Chapter 4:
Technical Writing Skills for Support
Professionals
A Guide to Customer Service Skills for
the Help Desk Professional
Second Edition
Objectives
• Describe the impact of technologies such as the
Internet, e-mail, instant messaging, and
knowledge management systems on the help
desk and its customers and on the role of help
desk analyst
• Understand the most common help desk
documents used by help desks to convey
information
• Understand the characteristics of good technical
writing and use proven techniques to improve
your writing skills
A Guide to Customer Service Skills for the Help Desk Professional, 2e
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Technology-Delivered Support
• Historically, customers called the help desk
or walked in to the help desk area when they
needed assistance or information
• Today, companies are providing additional
ways for customers to obtain support
–
–
–
–
E-mail
Fax
IM
Web sites
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Technology-Delivered
Support (continued)
Technology-delivered support services
enable the help desk to:
• Anticipate and proactively meet its
customers’ needs
• Reduce the overall cost of delivering
support
• Prioritize and manage its workload better
• Ultimately, improve help desk services
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Technology-Delivered
Support (continued)
• The effective use of technologies requires that
help desks must:
– Diligently capture and deliver high-quality information
– Rethink the skills that help desk analysts must possess
– Rethink the skills and knowledge that customers must
possess
• Used effectively, technology empowers both
customers and help desk analysts
• Used improperly, technology can frustrate
everyone and can alienate customers
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Technology-Delivered
Support (continued)
• Telephone, Internet, e-mail, and IM technologies
all play a role in customer support
– Telephone and IM - Provide immediacy and the ability to
interact with a human being
– E-mail - Provides the ability to send and receive detailed
information
– Web-based services - Provide customers with the ability
to perform functions
• Help desk analysts must feel comfortable
communicating via all of these methods and must
possess or develop the different skills that each
of these technologies require
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The Help Desk Analyst’s Role in a
Technology-Centric World
• Analysts must continuously learn new technologies
and adapt those technologies to their work
• Technologies extend the help desk’s ability to gather,
organize, and use information
– Information - Data organized in a meaningful way
– Data - Raw facts not organized in a meaningful way
• Information is an extremely valuable resource
• Help desks rely on analysts to capture the highquality data needed to create accurate and useful
information
• As a result, writing skills and keyboarding proficiency
are important assets
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Enabling Customer Self-Service
• People have become accustomed to using
self-services
• Self-services - Services that enable
customers to help themselves
• Self-services benefit both customers and
help desk analysts
• Today’s demanding customers have come
to expect self-services
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Customer Support Via the Internet
• The Internet has dramatically changed the
way customers expect support services to
be delivered
• Some companies give customers access
to secured information via an extranet
• Internal help desks may enable customers
to access a Web site via their company’s
intranet
• Help desks offer many self-services via
their Web sites
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Customer Support
Via the Internet (continued)
• Functionality and ease of use are the keys to
a successful help desk Web site
• Well-designed Web sites offer customers:
– A variety of options
– The ability to obtain assistance easily when
they cannot obtain the information they need
– The ability to personalize their support
experience
• Web sites enable companies to costeffectively deliver support to their customers
24 hours a day, 7 days a week
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Customer Support
Via the Internet (continued)
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Using E-mail Effectively to
Communicate with Customers
• 93% of help desks use e-mail
• Many use primarily for internal communication
• Some companies use e-mail to:
– Inform customers about the status of outstanding
problems and requests
– Enable customers to submit problems and requests
– Automatically acknowledge that a customer’s e-mail has
been received, logged, and assigned a tracking number
– Conduct customer satisfaction surveys
– Simultaneously inform large numbers of customers
about a virus, product change, or new release that might
affect them
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Using E-mail Effectively to Communicate
with Customers (continued)
• E-mail does not provide many of the
capabilities of an incident tracking and
problem management system
– It cannot be used to automatically create trend
reports or as a knowledge base
• Help desk analysts typically log all e-mail
requests in their company’s incident tracking
and problem management system
– Including status updates
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Using E-mail Effectively to Communicate
with Customers (continued)
• Some companies use e-mail response
management systems
• E-mail response management systems:
– Enable help desks to manage high-volume
chat, e-mail, and Web form messages in much
the same way that ACDs enable help desks to
