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Curating Help Sites with Data-Driven Insights
- 1. 1 #LavaCon
- 2. 2 #LavaCon Curating Your Help Site with Data Bridge the gap between documentation and product https://help.avalara.com/
- 3. 3 #LavaCon About the presenters Jenny Evans Web Manager Avalara jenny.evans@avalara.com Theresa Manzo Product Manager MindTouch theresam@mindtouch.com
- 4. 4 #LavaCon Return on investment Avalara Help Center timeline Lessons learned managing content What data? Hard numbers Content can help Curation plan Questions
- 5. 5 #LavaCon Return on Investment • Scalability • Brand voice and authority • Share knowledge • Sales
- 6. 6 #LavaCon Problems – Why We Have a Site • PDF content is difficult to maintain • PDF content is difficult to share • No brand authority • No web presence for customers and potential customers
- 7. 7 #LavaCon Avalara Help Center History and Timeline 2004-2012 PDF Pre-web V2 2014 Site Launch V3 2015 Reorganization V1 Migration 2013 V4 2016 Responsive V5 2017 Curation Data- driven Site
- 8. 8 #LavaCon Learnings After Site Implementation • Site maintenance • Curation • Brand authority • Site accessibility • SEO
- 9. 9 #LavaCon Gather Data • Number of users • Content views • Time spent on page • Pages per session • Keyword search • Number of users • Content views • Time spent on video • Attendance • Customer satisfaction • Number of walkthroughs • Number of cases • GoLive velocity • Number of sales • Self-service
- 10. 10 #LavaCon Success Data • Increase in users • Increase in page views • Increase in go live velocity • Decrease in cases • Increase in sales • Ticket deflection %
- 11. 11 #LavaCon Hard Numbers – Ticket Deflection
- 12. 12 #LavaCon Hard Numbers – Ticket Deflection of 45%
- 13. 13 #LavaCon Actionable Data • Improve top 20% • Archive bottom 20% • Release notes most viewed content
- 14. 14 #LavaCon Actionable Data • Gap analysis • Tag with customer’s keywords • Swarm on trending case data
- 15. 15 #LavaCon Hard Numbers – Swarm Page Views ⬆ 2815% Cases ⬇15%
- 16. 16 #LavaCon Internal Adoption • HR • Account Managers • 4 product groups • Implementation • Support • Professional Services • Sales
- 17. #LavaCon17 Help Content Can Help • Product • Support • Sales • Marketing
- 18. 18 #LavaCon Data Collection Schedule As needed Weekly Monthly Quarterly Yearly % of clicks on a page Video views Page views # of videos # of visits from google % of videos watched # of web users # of pages Search refinement % Webinar attendance # of articles created # of webinars # of archived pages Webinar scores Bounce rate Views per video Class attendance % of case deflection Views per page Class scores Pages per session # of cases # of WalkThrus GoLive velocity Keyword search terms
- 19. 19 #LavaCon Curation Schedule As needed Weekly Monthly Quarterly Yearly Organize content on a page Report webinar and class evaluations to presenters for coaching Archive duplicate content (KCS) Update top 20% of content by product and content type Back-up archive Organize structure of the site Update content based on page feedback Tag content based on keywords Archive bottom 10% of content by product and content type Update year- specific content Combine articles to make them more efficient Create content for gaps Incorporate top 10% of FAQs into guides
- 20. 20 #LavaCon Key Takeaways • No overnight success • Use data to inform decisions • Create a cadence • Collect data in chunks • Share with departments
Editor's Notes
- Use data to bridge the gap between content and other teams
- Intro to Jenny and Avalara -Web Manager at Avalara for almost 4 years -Editor for 10 years - Avalara provides accurate transactional tax calculation for hundreds of accounting software, ERPs, and eCommerce carts Intro to Theresa and MindTouch –Why she’s interviewing me/Avalara -evolution of Avalara and MindTouch as a company and as a product -Relationship between the two
- Theresa will present this slide so it can be more conversational and organic – theresa to send notes for this slide T– What Return on Investment have you seen from your help center?
- Scale - Do not have to hire as many Support, Onboarding, people. etc. Brand voice – customers view us as an expert on their product Internal Connects Success to Support and GoLive Built out internal networks for CAMs (Account managers), Sales Teams, etc. Able to use information already provided to customers and share it internally 12 teams with their own sections, shared across multiple teams, all authoring their own content Training materials for incoming hires Sales - link from marketing site to help center learned that buyers first research online If they can find help content, they are more secure Sales team uses Help Center in deals - referencing T- What challenges were you experiencing before the creation of your Help Center?
- T – What sort of usability problems were customers experiencing trying to find information? Access to content Leaving their workflow to find help Increased customer dissatisfaction Patterns to support calls that could be solved with help content All new customers needed a golive person with multiple calls to set up the product T - What steps did you take along the way to achieve the results you just talked about?
