The time for seeing product and help content as a costly compliance and support issue is

long gone. Consumers are turning to authoritative content during the entire sales journey

for the transparency it provides into the capabilities of the product. As the Internet helps

shift the balance of power from the company to the customer, your product and help con-

tent becomes a cornerstone of any effective customer engagement strategy.

Product and help content are often relegated to “the post-sale jail,” but consumers in mar-

keting, sales, training, support, and account renewal stages are using this content. The sub-

scription model of selling has helped blur the lines between post- and presale; the custom-

er journey is no longer linear. Rather, it’s cyclical, and customers can flit from stage to stage

with ease thanks to everything being done digitally.

As companies look to meet the demands of multi-channel customer engagement, it’s im-

portant to make authoritative content accessible at every touch point. As the customer’s

journey becomes more self-paced and self-serviced, maintaining consistency across all of

these channels is of critical importance. Currently, delivering this consistency is one of the

largest problems facing many companies, and that’s because they lack a consistent source

of content that unifies the customer’s experience.

The Executive’s Roadmap to Product and Help Content for the Customer

Journey will help you understand the role of product and help content for your

consumers, as well as for the effect it has on customer-facing departments. Fur-

thermore, it will help position this content as a key strategic asset to achieve in-

creased sales, higher Net Promoter Scores and better customer retention.

Executive Summary

The tidal wave of new consumer and business technology has put businesses in a race to

keep up with the latest trends, and thus, keep up with their consumers. Companies are

willing to explore every avenue to engage customers, even turning to Snapchat to create

marketing campaigns.

The capabilities that consumers have nowadays far outpace the possibilities of those

twenty, ten, even five years ago. In 1991, if you were to piece together all of the functional-

ity of an iPhone into some monstrous, Frankenstein-esque device, it would have cost $3.6

million. The smartphone revolution, alongside the Internet revolution, has fundamentally

changed the habits of consumers, particularly the way that we engage with brands and the

expectation that answers are always at-hand (that’s why we have Siri and Google Now—we

can’t even type our questions).

Modern consumers are researchers. They’ve got the world at their fingertips, and the

world is full of online reviews, opinions and insights. Most of which are out of a business’s

control. Consumers want to know their investment is the right investment. Consumers

have been trained to avoid corporate sites when they’re researching the post-purchase

experience. There are several reasons for this.

The first is that the corporate site doesn’t have this information available. These sites are

simply marketing machines, designed to convert, convert, convert. Product and help con-

tent is locked away in the hard drives of company employees, or on a separate site all

together that’s filled with PDFs.

As a result, we, as consumers, have been trained to start at Google, because Google is

more likely to provide us the information we need, whereas the corporate site tends to be

high effort or a heavy sales pitch, even for current customers. Consumers don’t care where

the information comes from, as long as it provides the value they need. That’s why search

engine optimization (SEO) is so important for companies.

Meeting the Demand of 21st Century Consumers

People want to do things themselves, and they start at Google. Whether it’s doing research

to validate a product’s capabilities or looking to get a newly purchased product up and

running, self-service through Google Search is increasingly becoming the modus operandi

for consumers. New research from Detecon resoundingly backs up the fact that online

self-service is the key to engaging customers. According to the study, on average 78% of

consumers polled embraced online self-service. For e-commerce, that number jumps up

to 89% of customers. Even more interesting is the finding that 60% of customers use cus-

tomer self service as a criterion with which to judge a brand.

Since consumers are using search engines to self-serve and conduct research, search

engine optimization is a crucial component of engaging these consumers. But the search

engine–optimized content that lives on the Web is typically product marketing—the oppo-

site of what self-service searchers want.

Around 80% of the searches on the Internet are an attempt to discover information from

any source (the perceived “best” source via Google page rankings).

Searching for Self-Service

Four consumers trends are redefining the way customers engage with companies—even

in B2B models. Each of them makes delivering timely, authoritative content a priority for

companies looking to effectively sell to and retain customers.

