#46 - Creating Better Help Content with Andrew Sandler, Director of Innovation at Adobe

When Andrew joined Adobe back in November, he faced an interesting design challenge. How do you manage a vast library of help content, spanning tons of different products in different industries, so that users can easily find what they need to know to fix their problems? Andrew has learned a lot about leveraging the power of community to problem solve, experimenting with different formats to make technical explanations more accessible, and proving the value of great help content.

Erin and JH chatted with him about how he positions help content to stakeholders, tackles creating content for products that have evolved from box software to the cloud, and uses research to focus on the right things at the right time.

Highlights

• [1:43] Great product doesn't need as much help content, but people will always need help, and the more powerful your product is, the more help they will need.
• [8:53] By connecting customers with the right information through communities, they're 3x less likely to reach out to support for help.
• [10:59] Early engagement = better retention, so Adobe segments out its customers to focus on what gets them started.
• [13:35] Adobe has segments and chapters to keep everyone on the same page and communicating well.
• [25:20] People who get value from help content actually end up having a higher lifetime value. It's all about trust and mutual respect.
• [27:41] How Adobe creates help content for different languages and cultures.
• [32:09] How Andrew is thinking about simplifying solutions, and making help content work smarter, not harder
• [37:58] Help content and product can work together to create even better solutions for users.
• [39:32] Quantitative information can tell you what some of the issues are, while qualitative can help your team dig deeper into why they're there
• [43:03] Building out recommendations for other things you may be looking for helps your help content build a story for the user.