handle telephone calls
– Provide analysts the ability to search and
review customer messages and view a history
of customer activities on the support Web site
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Using E-mail Effectively to Communicate
with Customers (continued)
• Many incident tracking and problem
management systems integrate with standard
e-mail packages
– Allows automation of common tasks
• Downside of e-mail:
– Can be perceived as impersonal
– Can elongate the problem-solving process
• To minimize downsides, use common sense
and courtesy
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Using Online Chat and Instant Messaging
to Facilitate Communication
• Online chat and IM are:
– Extremely popular methods of communicating in both
personal and work settings
– Cost-effective, simultaneous ways to communicate
• Chat - A simultaneous text communication between
two or more people via a computer
• Chat room - A virtual room that provides users the
ability to converse (chat) real time with one or more
other users
• Instant messaging (IM) system – A system that
enables two or more people to communicate in real
time on the Internet
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Using Online Chat and Instant Messaging
to Facilitate Communication (continued)
• Help desks are increasingly using IM
• Many use primarily to communicate with
level two service providers
• Like e-mail, IM does not provide many of
the capabilities of an incident tracking
and problem management system
• Analysts are typically required to record
status updates obtained via IM in the help
desk’s system
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Using Online Chat and Instant Messaging
to Facilitate Communication (continued)
Factors causing companies to look more closely at
using IM to communicate with customers:
• Customers are increasingly demanding real-time
communication
• Analysts can often handle multiple conversations
simultaneously
• Companies are integrating IM into other systems
• Integrating channels enables help desks to
maximize their technological resources while
reducing the overall cost of delivering support
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Using Online Chat and Instant Messaging
to Facilitate Communication (continued)
To use IM effectively, companies must:
• Establish IM guidelines that address the cost,
legal, security, training, and management
challenges that companies face
• Spell out the types of interactions that are
appropriate for IM
• Staff this channel appropriately
• Ensure they can create a written transcript of
communications between analysts and
customers
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Using and Creating Knowledge Bases
• Few companies have the resources to:
– Re-create solutions
– Give analysts adequate training
• Analysts must help themselves by learning to
use and create online knowledge bases
• A knowledge base can be built using
sophisticated technology or it can be a
collection of books and documents
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
Knowledge resources include:
• Class notes
• Internet sites
• Online help
• Product manuals
• Incident tracking and problem
management system
• Co-workers and other service providers
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
• Expert and knowledge management systems
enable companies to:
– Consolidate knowledge resources
– Maximize their human resources
• Expert system - A computer program that stores
human knowledge in a knowledge base and has
the ability to reason about that knowledge
• Knowledge management system – A system that
combines the reasoning capability of an expert
system with other information sources, such as
databases, documents, and policies and
procedures
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
• Much of the flexibility and power of a
knowledge management system comes
from:
– The search retrieval technology that it uses
to retrieve data
– The quality of the data available
• Search criteria - The question or problem
symptom entered by a user
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
Search retrieval technologies include:
• Case-base reasoning (CBR) - A searching
technique that uses everyday language to ask
users questions and interpret their answers
• Decision tree - A branching structure of
questions and possible answers designed to
lead an analyst to a solution
• Fuzzy logic - A searching technique that
presents all possible solutions that are similar
to the search criteria, even when conflicting
information exists or no exact match is present
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
• Keyword searching - The technique of finding
indexed information by specifying a descriptive
word or phrase, called a keyword
• Query by example (QBE) - A searching technique
that uses queries, or questions, to find records
that match the specified search criteria
• Search operator – A connecting word such as
AND, OR, and NOT
“Garbage In, Garbage Out”
A Guide to Customer Service Skills for the Help Desk Professional, 2e
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
• Many incident tracking and problem management
systems have knowledge management systems builtin, or a knowledge base can be added on
• Some companies purchase and implement standalone
knowledge management systems
• Knowledge management systems can be used to:
– Record newly found solutions
– Retrieve known solutions and procedures
– Access existing knowledge bases
• Help desk analysts benefit because the information
they need is available when they need it
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Using and Creating
Knowledge Bases (continued)
• Many companies designate a knowledge base administrator