Consumer Trends Setting the Path

According to Advanced Web Ranking, Google searches break down into three main cate-

gories:

1. Navigational Queries

Searches that are aimed at finding the URL of a site account for nearly 10% of

searches, and shows how counterproductively lazy we are, since we’re taking the

extra step of searching and clicking instead of typing “.com” into the bar.

2. Informational Queries

Around 80% of the searches on the Internet are an attempt to discover information

from any source (the perceived “best” source via Google page rankings).

3. Transactional Queries

The final 10% of searches constitute all of the shopping and downloading that we

do.

Two things stick out about these numbers:

1. There is an overwhelming amount of people who are just looking to learn some-

thing, to find an answer.

2. Only a small percentage of searches are geared towards purchase.

But when it comes to our SEO strategy, which group do we target? The 10% of course, be-

cause that’s where the money’s at. But in doing so, we’re failing our consumers. The con-

sumers who just want information encounter pages geared towards the 10%—the market-

ing pages that push us to buy, download and sign up. It’s frustrating to them, and makes

your company seem difficult.

The challenge for companies is to ensure that the content that customers need to make

purchasing decisions and self-serve is easily accessible and consumable via Google Search.

Smartphones are increasingly dominating the attention of the modern consumer. Recent

research places the amount of time we spend looking at our cell phones at 2 hours and

57 minutes (officially surpassing our TV time).

Smartphones have fundamentally altered the way we interact with the world. With smart-

phones and always-on data, information is (or at least, should be) always at hand. Because

of this, 60% of all online traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, according to recent

data from comScore. But the experience with information is different on a mobile phone

than on a desktop. The experience on a mobile device needs to much less complicated

than on a traditional desktop.

Consumers expect content to be packaged into much more consumable pieces. No one

wants to read a novel on a smartphone (trust me, I’ve tried), which is why PDFs and Word

documents won’t cut it on mobile. Mobile interactions oftentimes are brief, what is referred

to as a micro-interaction. Google and Apple know as much, which is why their mobile oper-

ating systems have at-a-glance notifications. For companies to engage consumers during

these quick interactions, they need micro-content to match.

Whether it’s during purchase or for support, the ability to quickly get the information need-

ed is crucial. Even in a retail setting, consumers are turning to mobile devices to look up

information that validates their purchasing decision. When making the choice between two

different smart watches, a consumer might look up technical content to ensure it works

with their smartphone. If this information isn’t quickly discoverable, the consumer will be

frustrated and perhaps move on.

Mobile

The things in our lives are becoming smarter by the day. As our refrigerators, thermostats

and cars start to work and speak together, the potential—and the complexity—of these

items increases. The fridge won’t just be there to keep food cold anymore. It will become

the central hub of the kitchen, helping to keep track of grocery needs and scoping out

potential dinners. As the complexity of products increases, the gap between novice and

expert grows.

The challenge companies face is getting consumers to adopt these new technologies fully

by becoming product experts. Since products that are part of the Internet-of-Things com-

monly have screens and Internet access, training, technical, and help content can be de-

livered directly to the product. One of the great advances the Internet-of-Things brings

is contextual awareness about our lives, the time of day, our habits. The content that gets

delivered needs to be done in context as well.

Internet-of-Things

Cloud storage has changed the expectations people have around information. Consumers

expect information to be updated in real-time. Thanks to companies like Dropbox, Ama-

zon, and Apple, consumers are used to information that is accessible anywhere and con-

stantly up-to-date.

For companies, the challenge is effectively utilizing the full capacity of cloud computing and

storage. With the ability to work collaboratively and update content in real-time, companies

need to break down the silos that frustrate employees and customers. While information

is no longer locked away in hard drives and PDFs, incompatible cloud systems throughout

the organization can continue silos in a cloud-driven world.

Cloud Computing and Storage

For most companies, product and help content are locked away in what Dr. Tim Walters of

Digital Clarity Group calls the “post-sale jail.” This content is limited to a strict support role,

which diminishes the accessibility for presale consumers and severely limits the potential

of this content. Many of the most successful companies are using this content to help grow

their business by driving site traffic, accelerating the sales cycle, and creating loyal users

who renew and buy more.

