Re: Ques: Free User Hotline as Educational Tool?

[Regina Schwarz <regina_schwarz -at- BBN -dot- HP -dot- COM>]

(
Thanks Sella for your feedback. Let me answer your questions:

>1. Quality Control: I'd bet that most companies would feel >uncomfortable about sanctioning documentation from someone outside the >company.  At the very least, they would feel the need to review it and >make sure it is accurate. <snip>

Yes, of course. I don't think anyone expects the companies to use the
students revision as is. I think the idea is that the companies use this
as feedback. It also allows the companies to spot talented students for
an internship. Here in Germany, internships are very common. They're
called 'Azubi's' (for 'Auszubilderne' = trainee).

>2.  Ego.  My documentation is perfect.  I sure don't want a bunch of
>students digging into my user guides and telling me where I went wrong >and rewriting me. <snip>

We all feel that way. However, there was at least one user who didn't
understand the documentation & felt desperate enough to call the free
hotline. I don't like my work to be criticized, but I do know that my
work is *not* perfect. Therefore I do want feedback. In fact, in my
current job, I often searched the troubleshooting database, *looking*
for complaints about my documenation. I want to make my documentation
better. Complaints/suggestions about my documentation give me specific
areas to focus on.

>3.  I'm not really convinced that the company is getting valuable >feedback for no effort.  If the customer needs help, they call tech >support and ask their question.

Here I disagree. If tech support was so accessible & helpful, do you
think that the user would have made a long-distance call to the free
user hotline? When was the last time that you called tech support? This
is of course assuming that you know *where* to call. These users are
trying to find the answer to a specific question. My guess is that the
users called the free user hotline because either (a) they didn't know
where to call, or (b) they didn't get the answer they needed.

The students use text and flow charts to document their attempts to
obtain the answer from the company. In some cases, it has taken 4 phone
calls to get the answer, with each call involving several employees! If
I ran this company, I would sure want to know about a problem like this.
(BTW: In Germany, toll-free numbers are not as common as in the US, and
even local calls are charged by connection time. So, finding
the answer can be expensive.)

>4.  When users need help with a software product, isn't it usually true >that they are trying to do something specific, and they need to be told >the solution right then?  So, it is less likely that they would want to >wait around for some revised documentation when they can call the >company's tech support and get an answer right away <snip>.

You're right (see ques #3 above). The students notify the user right
away with the answer. In fact, one case involved an elderly woman who
had to turn on her lights because she couldn't get her electric window
shutters to open again. In this case, they went went to her home &
helped her :-)

>Sorry to be such a wet blanket.  Let us know how things work out.

>(I still think a valuable job for student tech writers is to write
>documentation for share/freeware.  Here they're meeting a *real* need,
>because the developers so often write the help themselves.)

Good idea. I'll forward your idea to them.

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