker/Robohelp. Once Office added the ability to insert a screen clipping for Word and PowerPoint, I often used that. So it's only been recently that I've really embraced Snagit as my capture tool of choice. But I mentioned last post, I'll never go back!

In order to have a frictionless workflow for capturing images to build your library, you need to do a few things to set up your system ahead of time. While this is true with many tools, with screen captures, I had never found the need to use these features until I was staring up a mountain of work with similar content in different forms.

So here are the steps for setting up your capturing environment for use in the automatic workflow that I'll share.

I like to have a thin black border around the images for documentation, for use on PowerPoint slides and for use in self-paced eLearning materials. You can have SnagIt add this border automatically.

Note that there are several other effects that are possible to add at the same time, like adding edge effects, shadow, or scaling the image. I don't use any other effects at this time, but it's good to know that they exist, and that you can apply more than one effect at a time. With my next project that requires tons of images, I will definitely investigate applying some of those other effects automatically.

Now, your capture settings are ready to roll, and the workflow is really easy.

1. While writing, I set up the screen I want to capture.
   
2. I press the PrtScrn key and hover over/draw around the part I want to capture.
   
3. I select Finish in the SnagIt Editor window.
   

​Because I've got Copy to Clipboard turned on, I can actually just paste the image into my document. 

However, if I wanted to further modify the image (such as by taking out personal information in an example screen or add a highlight of some type, I can do that in the SnagIt Editor before I select Finish (see below). Note that the Copy to Clipboard option doesn't capture any editor modifications, so you would need to copy the final version or use the saved file if you do make changes. 

Now, even though I make heavy use of copy and paste to shortcut work, I have the files saved when I come back to them in a different context.

I can think of some great applications for this workflow, especially when combined with single-sourcing. In the meantime, I'll keep writing and capturing those images as I go.

P.S. Here's one more caveat: SnagIt is not great at capturing itself. This blog post includes captures from both SnagIt and Word, with some additional editing done in SnagIt Editor.

Between instructor guides and student training manuals, I wrote approximately 1400 pages of content (or about 200,000 words) in 2017. To support those workshops, I developed over 400 PowerPoint slides and several quick reference guides. For self-paced training, I developed a total of about 800 eLearning slides, evenly divided between presentation style, interactive and review questions.

I produced 110 minutes of tutorial videos, and between the videos and eLearning, recorded approximately 210 minutes of narration. I wrote another 6000 words of new knowledge base content across four different software products.

After working as a localization specialist on other authors' single-source documentation for several years, I also authored my first massive single-source documentation project for both user guides and online help for a multi-module SaaS product.

​In addition, in my own business as a freelancer, I wrote proposals, blog posts and even a start to my own course content.

It all feels like a pretty good accomplishment, so now I want to share the strategies and workflows that help me stay super efficient and productive. 

In this post, I'll introduce you to my technology stack. What I've learned in 12 years as a freelancer, is that one tool does not do it all. I'm a big believer in using the right tool for the job, and these are the tools I've invested in on a regular basis to help me create effective content.​

*I have also used Adobe Premiere Pro, but find it way more power than I need for tutorial videos.

I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that all of this content takes planning and project management to stay on task and get things done. I use a combination of Evernote and Nozbe to manage tasks and projects. ​I also have other tools that help me run my business, including Toggl, Excel and Quickbooks, but I'll focus on content development in this blog.

​Coming up, I'll be doing some deep dives about specific workflows that help me take advantage of each tool's strength, while staying efficient and effective with the task at hand. 

I've read, listened, followed, and learned quite a bit since then, improving my skills and tracking down "the right" kind of projects.  There is a Customer Education revolution about to explode.  But the idea of customer education is far from universally accepted.

Part of a technology company's success is created through providing top-notch educational content for customers and potential customers. Rob Castadenda, founder of CEO and ServiceRocket, said at the Business of Customer Education track at Gainsight Pulse in May 2017 - "Customer education is a proactive way to help customers be successful with your products from the start." A recent job posting by Box explains the current customer education revolution so well: "The emergence of the Customer Education field is the result of the pervasiveness of SaaS businesses and their need to prove their products' value to customers. The old Learning & Development parameters are no longer sufficient to drive product adoption."

The right content (delivered live or online) can bolster a customer's successful onboarding and engagement with the product, so customers can get maximum value from your product. That also means expansions or referrals, as well as the renewals a subscription-based company needs to thrive.

But it may be hard to find the right person who can create this content, especially in a way to leverage similar content for different purposes or stages along the customer journey.

In an ideal world, you've got your Customer Education role(s) reporting under Customer Success, and Customer Success in constant communication and alignment with other areas of the company that use customer-facing educational materials, like Sales and Marketing. You'd have a repository of knowledge and content ideas shared across the company, such as in Evernote Business shared notebooks, which could quickly and easily be re-purposed for different needs with a single-source mindset.

But we don't live in an ideal world.