They’re able to do this because they know the value of product and help content for the

entire customer journey. And they know how to take the tribal knowledge that forms the

foundation of this content—from employees and customers—and transform it into a cus-

tomer engagement channel that helps drive revenue.

To help visualize the way tribal knowledge becomes customer engagement, we’ll think of

an iceberg. As Ernest Hemingway reminds us, 90% of the iceberg is underwater. It’s only

the top 10% we see. But most companies never let their content be seen above water,

instead choosing to lock it away in silos and behind logins. Once you are effectively able

to get this content to the surface, you’re helping your customers, and employees become

product experts with much less effort.

The tip of the iceberg represents the revenue-generating potential of product and help

content. It includes the touch points and channels that help drive customers into the sales

funnel—i.e. through search engines. Where people get messed up is thinking that the part

of the iceberg submerged below the water—the part that constitutes “support”—and the

exposed part are separate. One is presale, the other post-sale, they say. But as research

tells us, this tribal information can be transformed into presale dollars.

The “Post-Sale Jail” and the Iceberg Theory of Help Content

As we move up the iceberg from tribal knowledge, it’s a matter of continual improvement

and optimization. You compile the tribal knowledge and formalize it into “content.” From

there, you improve the organization to ensure it makes sense and provides customers

learning pathways through the content. For many companies, getting to this point is a huge

success, since curating, formalizing and organizing can be time-consuming and difficult

with many content management solutions or knowledge bases.

Once you’ve mastered these, you can use analytics to understand user behavior and site

traffic. This allows you to improve your content, with the intent to provide more value to

your customers. With valuable content in hand, we then can begin to see the surface—the

elements that make up our revenue-generating initiatives.

That begins with SEO. If you can’t get this content to rank in search engine results pages,

then it won’t do your exisiting customers looking to self-serve or prospective customers

looking to validate much good. With this content on search engines, you’ll help create

smarter customers who move through the sales cycle faster. As a bonus, you’ll lower sup-

port costs as customers are able to self-serve for commonly asked questions.

In a subscription economy, companies live and die on their ability to make customers into

product experts. With the cost of acquiring new customers being seven times more cost-

ly than retaining a customer according to KISSmetrics, keeping customers is vital.

But turning customers into product experts is one of the hardest challenges companies

face today. On average, over 508 applications are being used in every enterprise compa-

ny, all of which are vying for the time and attention of customers. With so many applica-

tions to use and manage, how does your company stand out and make it easy for custom-

ers to become product experts?

The answer is through effective online self-service that brings together all of the tribal

knowledge from customers, employees and subject matter experts. Online self-service is

now the preferred channel for customers to receive support. It’s easier and on their time,

at their pace. But companies are failing to support their customers in becoming product

experts across all channels. A recent study by Eptica found that out of 100 companies sur-

veyed, over half of customer questions go unanswered across all channels. What’s worse

is that “when asked the same question on email, Twitter, and web chat, just 11% of compa-

nies provided consistent answers across two or more channels.”

Both the lack of answers and the lack of consistency across channels ruin your customer’s

attempts at becoming product experts. They need consistent, authoritative information.

Keeping content locked away in wikis and within departments is a leading contributor to

this problem. That single source of self-service content works just as well for your employ-

ees as well.

The Product Expert Imperative

To create a product expert, it’s important to take a step back and really evaluate what

customers are thinking when they are learning about your products in the sales cycle or

learning how to implement and use your products. So many customer interactions begin

with the words “I don’t know.” Not-knowing is what necessitates most support calls and

chat sessions. “I don’t know” is usually a frustrating barrier to customers becoming product

experts—especially when the one who doesn’t know is the employee!

“I don’t know” is also the trademark of “beginner’s mind”—a Zen Buddhist principle called

Shoshin. Shoshin is a willingness to learn, an openness to possibility, even when you con-

sider yourself an “expert.” Understanding “beginner’s mind” can help us to improve the way

we engage customers to create product experts.

