Many businesses strive to provide the best possible customer support service and also improve corporate wiki for internal use. But when one has to manage an excessive amount of help documents that will serve numerous purposes, this process can soon become overwhelming. Help authoring software streamlines this entire process and makes it much more controllable, smoother and easier.
However, it is important to know that not all help authoring software solutions on the market are exactly the same. They differ from one another in many ways. You have to look for features that will meet your business needs and goals, so here is a list of help authoring software features that businesses can benefit from the most.
Ease of Use
First on the list is ease of use. Why is it important for business to use streamlined and user-friendly software? Easy to use help authoring software will not require an organization to spend additional funds to train employees on its use. A person can quickly get used to the tool and use it to create help manuals, wikis, product guides, software documentation etc. In fact, some vendors have developed their own solutions so that anyone can learn how to use it in several minutes, even those with no technical background.
This is achieved with a simple “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor. This will allow employees who are in charge of creating help documents to see what the documents look like in real-time before they publish them online. With the option to import existing files, such as MS Word, Flare, Robohelp, the process of creating a help document is made even faster and easier.
Mobile Compatibility
Mobile platforms have been growing at an exponential rate for quite some time now. Since we know for a fact that there are 2.32 billion smartphone users, it’s safe to say that investing in software that is not mobile-ready is not a wise choice. But how does online help authoring software that is mobile compatible benefit businesses?
Well, this factor affects your business on both ends. Mobile-ready help authoring software will enable your authoring teams to access it via any device, regardless of their current location. This means that you won’t have to invest in additional hardware, since your employees will be able to use their own devices to author help documents.
On the other hand, customers who need to access these documents online can also do it from any geographical location and any mobile device. Responsive design will ensure that the quality and layout of your help documents stays intact on screens of all shapes and sizes.
Analytics and Reporting
It is important to understand that creating help documents and publishing them is not a one-time job. They have to be constantly updated, optimized and improved so that they can stay relevant and serve their purpose – ticket deflection and better customer support. But how will you know which documents are good and useful and which ones are causing even more frustration in your customers?
The answer lies in the powerful synergy of analytics, reporting and search features. Using online help authoring software with all three of these features will put you in a position to reap many benefits. You will be able to identify the documents that are causing people to bounce off your website and improve them.
Also, you will be able to see what people are searching for and what they are finding or not finding, so that you can add new content accordingly. By having insight into what the customers or employees are reading more often, you are able to feature these help documents on the front page of your help center.
Adaptive Layout Templates
In the best scenario, any business would like to have help documents that go along with its branding strategy. We are not talking only about the tone used to write the help documents, but also the colors and layout of help documentation.
It is important to know that maintaining brand consistency also extends to help documentation. This is why it is important to identify the help authoring software solutions that enable businesses to create both informative and aesthetically pleasing help documentation.
The best ones will come with many ready templates that you can immediately use to create help documentation, and with the support to fully customize those templates and provide the desired experience for your customers or employees.
Some vendors have implemented features to allow you to fully customize headers, colors, fonts and even logos. And if you have some experience with CSS, you can even completely change the design.
Integration
The primary purpose of help authoring tools is to enable you to quickly create help documents. But did you know that the latest online help authoring software solutions on the market will also allow you to integrate it with other software you are already using or might start using.
There are several different integrations these tools can offer. You can easily add a survey to get valuable feedback, but you can extend this integration even further. For instance, you can set it to capture feedback and communicate it to the CRM software.
Help authoring software can also be integrated with live chat software so that you can capture more customer details and improve your email marketing efforts. The bottom line is, these tools are not just for help authoring, but are also a tool that helps businesses generate leads and capture feedback. This is why it is important to look for integration potential of the software you are buying.
It is important to find help authoring software that is very simple to use, but at the same time provides great functionality. This functionality depends on the features that we have listed above. This is why it is best to take a closer look at each vendor’s solution and determine whose software has all the features your business needs. Since online help authoring software is an extension of knowledge base software, make sure to also check the features of a vendor’s knowledge base software solution.
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