(KBA) or knowledge engineer to maintain their system
• Knowledge engineer – A person who develops and
oversees the knowledge management process and ensures
the information contained in the help desk’s knowledge
base is accurate, complete, and current
• In smaller companies, an analyst with excellent writing
skills may perform this role on a part-time basis
• Larger companies may have one or more full-time
knowledge engineers
• The knowledge engineer role is:
– Becoming increasingly important
– A highly valued position in many organizations
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Writing Help Desk Documents
• The amount of writing done by analysts varies
from company to company
• A number of documents are common
• Each document has a different audience and
purpose
• Before writing, ensure you understand the
audience’s needs and how they plan to use the
information
• The goal of help desk writing is to accurately
convey technical information in an interesting
way that can be understood by readers
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Trouble tickets:
• Typically logged electronically at the time the request
is received
• Well-written tickets provide:
– The information other analysts and service providers
need to solve problems quickly
– A historical accounting of steps taken to solve a
problem
• Analyst should clearly record:
– All of the information the customer provides
– All steps taken to diagnose and resolve the problem
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
• Most tickets are made up of two basic parts:
– Data field - An element of a database record in
which one piece of data is stored
– Text field – A field that accepts free-form
information
• Text fields are used to collect detailed information
• Many companies establish standards for how to
enter certain words or phrases into text fields
– Standards help analysts write consistently and
minimize confusion caused by inconsistent terms
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Strive to understand how the data you
collect is being used in an effort to ensure
that you are entering information as
accurately as possible!
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Accuracy is important:
• Entering inaccurate date and time data
can make tickets appear late
• Customers increasingly have the ability to
check the status of outstanding tickets
• Trouble ticket data is often automatically
forwarded to customers via e-mail
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Accuracy is important (continued):
• Trouble ticket data is used by other service
providers to diagnose and solve problems
• Trouble ticket data is used by management to:
– Create reports and analyze trends
– Justify resources and measure performance
– Fully understand your workload and your
contributions
– Identify improvement opportunities
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
E-mail Messages:
• Well-written e-mail messages:
– Are as clear and concise as possible
– Convey a positive, friendly tone
– Provide as much of the needed information as
possible the first time
Try to anticipate follow-up questions a customer
may ask and volunteer the information!
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
• Well-written answers to the most common
customer queries
• Well-written FAQs:
– State both the question and answer clearly and in a
language that is appropriate to the audience
– Use jargon and technical terms in the answers, as long
as the terms are defined for the reader
• FAQs are a basic self-service
• FAQs enable customers and co-workers to find
solutions and answers to questions on their own
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Knowledge base solutions:
• Must be accurate and complete
• Solution - A definitive, permanent resolution to a
problem, or a proven workaround
• Typically stored as records in a separate file than
trouble tickets
– Enables a one-to-many relationship
• Solutions do not:
– Describe things to attempt when diagnosing problems
or responding to inquiries
– Contain the details of a single specific problem
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
• Many help desks develop standards that describe
how to write solutions
• Standard solutions contain two types of
information:
– Fields that are used to index the solution and link it
to the type of problem being solved
– Text that describes the solution
• The description of a solution may contain links to
online documents, or a multimedia presentation
of some kind, such as a video or audio clip
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
When working in a help desk:
• Strive to use all available knowledge resources
• Contribute to the creation of your company’s
knowledge management system
• Respect the fact that your coworkers and other
service providers are just as busy as you are; look in
the knowledge base for answers to routine questions
• Seek help if you have difficulty finding solutions or
using your company’s knowledge management
system
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Reports:
• Entry-level analysts may not prepare reports but senior
analysts and managers often do
• Reports may be statistics or detailed accountings produced
from the data collected in an incident tracking and problem
management system
• Creating this type of report requires:
– Knowledge of the system
– The available data
– Knowledge of the reporting package used to pull the data out
of the system
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
• Reports may also reflect the results of a study,
the status of a project, or the analysis of statistics
• Preparing these reports requires:
– Writing skills
– An understanding of the recipient’s expectations.
