Help documentation is one incredibly important aspect of any product or service in the modern world. Even though most of the companies give their best to simplify the procedures and functions of their products or services, some of them still require at least some sort of helpful information attached to them.
Most of the help documentation today is found online in forms of FAQ pages, Wikis, Help Centers. Help documentation that is compiled and arranged in this way has proven to be a great resource for both clients and corporations. One of the solutions that came from the software industry had a really big impact on how effective online help could be. This solution is, of course, context-sensitive help.
Since this is a popular and often misunderstood topic, we have decided to compile this list and share it with anyone who is wondering about the benefits of using context-sensitive help.
Enhanced User Experience
Over the past few years, user experience became the primary concern of all industries. When it comes to helping documentation it has to be immaculate in order to provide the best user experience possible, and this is where context-sensitive help comes into play.
With the ability to easily create tooltips, lightboxes, and pop-ups the entire database of help documentation can be integrated into one intuitive learning environment. What’s more important, by offering easily accessible means to get to more detailed information, the customer frustration becomes something you won’t have to worry about. At least not in regard with your online help.
Increased Ticket Deflection
Ticket deflection is a factor that has a major impact on the entire customer support department. By integrating a context-sensitive solution into your online help asset, the customers will have much higher chances to find the help they so desperately need. Of course, there is always some unpredictable situation that has to be addressed directly by customer support agents.
Only now, the customer support is not working under pressure of long queues of angry customers who demand all kinds of information. Your customer support will be able to provide quality service with an effectiveness hardly achievable before the implementation of context-sensitive help.
Cut Down Expenses
Context-sensitive help is another game changer that cuts down expenses for an organization. Since customer satisfaction is the most important business success factor, besides worker productivity, of course, many companies invest copious amounts of money in providing a top notch customer service. We are talking about agents working around-the-clock, hundreds of thousands of emails, hours and hours of phone calls and terabytes of help content.
By implementing context-sensitive help, you will be reaching to your customers in a new and more efficient way. Providing an interactive help environment that allows customers to find out what interests them and not what you think should interest them. With fewer tickets for your customer support team to respond to, fewer work hours and a dramatically decreased number of “Return an item” procedures, the expenses will plummet.
Offer More than “Just” Help
Context-sensitive help is a unique way to add more value to existing online help platform. This value comes through the utilization of tooltips, lightboxes, and popups. How is it more than “just” help? Well, since this solution is really easy to integrate throughout most of the online platforms, you can be there for a website visitor, customer or a prospect at any time.
By identifying the hotspots from previous experience, you can integrate context-sensitive help right there on the webpage. For instance, tooltips are commonly used to explain product features, policies and pricing disclaimers. So, context-sensitive help is not only providing help but providing it precisely when and where a user needs it.
Edit Help on the Go
Another great thing about context-sensitive help is how easily it is implemented and used. Basically, there is no need to rearrange or recreate any of the existing help-based content that you already have in place. This solution is entirely based on short software codes that you can paste anywhere on the website where you want help to appear.
The same goes when you want to remove it; just delete the code snippet and you will remove help from that spot. This option is really useful because it makes updating very fast and easy, removing the focus from the coding and emphasizing the help content quality.
Since the updates are very small, they can be done on live websites instantly, bringing changes that add up to the delightful experience a website offers to both prospects and existing customers.
24/7 Help Accessible from Anywhere
Context-sensitive help comes as a mobile-ready solution for your website. This means that all users, no matter what device or operating system they are using, will be able to use it and experience its benefits to the fullest. It is built respecting the latest trends of responsive design so the tooltips and light boxes automatically resize to fit the screen of any mobile or desktop device.
On top of that, once you integrate this solution with your online assets, it will always be there. This solution will also take care that the help is accessible for all your customers around-the-clock.
The benefits of using context-sensitive help have serious impact on the organization as a whole. As you can see, it has an effect on customer satisfaction rates, as well as the performance and costs of the customer service department.
Among other things, context-sensitive help can also seriously decrease onboarding time for new employees by providing the right information at the right time. This omnipotence is exactly the reason why context-sensitive help became standard in many industries, and why you should be utilizing it on your own website.
