The COVID-19 coronavirus is having a huge impact on people and organisations. With so many things that could be about to change, how should technical communicators respond? What’s your plan for the future? In this presentation, we looked at: How organisations might change during and after the COVID-19 lockdown What that means for technical communication, and how you can come back stronger than ever What technical communicators can do to help, and how you can deal with this crisis How other technical communicators responded when we asked them for their views

1. Covid-19: The future of
organisations and technical
communications
Ellis Pratt
Cherryleaf
12 May 2020

2. I hope you are all safe and
well

3. Overview
1. The impact on organisations
2. The impact on technical communication
3. What others think

4. About me

5. About me
Director at Cherryleaf, a technical
writing services and training
company
Based near London
Degree in Business Studies
20+ years in technical
communication

6. 1. The impact on
organisations

7. The impact on organisations
1. A time of rapid change
2. Big projects rapidly thrown together
3. A need to make sense of it all
4. Business models will change

8. 1.1
A time of rapid change

9. Impact on company
finances
Cash and cashflow
Cash over profits
A need to cut costs or sell assets

10. Impact on staff
People taking sick leave to recover
from COVID-19
People taking sick leave to manage
their mental health
People taking sick leave to support
relatives

11. Missing support staff
“Companies are needing to get
creative about how to replace
once reliable customer contact
centres”
https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/04/britains-call-centres-are-overwhelmed-and-overhauling-how-they-work

12. Impact on the
market
“10 years in 10 weeks”
Big changes in market share (e.g.
Zoom)
A chance to stake a claim in a
market
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

13. Impact on
customers
Anxious customers
A need for operational excellence
from businesses

14. People are looking for expertise
https://savanta.com/view/coronavirus-crisis-shows-the-real-value-in-genuine-expertise/

15. 1.2
Big projects rapidly thrown
together

17. Paycheck Protection Program

18. Big projects rapidly
thrown together
There can be unclear
communication to customers, staff
or stakeholders
There may be “grit” in the operation
of the system that needs to be
explained

19. 1.3
A need to make sense of it all

20. Ian Burbidge, The RSA
https://medium.com/@thersa/the-path-from-crisis-6d3f83c96d0b

21. Cynefin

22. Cynefin - Simple
If you do X, expect Y
There are rules in place
Define and communicate best
practice

23. Cynefin -
Complicated
There can be multiple right answers
Although there is a clear relationship
between cause and effect, not
everyone can see it
Define and communicate good
practice

24. Cynefin - Complex
The right answer is elusive
You must explore and adapt. You
must base your decision on
incomplete data
Cause and effect can only be
deduced in retrospect, and there are
no right answers
Define and communicate emergent
practice

25. Cynefin - Chaotic
Crisis time
Cause and effect are unclear, because they shift
constantly and no manageable patterns exist
Searching for right answers would be pointless
First establish order, then sense where stability
is present and from where it is absent, and then
respond by working to transform the situation
from chaos to complexity
Define and communicate novel practice
Communication needs to be direct, top-down.
There’s simply no time to ask for input

27. 1.4
Business models will change

28. Impact on industry
Review of supply chains to improve
resilience
Industry 4.0 automation?

29. Moving from an oral
to a written culture
“An oral culture has huge advantages in
that it’s fluid, easy to pick up, and
doesn’t require a lot of attention to
processes.
But it has a big disadvantage which is
that knowledge is stored inside people’s
memories, or embodied in the things
that are made in specific contexts.
This creates problems when someone
goes on holiday, and even worse when
someone leaves…”
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

30. Moving from an oral
to a written culture
“…It means people often spend time
reinventing or duplicating things that
have been invented before.
Stepping back, it often means there is
no single view of the system that the
company is operating, (which is why
so many design consultancies start
with trying to map the systems that a
company operates).”
Will Myddelton, Local Welcome
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

31. A move to digital-first operations
“The ability to adopt a digital first operational approach
and the potential conversion of back office operations
to support new digital relationships using digital technologies and
seamless integration”
Savanta report 23 April 2020
https://savanta.com/view/ask-questions-listen-and-critically-make-decisions/

32. Halifax Bank advertisement

34. Change UX patterns
to reduce anxiety?
Persuasive notifications (aka
urgency)
Sensationalism
Unpredictability
Powerlessness (eg.making refunds
links hard to find)

