Challenge
It was discovered that some customers were having trouble finding what they were looking for when using online support tools such as the forums, documentation, and knowledgebases, causing an excessive burden on the support team, who routinely had to answer tickets dealing with material that was already available to the customer. This project was meant to help reduce the menial ticket load of the support staff.
Approach
I decided to try to understand more about the problem by recruiting for and performing remote interviews with customers. Talking with the customers uncovered some issues with the way people try to use the product documentation. I then performed a competitive analysis of other product documentation systems and sketched out wireframes for improvements.
Outcome
This project uncovered underlying issues that lead to a larger effort to significantly revamp the online support system. It also served as a starting point for a large project to redesign and relaunch the Telerik product documentation.
Lessons Learned
During this project, I learned that customers were very specific with their needs when trying to find answers in the product documentation. One of the biggest challenges for me was to figure out ways to help users without them having to bounce back to search results but still optimize for the search-first frame of mind that most seemed to have.
