| Authors: | Kevin Hale |
|---|---|
| Time: | 14:40 |
| Session: | http://docs.writethedocs.org/en/2013/conference/talks.html#kevin-hale |
| Link: | @ilikevests |
| Link: | https://speakerdeck.com/roundedbygravity/how-i-got-everyone-to-write-the-documentation |
| Video: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRCq-AvYmU |
Hale is from Survey Monkey, and founded Wufoo. It’s web-based Microsoft Access, that looks like it’s designed by Fischer-Price. Acquired by SurveyMonkey in 20XX, returning 29,561% profit to investors. The team was about 10 people whne acquired, and everyone wrote documentation. They did this because they were all required to do customer support.
They did this through the company culture. They were fanatical about creating relationships with their customers, treating new users like they were dating, and existing users like a marriage, applying the best science they could find about these topics. When it comes to dating, first impressions matter. Tolerance for surface issues like picking your nose (especially compared to when you’ve been married for years) is very, very low. By focusing on the interactions (upgrade triggers, login CTAs, etc) you can draw users in. [Lots of very visual examples; really, really engaging.] When Wufoo launched their API (and the documentation for it), they held a
John Gottman does research about marriages. He can watch a 15 minute video of a couple fighting about something, he can predict the survival of the relationship at 4 years with 85% accuracy. When 1 hour of observation, his accuracy goes up to 94%. What Gottman has found is that everyone fights. Money, kids, sex, time, others, jealousy, and in-laws. In marriage, divorce is the equivalent of churn. Users and companies don’t complain about kids and sex, they complain about cost/building, users’ clients, performance, roadmap, etc. In the typical freemium funnel, you have this funnel. Support is what happens between the stages of the funnel.
Software engineers and developers are divorced from the consequences of their decisions. Before launch you’re solely focused on building software. After launch, that pie gets split up into support, hiring, crap, and more crap, and the people doing the building/engineering are no longer part of the feedback loop.
Wufoo wanted a culture of
They started doing Support Driven Development. They wanted to build software that was better and of a higher quality when it goes out the door. So everyone does customer support. What happens when you make everyone responsible for customer every week? When they’re in a feedback loop where they feel the consequences of their engineering decisions? They all become incredibly invested in making a great product.
Support responsible developers and designers give the best customer support. Kayak founds this, too: they installed a phone in the engineering department. You’re not paying them to answer the phone, you’re paying to motivate them to fix things.
Even the accountant wrote docs, and came up with making the charge name was “wufoo.com/charge”, which explained things.
Support responsible developers and designers create better software. Studies back this up; cites a study by Jared Spool that correlates increased direct exposure to the customer (at least two hours every six weeks) with better software. Wufoo engineers had six to eight hours per week. And landed a spot on Neilsen’s list of best web application UIs, along with companies that had way more money and people.
Support responsible developers and designers respect the front lines doing customer support. When they finally hired a real (full-time) support person, they were the most revered member of the team.
Finally, relationships atrophy. Gottman saw that some couples broke up in four years, and he could predict that very accurately. Others went ten, fifteen years, and then the kids went to college and they went away, and then the relationship died. Relationships follow the second law of thermodynamics. Wufoo puts energy back into the relationship with their customers by blogging, writing email newsletters, and also doing an internal alert. For an engineer, the internal alert is the most valuable piece of real estate at Wufoo. To get there, the engineer has to write the docs.
Wufoo also made sure people were saying Thank You to the people writing the docs. So every week they write thank-you notes to their customers. [Wow, this is amazing.] They’re not fancy, they’re cardboard cards with dinosaur stickers on them that a developer or accountant or the CEO writes a heartfelt thank you on. THAT puts energy into the relationship.