35. “Only 1 left”
Image: David Swallow

36. Countdown clocks

37. Does your tone need to change?
MailChimp has a disable humour option
Image: TG Founder

38. Self-service support
Replace once reliable customer
contact centres

39. Working from home
Proof it can be done
Need to retrospectively establish
controls, processes and rules for
teams working from home

40. Working from home
How do you onboard new staff?

41. So many video calls
“Zoom gloom”
Virtual interactions can be extremely
hard on the brain
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens

42. Working from home
Less need to employ locally?

43. 2. The impact on
technical communication

44. We can solve many of these business-
critical problems
1. The need for customer self-service support
2. Continuity when staff are not available
3. Reducing the number of video calls
4. Helping communicate any changes to the way the business works

45. A. The need for self-service
support

46. Self-service support
Replace once reliable customer
contact centres with…
Knowledge Bases

47. 2.1
Continuity when staff are not
available

48. Continuity when staff
are not available
Creating internal knowledge
bases/wikis
Documenting the knowledge that
normally stays in people's brains
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

49. Video walkthoughs

50. Walk me guides

51. 2.2
Reducing the number of video
calls

52. Reducing the
number of video calls
Documenting the knowledge that
normally stays in people's brains
Creating templates/style
guides/standards for people to
document the knowledge
themselves
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/customer-success/professional-services-engineering/workflows/

53. 2.4
Helping communicate any changes
to the way the business works

54. Helping communicate any changes to the way the
business works
Process flowcharts with hotspots

55. Potential issues

56. “Time to market” will be important
Your publishing toolchain

57. You’ll need to take the initiative
Show something concrete

58. 3. What others think

59. Cybersecurity
One trend I'm seeing now is the requirement for doc (or better doc)
about remote payments, as small businesses such as restaurants
switch to a take-out/delivery model to survive.
This includes the security aspects around remote payment where the
card holder is not present.
Cybersecurity is, of course, always important but sadly we're seeing
an increase in attacks, especially phishing scams, so there's a need
for comms around that.
Amanda Lindsay, Content Strategist at ONLYFORWARD LTD

60. Work From Home
We'll probably never return to the old paradigm of co-workers located in the same office
space, interacting in meeting rooms and, less formally, in the break area or on the patio.
Those interactions have long been a way for technical communicators to build collegial
relationships both with each other and with subject-matter experts.
Now, we'll need to find new ways to assert ourselves, demonstrate our value, and earn -- at
least in the eyes of the SMEs -- our place at the table.
For the introverts among us, it could be daunting. Fortunately, many of us already work with
remote teams, often in different countries and time zones.
We've learned skills for building and sustaining those working relationships without sharing
the same physical space. Now we'll need to apply those skills more often and more
intentionally.
Larry Kunz

61. Self-Support Help
Self-service help platforms would require well organized and
indexed bases of knowledge, which is something I have been
dreaming about for as long as I can remember.
Imagine if users could find answers to 90 percent of their
questions without agent assistance.
James Hanson, Content Development and Migration Expert

62. Self-Support Help
I've been blown away by the number of emails I've had from
companies imploring me to use their online help rather than
calling them.
Preaching to the choir of course!
Liz Gregory, Technical Author at tvONE Ltd

63. Self-Support Help
I am finding that off shore teams are referencing the knowledge
centre I have created to create better documentation, and are
much happier contributing to make the guidance better than they
seemed to be before COVID19
Suzanne Marshall, Lead Technical Author at Dentsu Aegis Network

64. Summary

65. There’s a “new normal” in business
A need to enable customers to support themselves
A demand for accurate, authoritative information
A need to reduce the number of video calls
A need to help communicate any changes to the way the business
works

66. Technical communicators can help
meet this need
Customer self-service support (Help, knowledge bases, video
walkthroughs)
Having the right tone (UX writing, editing)
Staff self-service support (knowledge bases, policies and procedures)
Communicating change (process flowcharts, video walkthroughs)

67. More information
Our free mini-online training
course on leadership and
communication
https://cherryleaf.teachable.com/
p/the-new-normal
Tom Johnson’s survey: The
quarantine/pandemic impact on
techcomm
https://idratherbewriting.com/blog
/quarantine-pandemic-impact-on-
tech-comm-survey/

68. www.cherryleaf.com
@ellispratt
ellis@cherryleaf.com