{"id":94,"date":"2015-05-22T22:08:48","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/?p=94"},"modified":"2015-05-27T12:41:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T12:41:08","slug":"gerry-mcgovern-key-principles-for-creating-useful-self-service-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/gerry-mcgovern-key-principles-for-creating-useful-self-service-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerry McGovern: Key Principles for Creating Useful Self-Service Content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/gerrymcgovern\" target=\"_blank\">Gerry McGovern<\/a>, founder and CEO at Customer Carewords, shares how to take better care of customers through the self-service content you provide.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>The Age of the Customer<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In recent times, there&#8217;s been a collapse in trust&#8230;along with a rise in\u00a0expectations<\/li>\n<li>Very little trust in organizations &#8212; power has shifted to customers<\/li>\n<li>Need to develop things for customers<\/li>\n<li>Web = essence of self-service<\/li>\n<li>Need to have empathy for customers and what they need to do<\/li>\n<li>Companies\u00a0are going out of business faster than ever\n<ul>\n<li>Avg. lifespan of a company in 1930: 60 years<\/li>\n<li>Today: 20 years\n<ul>\n<li>Takeaway: If you don&#8217;t put customer first, your biz won&#8217;t exist much longer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Cardinal rule for an organization: &#8220;I am not the customer&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Culture of Volume<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Old world: culture of volume\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.6471;\">Obsession with production and making more and more content<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Misguided reasoning\n<ul>\n<li>If we make more content, we will be more successful!<\/li>\n<li>Opposite is true<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>New world: outcome focused\n<ul>\n<li>Start testing things<\/li>\n<li>Identify the &#8220;old, smelly content&#8221; and do something about it<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s a driver of value to give people the right content, quickly<\/li>\n<li>Web teams should manage consumption, not production<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Case in Point: Columbia College of Chicago website<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>36,000 pages reduced to 944 pages<\/li>\n<li>Got rid of content and doubled the amount of inquiries from prospective students<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Case in Point: Norwegian Cancer\u00a0Society<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Did task analysis and switched from biz focus to customer focus<\/li>\n<li>5,000 to 1,000 pages (80% decrease)<\/li>\n<li>Results\n<ul>\n<li>70% increase in one-time donations<\/li>\n<li>88% in monthly donors registered<\/li>\n<li>164% increase in members registered<\/li>\n<li>384% increase in incoming links<\/li>\n<li>80% increase in visitors<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Self-Service (and Other) Stats<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>By 2020, the customer will manage 85% of its relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human (h\/t:\u00a0Gartner)<\/li>\n<li>33% of millenials would prefer to clean a toilet, 23% would prefer to do physical labor than call customer service<\/li>\n<li>1 million B2B salespeople in the US will lose their jobs to self-service ecommerce by 2010 (h\/t:\u00a0Forrester)<\/li>\n<li>Only 51% success rate using self-service on technology websites (h\/t:\u00a0Technoogy Services Industry Association)<\/li>\n<li>Online advertising spend going up; CTRs have crashed<\/li>\n<li>Odds of being hit by lightning: 0.03%; odds of clicking on a\u00a0banner ad: 0.04%<\/li>\n<li>Technology is not a bridge; it&#8217;s turning into a barrier<\/li>\n<li>Executive distrust of B2B vendor websites\n<ul>\n<li>Online content influences decision making: 88%<\/li>\n<li>Trust vendor websites: 9%\n<ul>\n<li>We&#8217;re creating content that people don&#8217;t trust<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>What&#8217;s the\u00a0main reason a piece\u00a0of content didn&#8217;t succeed in making a positive impression? <strong>71% say it seemed like a sales pitch\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Marketers: look at us\n<ul>\n<li>93% connect their content directly to a product or service<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Behavioral Studies<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Observe how people do things<\/li>\n<li>Only need 15-20 people to get reliable stats<\/li>\n<li>Measure the success of the most important things your customers are trying to do on your website<\/li>\n<li>Always be testing<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Real Need: A\u00a0Task Strategy<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>We shouldn&#8217;t have a mobile strategy or an experience strategy<\/li>\n<li>We should have a task strategy\n<ul>\n<li>Test for the tasks users actually want to do<\/li>\n<li>If customers can do what they need to do, we all win<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>More blog posts, auto-complete search, feature dumping &#8212; not what people want\n<ul>\n<li>They want the right answers for their questions<\/li>\n<li>We need to focus on helping people succeed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t listen to customers\n<ul>\n<li>Observe behaviors<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t just go on gut instincts\n<ul>\n<li>TEST ALL OF THE THINGS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gerry McGovern, founder and CEO at Customer Carewords, shares how to take better care of customers through the self-service content you provide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confabmn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}