Why hire a technical communicator?
If you've never employed a technical communicator before, you might wonder what value a technical communicator can add to your business. A good technical writer saves your business money by:
- reducing the number of calls to your Help Desk.
- reducing product returns.
If your customers have a manual, there's a chance that some of them will look up the answers in the manual instead of calling you every time something goes wrong. This saves you time, trouble and money. Not all customers ring up when the going gets tough - some simply pack the product up, bring it back and demand a refund. If you're really unlucky, they then go and tell all their friends how bad the product is.
Of course, the reverse is also true. If a product is user friendly and well supported, people buy it and tell other people to buy it. For example, Microsoft. All jokes aside, before Windows came along, word processing was fiddly and complex. Operators had to remember lists of codes to format their text, and couldn't see the formatting until they'd printed it out. Then along came Windows with its easy to use graphic interface and a comprehensive online help file. Within a few years, Microsoft had cornered the market (and set a new standard for online help at the same time).
A good technical communicator can also help your productivity. Many businesses have difficulty employing and managing staff. The employee doesn't know how things are done, and the employer ends up spending as much time supervising the employee as they would doing the job themselves. A well-written procedural manual can double as a training package and an induction kit. It tells your employees how things are done, where things are found and who to ask for help when things go wrong. This helps your business to present a consistent, professional face to your customers. It may also help with insurance and legal liability, for example if one of your employees hurts themselves doing something that the procedures manual specifically tells them not to do.