A couple of weeks ago, I had ordered an English-language magazine on Blinkit. However, (perhaps due to unavailability) they decided to send me a different language edition, which I then returned. When this happened a second time, my frustration had reached its peak. Here’s an example of the empathy demonstrated by Blinkit support staff (Or is it AI? Anyway a thought for another day!)
Nicely handled, Blinkit, albeit a bit repetitive.
They apologised profusely and made me feel that they understood my disappointment and wanted to truly help me. That’s exactly what empathy is.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. It means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to see things from their perspective.
Usually, this is a key quality that support staff demonstrate (as seen above). But I believe it is also extremely important for a tech writer!
Many people think tech writing is just stringing together a bunch of words. Copy-paste content from the product spec, slap a couple of screenshots, format the document a bit to make it look pretty, and it is done. However, they couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Tech writing is about understanding the user’s journey, frustrations, and needs and then creating content that meets their requirements, and enables them to achieve their goals.
And that’s where empathy comes in.
Let me give a simple example. A technical writer has documented an API. The authentication information is available, the endpoint and methods are listed, and sample codes and parameter descriptions are present. However, there are two issues:
- Mandatory fields have not been called out distinctly in the request parameters.
Impact: A developer using this API documentation is surely going to be in a fix. They would have to do trial and error to figure out which parameters are actually necessary and which are optional.
- Error and troubleshooting information is missing.
Impact: If something goes wrong, the developer will need to contact the official support team or review community forum discussion threads to find a solution.
These are things that seem small but often have a huge impact on user experience.
How Does Being Empathetic Help?
- Creation of User-Centric Content
By learning about the needs of the user better, we can create content that truly delights them. In technical communication, we usually cater to a mixed audience – we have the product/concept veterans, while some are still beginners. In such cases, we should ensure that the content is comprehensible for all audience types. For instance, if we’re creating a user guide for a very technical product, perhaps having a glossary would enable audiences with different skill levels to easily grasp concepts. Another example would be to add analogies that would help users easily relate to concepts and understand them. - Improves Content Usability
Not all users are built the same. Some do not mind reading through reams of pages while some want to read an FAQ to get answers quickly. Let’s take the example of long procedural documentation. Doing a particular task takes a gazillion steps and the document is a very long scroll. The user might feel lost in the mountain of content presented to them. Perhaps, in this situation, a video guide would be a welcome addition.P.S. Whatever you do, just don’t write a manual like this.
- Anticipate User Concerns
How many times have we received strange error codes on our screens while trying some tools? Of course, we are all too familiar with 404, but there are some errors that are incomprehensible.
Users could also encounter such errors, right? During the guide’s creation, we can proactively add troubleshooting tips and error codes with reassuring information that would resolve the user’s issue.
How Can Tech Writers Become Empathetic?
Empathy can be learned and developed over time. To better understand our users and their needs, we can take the following steps.
- Conducting user research: The best way to learn about your users is to talk to them. At Razorpay, we deeply believe in talking to our audience and getting their insights. We participate in user interviews and also ask external folks to try our products, read our documents, and provide feedback.
- Analysing user feedback: While it might not always be possible to conduct user interviews, we can definitely deep-dive into the audience feedback on docs pages. Many sites have integrated feedback modules that route user insights directly to writers. By digging into this gold mine, we can definitely derive opportunities to improve our content.
- Actually stepping into users’ shoes: Have you heard of the term dogfooding? Dogfooding refers to the practice of an organisation using its own products or services. Writers can personally use their documentation to see how accurate and complete the information is. If they’re already familiar with the product or service, they can try to approach the documentation with the mindset of a new user with minimal prior knowledge. This provides valuable insights from the user’s perspective.
Conclusion
Empathy is not just a nice-to-have skill for technical writers; it’s essential for creating user-friendly documentation. By understanding and considering user’s needs and feelings, empathetic writers can produce content that is clear, helpful, and supportive. This focus on the user leads to higher satisfaction, fewer support issues, and a better overall experience with the product.