I've been monitoring the types of jobs that incorporate customer education since I put that stake in the ground for my own career, and am amazed at the inconsistency in what I find in this exploding discipline.  Recently, over a period of two weeks, I identified 29 different titles (for 35 different current job postings available on LinkedIn, both entry-level and leadership levels) that included developing customer education content as most of or a significant portion of the job responsibilities. These range from the more obvious "Customer Education Specialist" role to various sales, success, and product-related titles. Some companies graft titles from the learning and development world, like instructional designer, but I suspect those are more mature companies with the need for specialized roles. Other companies seem to create their own titles that incorporate the shared responsibilities and blended roles required in a fast-paced tech company.

It's a wonder that tech companies find the content development skills they need in potential hires, and that people with those skills find the companies who need them. 

Julia Borgini had a great article to help with identifying what companies should look for in the person who develops the content for the customer education building the foundation of customer success. She calls the role "Learning Designer." To summarize, her top recommended skills and competences are:

• Understanding of how people learn
• Passion for knowledge and learning, while focusing on the outcome for the learners
• Ability to communicate complex topics in terms people can understand
• Knowledge of the latest tools for developing educational content
• Skills to manage projects through the development and delivery process
• Design skills to create visually appealing content
• Ability to create meaningful assessments

Julia closes by saying it may be difficult to find one person who demonstrates all of these skills (though, to toot my own horn a little, I know it's possible). Make sure to evaluate your goals to determine what kind of content you need for where you are in your company journey.

Adam Avramescu says "I like to say 'we are all educators' when it comes to making customers successful." But he believes that Customer Education is the in title that will stick as time goes on - be it Customer Education Content Developer or Director of Customer Education - and that some existing L&D titles like instructional designer will stick around as specialty roles.

If you haven't already, make Customer Education a part of your organization's plans for obtaining, onboarding and retaining customers with the content to help your users succeed. 

The existing definitions of single-source publishing are often dry, nerdy and use complicated words. You can get explanations from Wikipedia, MadCap Flare (one of the providers of technology supporting single-sourcing), or this one by the CEO of another technology provider, Paligo. These definitions will probably make your eyes glaze over if you're not a nerdy technical writer type. 

I used this utility to make sure I could explain single-source publishing as simply as possible.
 
To boil it down to the essence, single source publishing is a way of writing once for many uses. It takes a bit of work up front to write in a way to use it again, and another bit of work to store the content in a way to make the pieces easy to find later.

But the payoff for the added set up is an exponential increase in efficiency and productivity. You can maintain the content pieces in an agile way to keep up with your product changes, and assemble deliverables ranging from white papers to knowledge base articles to training materials in minutes.

Though write once for many uses takes some up-front work, the techniques are not complicated.

A good overview starts with a summary of Anders Svensson's 5 principles*:

• Don't repeat yourself (instead of repeating the same content in multiple places, reuse it)
• Keep it simple and straightforward (the simplest way is usually the best)
• Aim to make topics stand alone
• Each topic has only one job 
• Avoid specifics or use simple strategies for dealing with them (like variables or conditional text), which must be balanced with the “keep it simple” strategy

 
It is possible to over-complicate the design for reusing content. I once had a client who wanted user guides for multiple modules of multiple products with multiple licensees. As I implemented his requests one-by-one over time, the documents I'd inherited ended up getting so complicated that maintaining what amounted to hundreds of pages of content needed to be a full-time job rather than a once-every-update outsourced project. 

However, in the new subscription service landscape, these principles of single-sourcing are vital not only to documentation, but to every aspect of an organization’s content creation, from customer education and success to sales and marketing.

The most successful companies will master these methods of reusing and sharing content across their organizations. 

Goal Number one for many companies is reducing support costs. Scott Hopper, an IT Software Technical Support Engineer says, "Of course they want to reduce support tickets. Support is expensive. Unless, you are trying to grow your support team, you want as much self-service knowledge as possible."

If this is the issue you want to start with as you embark on creating your content, make it a specific, measurable goal, like "I want to reduce the number of open support tickets each month by 10%." That way, you can get a clear financial impact that shows the value of your time spent writing and maintaining online help or a knowledgebase.

Brooke Harper, a Sales Development Representative, clarifies the purpose of content like this. She says "As a consumer, I usually look for a quick answer to basic questions or quick actions to simple tasks."

Scott Hopper mentions a couple of other goals you might have as you develop content. "Onboarding customers and converting trial users, puts money in [company's] pockets."

​Let's look at these goals separately. ​

​A similar goal is clarified by Sebastian Cabrera, a Customer Success Manager. He says, " One goal is to facilitate adoption for large accounts, where a CSM could have a hard time delivering high-touch assets for every user. This helps deliver product and support updates to all customers with just a link.
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This is closely tied to a goal of providing self-serve education for customers. Self-serve education can be anything from basic 1-2 minute YouTube tutorials on how to complete specific tasks, to much more elaborate academy course offerings that go beyond using the tool into industry best-practices, as well as preparation for high-stakes proctored exams (certification).

All of these are good goals, and you can find evidence in the Customer Education discipline of how beneficial each can be to your bottom line. Once you start developing your content, you will find that much of what you develop can be tweaked to serve more than one purpose including in sales and marketing where the financial return is more obvious. 

But when you are starting out, focus on one very clear, specific goal. It's great to think long term about how that project can scale along with your company. You need to have that laser focus on what you are trying to accomplish. Otherwise, you may end up with lots of help, but find that your customers don't find it very helpful.