• Common reports an analyst may create include:
– Progress reports
– Requirements reports
– Feasibility reports
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
• When asked to prepare a report for the first time:
– Find out exactly what is expected in terms of format and
content
– Ask to see a copy of a similar report
– Prepare an outline and ask for feedback and approval
prior to preparing actual report
– Be open to and ask for specific, constructive feedback
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Policies and procedures:
• Help desk staff are often involved in the
development of policies and procedures.
• Policies and procedures may be used by
customers, the internal support organization, or
simply within the help desk
• Procedure - A step-by-step, detailed set of
instructions that describes how to perform a task
• Many companies develop a standard format, or
template, that is used to prepare procedures
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
Well-written procedures:
• State every step explicitly
• State the result readers can expect when a task is
complete
• Let the reader know what to do if they do not get
the expected result
• May include information about what not to do
• May include detailed warnings
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
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Writing Help Desk
Documents (continued)
• Many help desks create and maintain a Help Desk
Analyst’s Guide
• A Help Desk Analyst’s Guide:
– Spells out the policies and procedures of the help desk
– Contains information analysts need to do their work
– Ensures the knowledge and experience of help desk
management and key staff members is always available
– Is often used to orient new help desk staff members
– Should be considered a “living” document
Helping to create a Analyst’s Guide is an excellent way
to practice and improve your writing skills!
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Improving Your Writing Skills
• Well-written materials are:
– Simpler to comprehend
– Provide needed information
– Leave a good impression
• Writing becomes easier with practice
• Hone writing skills by paying attention
when you are reading
• Excellent books and classes are available
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Technical Writing Best Practices
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Know your audience:
– Determine the skill and education level of the
intended readers
– Reader should understand your main ideas
– Define technical terms the first time you use them
– Strike a balance between a very simplistic writing
style and one that is highly technical
– Tip: Know how much information your reader
wants and needs
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Use the active voice
– The subject of a sentence causes or does the
action
– Our help desk analysts update our Web site every
Tuesday
• Use simple language
– Communicate more efficiently and effectively
– You can use these procedures to fix the problem
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Be concise
– The fewer words you use, the better
– Attempts to resolve this recurring problem have
not been successful
• Be specific
– Readers of technical writing seek detailed
information, such as facts, figures, data,
recommendations, and conclusions
– how good, how bad, how fast, or how slow
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Avoid or define jargon, technical terms, and
acronyms
– Use terminology that is compatible with the
readers’ technical background
– Define technical terms or acronyms the first time
you use them
– Turn up the brightness on your monitor
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Break up your writing with lists and short
sections
• Numbered sequence:
– Check the following for a blank screen
1. Is the monitor plugged in?
2. Is the monitor powered on?
• Bulleted list:
– Consider the following when establishing a help desk:
• Your company’s goals
• Your customer’s expectations
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Be consistent
– Inconsistencies cause confusion
– Once you have used a name or title, do not use a
different name or title to refer to the same thing
– A technician will be on-site tomorrow afternoon. The
technician will fix your printer and monitor.