The Beginner’s Mind Approach to Engaging Your Customers

When new customers begin learning your products, there are a lot of “I don’t knows” to go

around. They’re at what Kathy Sierra calls “the suck threshold.” The challenge companies

face is getting customers past “the suck threshold” to the “kick- ass threshold.” Kick-ass

customers are the product experts who become brand advocates and renew when the

time comes.

Of course, when it comes to using products you’ve spent hundreds, thousands, hundreds

of thousands, or even millions of dollars on, there’s a definitive time frame for how long

“I don’t know” remains acceptable. By many accounts, 90 days is the make-or-break limit.

According to Scout Analytics, only 10% of customers will remain loyal if they’re not suc-

cessful after 90 days.

During the initial 90 days, customers have “beginner’s mind,” and they’re okay with that.

But after a while, the long calls to customer support, the waiting between emails, the fruit-

less Google searches all start turning “I don’t know” into “I don’t care.” And once your cus-

tomers start having that attitude towards your product, you can kiss that renewal goodbye.

Even huge IT projects are susceptible to failing because the trouble in using the software

outweighed the value of using it. According to a 2012 McKinsey study, 40% of IT proj-

ects over $15 million failed. That’s way, way, way too high. The bar to becoming a kick-ass

product expert needs to be lowered, and the key to that has to do with the way content is

structured and delivered.

Keeping “I Don’t Know” from Becoming “I Don’t Care”

The difference between “I don’t know”—meaning a customer is willing to learn—and a cus-

tomer not caring is the effort your customers have to put in to learn. Ideally, you want your

customers to always have a “beginner’s mind,” because that means they’re always learning,

continuing down the path to becoming a product expert.

How do you train your customers to embrace not-knowing? By making information easily

accessible throughout the customer journey. It can’t be locked away in PDFs. It can’t neces-

sitate a call. It needs to be as simple as a Google search.

That way, “I don’t know” is associated with a pleasant, user-friendly experience (one that

doesn’t require timely, expensive support calls or chat sessions for your agents). With in-

formation readily available and easily consumable, “I don’t know” is a chance to learn, rath-

er than a frustrating interaction with your company.

Engaging customers with the information they need, where they need it is crucial through-

out the customer journey. Analyzing where customers have “I don’t know” moments will

help unlock how to structure and deliver your content.

Training Customers to Love “I Don’t Know”

So it’s clear now that we shouldn’t underestimate the value of the technical information

your company produces. Product and help content spans the entire customer journey. It is

the cornerstone, the one consistent touch point your customer has with your company. No

employee will be there for the entire customer journey the way your content is. That’s why

making it simple to find and use from any device during any stage of the customer journey

is critical to help companies grow.

The following chart shows the customer’s journey through your organization. Most com-

panies only look at the customer journey from an inside-out perspective. They look at how

customers move through each department, from marketing, to sales, and beyond. But the

customers don’t see it this way. The customer journey, thanks to the subscription model, is

becoming less linear and more cyclical and erratic.

There are three main components to the customer journey, from their perspective: Aware-

ness, or how they find your brand; buying, in which they justify choosing your brand; grow-

ing, where they learn to succeed with your products.

Creating a Roadmap for the Customer Journey

Many consumers start with initial searches (usually through Google) that are not related

to your brand. This is where consumers get a lay of the land that they’re trying to make a

purchase in. They may wonder things like: What are the companies I need to be aware of?

What products are there related to this field? What resources do I have at my disposal?

This is where SEO—and your marketing department—comes into play. Tactics like pay-per-

click advertising and keeping a current blog are common ploys to rank higher in search

engines. The searches consumers make can run the gamut from “best company for x”

to “how do I achieve x.” Consumers are looking for the resources to begin the next stage

(Scope Needs), and your technical material can play a part in helping drive traffic and en-

gage customers. That is assuming it is also search engine–optimized, just like your market-

ing materials. Too often, that’s not the case.

