Focus On SDL
Customer Engagement Strategies
A Paradigm Shift for Technical Documentation
Most organizations already have a market segmentation and product categorization available, which is a good starting point for the development of a CECM. The good news is that the whole model does not have to be developed right away. Most organizations can immediately take advantage of their product categorizations even if the whole CECM is not complete. In fact, we regard this step-by-step approach to the CECM as a best practice for the adoption of a next-generation customer experience. Often the hardest part of the CECM is the development of personas which can be used for enriching the content. A growing number of organizations, however, are already developing personas for their product development and marketing activities. The writers of technical information can often appropriate or adapt these already existing personas.
Consider this example of a CECM: Suppose a large computing company manufactures printers. These printers are sold into different markets: home/home office and business. Within each of these markets, the printers are further segmented. There are black & white printers and color printers. There are also variations called “all-in-one” printers that include other functions such as fax and scanning. Some printers come with special features for photo printing. Others have Bluetooth functionality. The list can go on and on. Each of these segmentations becomes the basis for enriching the content.
When part, or all, of the CECM is ready, it can be applied to the content. The content can be enriched in several different ways. DITA itself provides a mechanism for adding conditions to the content that can turn content on and off depending on context. DITA conditions by themselves are usually not rich enough for this next generation customer experience. Therefore, content has to be enriched in other ways such as through the use of metadata or with advanced condition-management features offered by some component content management systems like SDL Trisoft. Content can be enriched at the time of writing or through automation processes as content is converted into topic form.
To manage this enriched DITA content, an organization needs a technology infrastructure that can evoke a content-assembly process on the fly in response to inputs from the customer or customer-driven triggers. To do this properly, the enterprise needs a key technology component that links the DITA technology to the Web technology. We call this category of technology “smart content assembly and delivery.”
It should not be surprising that a new kind of technology is needed to achieve this goal of next-generation customer experience. After
all, the Web experience called for a new set of management systems that are loosely grouped as Web content management systems. As the community moving into DITA is realizing, the management of DITA content is complex, requiring its own specialized systems. This next-generation customer experience requires a new kind of application as well. The application has to mediate between the world of the Web and the customer, and the world of documentation and DITA. Essentially, the application provides an intelligent mechanism to receive input or triggers from the customer or content consumer, and determine which of the content to serve up. To be “smart,” it must not serve up a static page, but rather respond based on input, and then serve up the relevant DITA content.
To return to our printer example, if the customer who visits the website clicks on the AIO Printer 930 and selects photo printing, the very procedures and information should change to reflect that specific printer. Or suppose a customer is using a product that doesn’t have Bluetooth, they should not have to see Bluetooth-specific content. The smart content assembly and delivery engine can take input from the customer and match that to content that is written in DITA, conditionalized with variations, and enriched with metadata. This is a new category of application in the market that bridges the world of the Web and the world of the technical writer.
SDL’s Structured Content Technologies division has developed a best practices methodology and technology framework for moving companies into DITA and this next-generation customer experience. For information about this methodology, please inquire at http://www.xml@sdl.com.
SDL’s Structured Content Technologies division is a worldwide leader in Component Content Management and Dynamic Publishing software. Leveraging XML standards such as DITA and S1000D, the division’s suite of products empower global companies to efficiently create, share, manage and publish technical information that is up to date and tailored to the interests of their global customers.
SDL Structured Content Technologies Division
101 Edgewater Drive
Wakefield MA 01880-1296
PH: 781.756.4400
FAX: 781.756.4330
Contact: xml@sdl.com
Web: www.sdl.com/xml