• Use the same grammatical construction for each
item in a list
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Inconsistent
– Reasons companies establish a help desk include:
• To provide customers a single point of contact
• Minimization of support costs
• Minimize the impact of problems and changes
• Consistent
– Reasons companies establish a help desk include:
• Provide customers a single point of contact
• Minimize support costs
• Minimize the impact of problems and changes
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Technical Writing
Best Practices (continued)
• Check you work for accuracy and completeness
– People use the answers, solutions, and procedures to
do their work, use software, and operate hardware
– Ask a coworker or subject matter expert to review
complex documents for accuracy and completeness
• Check your grammar, punctuation and spelling
– Proofread every document to eliminate any errors
– When in doubt about grammar, punctuation, or spelling
rules, check a style guide or dictionary, or ask an
experienced coworker for feedback
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E-mail Best Practices
• E-mail has transitioned to a serious business
tool
• Companies are under tremendous pressure
to respond to e-mails quickly and
professionally
• E-mail absorbs a significant amount of time
during a typical work week
• E-mail is a written document and so technical
writing best practices apply
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
• Manage customer expectations
– The help desk must communicate its policies
– E-mail response times may be dictated by a
SLA
• Acknowledge the person
– Just as you would if you were interacting in
person or over the telephone
– In business, it’s best to take a formal approach
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
Use a meaningful subject line:
• A generic subject line may get
mistaken for unsolicited e-mail, or
spam
– "RE: Backing up your data (ticket
335262)"
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
Personalize your response:
• Use the customer’s name
respectfully
– Dear Ms. Boyet
– Dear Professor Levy
– Dear Rae
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
Personalize your closing:
• Use a positive tone and make it easy for the customer
to obtain assistance in the future
– "Your ticket number is 58026. Please refer to that
number if you need to contact us again concerning this
matter.
If we may be of further assistance, please contact us by
e-mail or by phone at 1-800-555-4567 between 7 a.m. and
9 p.m. Central Standard Time.
Sincerely,
Karen Dingman
Customer Support Help Desk"
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
• Be practical and be patient
– E-mail is not always the best way to communicate
– Use common sense
• Check your grammar, punctuation, and spelling
– Form and accuracy matter
– The quality of an e-mail message constitutes a “first
impression”
• Be forgiving
– When necessary:
• Simply ask for clarification or missing details
• Tactfully point out errors and offer specific suggestions
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
• Avoid lengthy discussions and debates
–
–
–
–
Limit the number of subjects in a message
Clearly distinguish a change in subjects
Consider restating your requests at the end
Verify that you have answered all of the customer’s
questions in the order they were presented
– Anticipate any additional questions the customer
may ask
– When needed, pickup the telephone or schedule a
meeting
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
• Verify your distribution lists periodically
– Make sure you’re sending messages to the
correct recipients
– Many companies provide easy ways for
customers to opt out of mailing lists and
specify their preferences
• Standardize your signature
– Include all the ways to contact the help desk
– Use the help desk’s telephone number and email address
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E-mail Best Practices (continued)
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Writing for a Global Audience
• The Internet and e-mail make it possible to
interact with customers worldwide at any time
of the day or night
• How you use expressions, dates, times, and
even numbers can confuse your customers
• Avoid idioms
• Internationalize dates, times, and numbers
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Chapter Summary
• The Internet, e-mail, and IM:
– Complement the telephone and onsite services as a way
to communicate with customers
– Extend the help desk’s ability to gather, organize, and
use information
– Enable companies to provide self-services that
customers can use to obtain the information they need,
when they need it
• Information is a valuable resource, and people with
good writing skills can capture it easily and accurately
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• In a help desk, good writing skills are needed to log
trouble tickets, send e-mail messages, develop
answers to FAQs and knowledge base solutions,
prepare reports, or prepare policies and procedures
• When preparing documents, always be aware of the
document’s target audience and purpose
• Learning the rules of writing will provide you the
foundation needed to write any document and to
make a positive impression with your writing
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Chapter Summary (continued)
• Writing improves and becomes easier with
practice
• It also helps to know the rules
– Technical writing best practices
– E-mail best practices
• In today’s digital age, good writing is quickly
becoming a critical success factor
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