General Search

Awareness is where consumers do their due diligence to determine the best fit for their

needs. While this generally falls under the auspices of the marketing department, not every

stage of the journey is covered by your marketing department. The challenge the market-

ing department faces is trying to get quality leads into the sales funnel—and that’s done

through the quality of the content that your company as a whole produces.

Social media is the en vogue way to engage consumers. Likes and retweets, while perhaps

validating to a marketing manager’s ego, are difficult to convert into buyers. According to

eMarketer, U.S. marketers last year spent $3.08 billion on Facebook brand pages and so-

cial media advertisements, with little return to show for it.

In reality, Google represents the battlefield we’re playing on. It’s where consumers come to

research and engage companies, and it’s where competing companies duke it out for the

consumer’s attention. So let’s talk a bit more about what takes place during the awareness

stage—and how the content you already produce can (inexpensively) help supplement the

expensive demand generation efforts of a marketing department.

Consumers are looking to research the potential and ramifications of their future pur-

chase, especially if it is part of a company project or initiative. As they’re likely not an ex-

pert, they’re looking for expert advice and authoritative content to determine the right

questions to ask, the right features to have, and the right results to expect.

This tends to preclude typical marketing content (too biased), but provides an opportunity

for your authoritative help content to step in and fill the gap. Otherwise the only thing fill-

ing those gaps are the third-party sites, industry experts, and peers they turn to. And who’s

to say they’re going to be promoting your products and brand?

Scope Needs

You can’t talk to every vendor, so now it’s time to start crossing names off the list. This step

is made independent of your marketing or sales team’s efforts—again, because they’re not

likely to provide what consumers need to make this decision. What are the things consum-

ers look for to narrow the field?

The first, of course, is price. Individuals and companies all have budgets, so pricing is the

easiest place to rule out possibilities. But beyond that, how do you start to narrow the list?

In my experience in the industry, and just as a consumer, that list starts to dwindle down

as I look into the post-sale experience. I want to know what my life will be like using the

product day-to-day. I want to know that the company has everything I need to be success-

ful.

So an important part of this step is peer opinion, but also the content you put out that

supports the post-sale experience. Case studies are great—but definitely paint a positive

portrait of the company. Technical and help documentation is, on the other hand, proof

positive of your company’s ability to train and support customers post-sale.

Narrow Field

Up to this point, you probably have no idea that a consumer is in your sales funnel. It takes

passing through all of the research done previously to get to the point where the consum-

er raises their hand from the anonymous crowd surfing your site to say, “Let’s talk!” And by

this point, even if they’re engaging with multiple companies, consumers have a pretty good

feeling about which company they’re going to go with—all before you even know their

name.

Compare & Engage (Marketing)

Marketing departments are always looking to drive more organic traffic to their site. Mar-

keting is a numbers game. Only a percentage of consumers who see a link to your site will

click; only a percentage of those will stick around to explore more content; only a percent-

age of those will fill out a form or reach out to you by phone/email; and finally, only a per-

centage of those ever convert into actual, paying customers.

Perhaps the biggest struggle is providing content through the corporate channel that helps

consumers do research and validate products. Marketers aren’t usually the subject matter

experts—and it’s the subject matter experts consumers are looking for to help them make

decisions.

Awareness Pain Points

In a B2B setting, the initial interaction between a prospect and the sales team is the re-

quest for proposal (RFP). This indicates the interest they have in your products and begins

the process of “officially” becoming educated by your sales and technical sales reps.

This is obviously a spot where your product and help content come into play. As RFPs often

look to validate a supplier’s ability to fulfill certain requirements, having this documentation

at the ready as part of the sales rep’s arsenal is crucial. A timely turnaround on an RFP can

make the difference between sale and no sale.

Request for Proposals

Once consumers have the information gathered they need—whether through the RFP

process or through the process of communicating with a sales rep—the pool of potential

vendors gets narrowed again. This is another place where your authoritative product and

help content can provide the technical validation that lifts your company over another.

Consumers are just as concerned selecting the right product as they are in selecting the

right vendor. This content can help assuage any concerns they might have moving forward

with your company.