- Lessons learned along the way Pre-web Content is difficult to update, maintain, and share changes Can’t measure!!!! Migration to site Always will take longer than plan Set up data analytics tools now Estimate costs Site launch Set up success metrics How many users each month? What content are they looking at? What content do they need? Reorganization Homepage was too cluttered Content wasn’t interlinked Yes customers want microcontent in the moment, but also robust workflows Responsive Content needs to be accessible across all devices Curation Content needs to be maintained Can’t publish and forget it T – What do you mean by a data-driven site? Data-driven site Goals Curation plan Act on data T - What have you learned that you could have applied earlier in your timeline? Understand the effort to migrate a site Implement data tools on your site early even if you’re not going to use them immediately Set up events and triggers for data collection
- T - Once you’ve launched your Help Center, what were some of the challenges you ran into and what did you learn from them? Challenges we faced – duplicated content, disconnected content, how to update it based on releases You need to develop a curation plan - content is recent, relevant, accurate. Otherwise you will lose brand authority. User Guides = optimal path KB = FAQ, specific answers to specific questions We’ve done a blend of all these different types - seamless from one to the other, all at the user’s fingertips – centralized Separation from product, UI, marketing, etc
- T – After overcoming challenges of implementing help center, what tools did you use and what data points did you learn from them? Number of users Content views Time spent on page Pages per session Keyword search Case deflection Number of cases Number of sales Self-serve percentage Completed walkthroughs
- T - What improvements did you notice with the launch of your Help Center? Initial data to collect This is where most people start collection data, but need to take it a step further These data points all demonstrate that our content has value and that the site is improving But what can you do with this data? Celebrate success Measure success of changes to content T – Our customers look at ticket deflection as their most important success metrics. How did you implement ticket deflection and what type of improvement did you see?
- Customers start to fill out a case to support (taking up valuable resources, time, and money), but stop because we’ve surfaced up an answer to them by searching the help center based on their case information. Over the years, our support contact information has moved around. For a while, it was in the header/footer of every page. A help center is there to deflect calls and allow customers to self-serve. If you offer a phone number, people tend to take the easy way and pick up the phone. We’ve actually made it harder to find the number – you have to search for it. This encourages users to use our help content. Trust me, if customers absolutely need to contact support, they will find a way!
- Stop and think about this – Not only can you deflect support tickets, but you can demonstrate the value of a success center with a search page and some numbers You’re saving the company money by not having to hire as many support agents, but you’re also providing a better customer experience. Customers get an instantaneous answer to their question instead of waiting on hold or waiting for an email response.
- T – How did you take your data collection to the next level? Deliver content that customers want when they want it Improve and archive Look at 5 different products Videos, webinars, guides, FAQs, classes Look at these subsection led us to the discovery that release notes were our most viewed content Led to moving it up in prominence in the site Redesign of release notes Improvements of release notes process from product teams Repeatable – continuous publishing cycle!
- In addition to looking at raw numbers of our own content, pull in data from other sources Support cases GoLive velocity Customer search terms Identify gaps in content and improve the way customers access the content Change flow of content T – What is swarming?
- Cross-functional team swarms on trending case data topic. We create content in a day and report on page views and case numbers next month to see if we had an impact. After a few months of doing swarm, we realized that the same case topics are usually at the top of the list because they require a customer to contact support. We started to look at other success metrics. For example, customers have to send us notices from the IRS for us to resolve on their behalf. By providing them with more information, we reduced the case handling time for these types of cases from 8 weeks to 6 weeks because customers would send all the required information up front. We then looked out what other data could we swarm on instead of case data – we’ve done most viewed content on the AHC, #1 asked question in Community/Forum, article with the highest attachment rate, case topics with the lowest article attachment rate, etc. Benefit to customer – they get the help they need when they need it. We’re filling a gap in our content that we wouldn’t have otherwise found because it’s not tied to a product release. This encourages self-service long after we stop measuring the immediate success of that content. Increases customer satisfaction. Benefit to company - By involving people from other departments, we’re letting them see what it takes to create content and shows the value of our content. In this example – decreased case resolution time by 40%
- T – Did other teams see benefits 12 teams/departments now have an internal section within the help center. Once support started to see the power of the help center and had the numbers to back up it’s value, more teams wanted to document their own tools and processes in the same place where we have our customer-facing content. They need numbers to: Page views Number of users Views per user Searches per user This internal area is so successful that they’ve started creating customer-facing content as well. I hold a monthly contributors meeting where I share metrics, site updates and improvements, and give them an opportunity to report bugs and share success stories.
- T – What external benefits did the internal teams see? The Avalara Help Center is a major selling point for Avalara. It’s demoed during most sales calls, support calls, trade shows, and conventions. Share data with the product team to improve the product – company code as an example Share data with support – KCS usage increased when case deflection data was available – proved our worth All marketing materials links back to our help content because they share our brand, but we share help Empowers content developers and strategists – shows value of content and writing expertise
- T – How would you recommend other companies start implementing their own data collection and improvement? Daily Tools should be set up in advance to collect data every day The last thing you want is to go to collect data and realize you had to set up a trigger event in advance and now you have to wait another month to get that data that you really needed for a report right now This schedule tracks data for the content that we create. If you create other type of content, add it to your schedule. Once the data is collected, we look at the numbers by product and by content type. Example: We look at page views for AvaTax, Returns, CertCapture, etc. It’s hard to compare overall under-performing content unless you silo it.
- What to do with the data Create your own schedule Print it out and hang it up at your desk so it’s a goal you can work towards
- T - What final advice would you give the audience on building their own Help Centers? Your help site is a living, breathing, evolving center for success. In order to provide the best content and experience for your customers, you need to constantly optimize by determining what is relevant to your customers. An optimized site will deepen customer relationships and lead to better customer satisfaction overall. T - Conclusion