The ‘Help’ or ‘Support’ section in most applications tend to have an uncanny ability to not ‘Help’ me in any way or form. I’m sure you folks out there have experienced this and can share my pain. It drives you bonkers, right? Well, it drives me nuts anyway. I hope this raises a thought provoking moment where you ask yourself, “Does my product(s) have a useful ‘Help’ button/section?” I sure hope so!
A support portal will be quite important for your customers. You should most definitely use your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to open up a support portal if you haven’t already. Also, be sure to go back and update your help center with current information. Products generally have updates that occur and some information may be out of date. A good CRM will definitely allow you to make your updates easily.
The thought about help centers hit me the other day when I was working on my sister’s laptop. I’ve harped out having a good help center before, but updating it is just as important. The laptop my sister wanted me to fix was having issues with audio and updating. It has Window 8 on it, which is realistically the first problem. At any rate, the laptop would say there are updates ready to be downloaded. It had about 200 updates to go through, but it wouldn’t download or install a single one. The process was stalled at 0%. I was floored at how Microsoft could break their windows update procedure. How could they possibly do that? HOW? I still have no idea, but it frustrates me to no end. I searched for hours and tried many suggestions, but nothing worked. Some of the suggestions told me to change options that weren’t even options any longer. What was even more mind-boggling was that I was reading this on Microsoft’s own site! I yelled out, “Seriously, Microsoft! Seriously!” Yes, I was talking to my screen. Anyway, I finally got the stupid laptop to update. I don’t really have any idea how I wound up fixing it, but I did.
That process got me thinking about other help center’s documentation, as well as my own company’s help videos. Some videos did a good job of walking through a process step by step, but other videos made no sense. I said, “Well, this has to go.” I remade some of the videos, and I have a list of others that I want to remake and update. This is important for the customers. If you forget how to do something on your own product, then look at your help video. If you discover that it’s not helpful, then that is a problem. It needs to be fixed.
In summary, verify your help center is actually helpful. It doesn’t matter if your product is a CRM, lead generation software, phones, computers, cars, sewing machines, etc. as long as there is a support center for your customers to get assistance with your product. Also, don’t forget to update it too! That’s just as important.
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