Narrow Selection

Few things are more valuable to a consumer than a peer opinion. The unbiased opinion of

current or former customers helps complete the picture of the post-sale experience that

your marketing and sales teams have worked to paint up until now. None of your content,

be it marketing, sales or technical, can help your company pass this stage.

But it’s not entirely out of your hands. As we’ll focus on during the Growth stage, ensuring

the success of your current customers is just as important as bringing new customers into

the fold. That’s because it’s your current customers—for better or worse—who will be pro-

moting or hurting your brand.

Peer Opinions

As consumers move through the sales cycle, they tend to work hierarchically, from the

top down. At the top are the “big deal” questions: features, functionality, etc. But as those

questions get answered, the concerns become much more granular, more technical, more

about the day-to-day experience. It’s up to a good sales rep or a good sales engineer to be

able to answer all of the technical questions that represent the final hurdles to the sale.

Again, providing the right documentation at this point is going to help seal the deal. It’s

important to document the solutions your technical sales team provides for future deals.

Knowledge-Centered Services (KCS) methodology isn’t only for support teams. Capturing,

reusing and optimizing this content are only going to help accelerate future sales cycles.

Final Validation

Sign it, seal it, deliver it—the deal is done!

Now the hard work begins. Hopefully everything that the customer has been exposed to

thus far helps set them up for success before the ink even dries.

Make Selection

There are several pain points that occur during the buying process for sales and technical

sales teams. The first is a lack of access to the authoritative content they need to validate

a prospect’s needs. If a sales rep has easy access to the content they need, it can help

accelerate the sales cycle. There’s no need to wait for a sales engineer to document every

solution. And to the prospect, it paints the sales rep as an expert, which bodes well for the

post-sale experience.

Another pain point is high turnover amongst sales reps. Asking green sales reps to sell

complicated prospects and services is risky, for both their success and the success of the

customer. Without well-documented, easily discovered technical content, the time it takes

for a rep to get up to speed with the product can be too long. And since the money is tied

up in their ability to make a sale, you’re likely to lose more reps the longer it takes to get

them ramped up. Which, of course, further perpetuates the problem.

Another pain point is that customers receive inconsistent messaging as they transition

from sales to onboarding/training. Consistent documentation that helps clearly lay out the

post-sale experience gives customers the resources they need to hit the ground running

once they sign on the dotted line.

Buying Pain Points

So the customer found out about your company and decided to purchase. Now the con-

tent rubber really hits the road. It’s time to get the customer up and running and seeing a

return on investment (ROI) as quickly as possible.

Commonplace one-year subscriptions act as a high-risk trial of sorts (for both parties). Not

getting customers implemented soon after signing puts the renewal at risk. Who is going to

be upsold on a product that just got up and running a few months ago?

As customers come onboard, they’re going to be in a learning mode. There will be lots of “I

don’t know” moments. It’s critical to have all of the right resources lined up so that “I don’t

know” doesn’t become “I don’t care.” This can include some combination of training/on-

boarding, support and communities.

The backbone of each of these areas needs to be the training, technical and help content.

Otherwise, getting started can be an arduous task for customers and a costly task for com-

panies as human resources are relied on to get customers up and running. Delivering con-

tent via a low effort, self-service model is crucial in this stage. One of the ways to best capi-

talize on this is through in-product contextual help. That way, when customers don’t know,

the answer is right in the product or application, without having to exit out— because who

knows when they might come back!

Learn

As customers begin to get the hang of your product, it’s up to your support and training

departments to help them fully adopt the product. The further customers adopt a product,

the more likely they are to stick with it when it comes time to renew. During this step, all

sorts of problems can arise that require documentation to solve.

Now, depending on whether you’ve trained customers to become self-reliant or to rely on

your employees, this process can be painless or painful. If you’ve introduced customers to

self-service documentation in the Awareness stage, then they’re more likely to be self-reli-

ant, satisfied customers. This way, your employees aren’t bogged down helping every cus-

tomer with every problem ever. Instead, they have more time to spend on more difficult

cases. And all of that extra attention should help translate into higher Net Promoter Scores

along the way.

