Customizations in End-User Documentation

Once upon a time, there was a need for a user guide. The user guide was written and, because it made sense to the technical writer at the time, the technical support phone number was included. Over time, as additional customers began to use the user guide, their technical support phone number was included.

Then an additional customer - I'll call the customer "Customer A" for the sake of anonymity - looked at this list of technical support phone numbers and stated, "We do not want our users to see other customer support numbers in the user guide." The solution was to create a client-specific version of the user guide.

At this point in the story, there are two versions of the user guide:

1. a "base" version that has a list of technical support phone numbers
2. Customer A's version that only has their technical support phone number

The number of customers using the user guide increased and, with every additional customer, their  technical support phone number was added to the list.

Then an additional customer - I'll call the customer "Customer B" for the sake of anonymity - looked at this list of technical support phone numbers and stated, "We do not want our users to see other customer support numbers in the user guide." The solution was to create a client-specific version of the user guide.

At this point in the story, there are three versions of the user guide:

1. a "base" version that has a list of technical support phone numbers
2. Customer A's version that only has their technical support phone number
3. Customer B's version that only has their technical support phone number

The number of customers using the user guide increased and, with every additional customer, their  technical support phone number was added to the list.

Then an additional customer - I'll call the customer "Customer C" for the sake of anonymity - looked at this list of technical support phone numbers and stated, "We do not want our users to see other customer support numbers in the user guide." Since Customer C knows we have created a version of the user guide for Customer A and a version of the user guide for Customer B, their solution is to create a client-specific version of the user guide for them.

The moral of the story?

Write software that is bug free so that the customer doesn't need to use a technical support phone number.