Adopt

Now that a customer is up and running, it’s time to start seeing the ROI. The vision that

your marketing and sales teams sold them on needs to start coming true. If your market-

ing and sales teams didn’t do a good job of painting the post-sale experience, customers

are likely to be disappointed.

Realize

It’s rather unlikely a customer bought everything your company has to offer. At some

point, you’ll want to task your sales or account management team to reach out and offer

new products that can help augment the first. Ideally, the upsell helps drive further prod-

uct adoption and value. Think of the relationship between an Apple Watch and an iPhone.

Your sales reps or account managers won’t be terribly successful if the customer has yet

to become a product adopter. But if the customer did, then the sales cycle starts all over (if

you’re lucky, you’ll get to skip Awareness and go straight to the Buying stage).

Expand

If everything up to this point has gone well—or well enough—you may have a brand pro-

moter on your hands! Your customers are going to help champion renewing your product

within their organization, and they are going to suggest your company to their friends as

well. It’s like its own marketing channel, and should help accelerate future sales cycles.

Promote

One of the most pressing pain points is delivering on what was promised during the sales

cycle. Setting customers up to succeed begins in the Awareness stage with the content

they find online. If there’s disconnect between your marketing and technical content, it may

not kill the deal. But the real pain will be felt once customers fail to see the ROI they were

promised and told would be possible.

Another pain point is maintaining relationships with customers that are built on value be-

ing delivered, instead of just sales pitches asking for more money. The key to avoiding this

pitfall is low-effort, high-value engagements with your customers.

Growth Pain Points

Businesses are fighting against diminishing customer loyalty and increased choice in the

marketplace. More than ever, they’re fighting against Google to keep their customers, from

initial awareness to renewal. This, more than anything, is telling of what ails companies.

The company is no longer seen as the authority. That’s why customers skip what should be

the obvious first step in lieu of search engines when researching and seeking support: the

main company website.

Tailoring your product and help content for your customer’s journey is about more than

reducing your customer’s effort. It’s about reestablishing your company as the authority

throughout the entire customer journey.

Many companies resist making their entire product and help content library publicly avail-

able. The result of this is that customers are turning to other resources—namely Google—

that may or may not lead them to your site or what they need. Or, they’re turning to other

channels, like phone and email, with frustrating, inconsistent results. Customers are four

times more likely to come away disloyal than loyal from these service interactions, accord-

ing to HBR.

As companies struggle to create customer engagement strategies that create loyal cus-

tomers, the answer begins with reestablishing the company as the authority. For custom-

ers, it’s a matter of trust. Can customers trust your company to deliver the technology and

expertise to help them get the ROI they expect?

Bringing the Customer Journey Home

It may seem like you’re sinking money into your product and help content. The truth of the

matter is that this content is the cornerstone of any customer engagement strategy that is

seeking to build up the brand as the trustworthy authority. If the customer journey is tak-

ing prospects and customers to third-party websites and Google for validation and sup-

port, even the best-laid customer engagement management strategies will falter.

It’s time to bring the customer journey home. The home page, that is. With the authorita-

tive product and help content as the cornerstone of the customer journey, you have the

foundation to build up trust with your customers again.

Matthew Berger is a content strategist who believes in the power of product and help

content to revolutionize the way businesses engage consumers. Combining his experience

in education and business, he wants to help educate companies and to improve customer

experiences. He is also an avid reader when his dogs don’t lie on top of the book he’s read-

ing.

About the Author

For the past ten years, we at MindTouch have enabled organizations to understand and

connect with buyers and customers more effectively by using content to turn them into

product experts and brand promoters. We convert product help content and documenta-

tion into a web-native, search engine–optimized, mobile-ready engagement channel span-

ning the entire customer journey from marketing to account renewal. Our software helps

companies optimize the customer journey and build better product roadmaps with timely

insights and analytics into the customer experience.

About MindTouch

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