S3E7: Documentation is your Frontline Defense - Find Out How with Caity Cronkhite

Have you ever thought of documentation being sexy? Probably not. Caity Cronkhite argues otherwise. She wholeheartedly believes documentation is sexy. She shares excellent advice for companies and writers to embrace this low-hanging fruit that can get excellent dividends if executed correctly.

What did our conversation touch upon?

• Caity's journey from a writer to an entrepreneur.
• How did Caity scale her entrepreneurial adventure while taking other writers with her?
• When the market gets tough, Good Words keeps growing. How is that possible?
• What is the measure of good and stable documentation? 
• How does good documentation allow companies to scale?
• How is documentation doing the frontline work for you?
• Why should writers unapologetically earn their seats at the table? 

Guest Bio

About the founder:  Caity was born and raised on a remote farm in rural Indiana. She eventually left her prairie roots to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where she received a degree in Technical Writing and Communication. After college, Caity went west—first to the San Francisco Bay Area, then to Seattle—to start her career as a technical writer and, eventually, an entrepreneur. She is passionate about using her personal and professional experience to uplift others, including advocating for increased labor and wage protections for freelance workers and creating a company that empowers its employees with meaningful career opportunities no matter where they live.

Caity currently lives in Seattle, Washington. When she’s not running her company, she enjoys gardening, bodybuilding, road trips, mentoring, and restoring her historic Seattle home.

About the business: Caity Cronkhite is the founder and CEO of Good Words LLC. Good Words is the premier technical writing and communications consulting firm, delivering ongoing strategic, management, and implementation support for our clients’ technical writing needs. Good Words’ consultants bring their concise and accurate writing skills and ongoing strategic plans to streamline even the most complex communications for some of the most technically sophisticated companies across industries, from Fortune 500 companies to 5-person startups. For more information, visit us at www.goodwordswriting.com.

Some resources worth checking out:

• The Good Words Blog: https://goodwordswriting.com/blog/
• Our website: https://goodwordswriting.com/
• Our LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/good-words-llc/

Audio Engineer - RJ Basilio

Transcript

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 0:04

Hello, listeners. Welcome to Inside Tech Comm with your host Zohra Mutabanna. In season three, we shift our focus to shed light on why Technical Communication is a core business asset. In this regard, we will speak with guests who are our stakeholders, such as product managers, marketing professionals, UX designers, QA and customer support, who engage with writers to create a seamless experience for the customer and meet business goals together. Let's get started. Our guest today is Caity Cronkhite. Caity is the founder and CEO of Good Words, LLC. Good Words is the premier technical writing and communications consulting firm. Her company delivers ongoing strategic management and implementation support for clients' technical writing needs, Caity's company has worked with technically sophisticated fortune 500 companies to five person startups. Hi, Caity. So glad to have you here. How are you doing today?

Caity Cronkhite: 1:10

Thanks, Zohra. Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 1:14

Awesome. And I'm equally excited to be talking to you. Really humbled to have you on my show.

Caity Cronkhite: 1:19

I appreciate it. Thank you, likewise.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 1:21

So Caity please tell us about yourself.

Caity Cronkhite: 1:24

Totally. Well, as you said, I am currently the founder and CEO of Good words, LLC. And as you said, we are a technical writing and communications consulting firm serving all kinds of clients mostly in high tech industries. So everything from software,new programming languages, cryptocurrency and blockchain, finance and fintech and aerospace and everything in between. So I actually started my career as a technical writer, myself. I got a degree in technical writing and communications from Carnegie Mellon University. And so I started my career as a technical writer working for various enterprise technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. And my career took several interesting turns. And I eventually started my own freelance business, after a few years in the industry, and my freelance business actually turned into good words, my current company. So now we have a staff of about 20 technical writers who work on projects for our clients, and just really excited to work with so many great writers every day who are working on some of the world's most interesting technology.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 2:39

That's fantastic. I don't believe I have run into writers who have become consultants. So this is a great opportunity for me to pick your brains, and to understand what that journey was like transitioning from a, an individual contributor to an entrepreneur.

Caity Cronkhite: 2:56

Absolutely.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 2:57

So how long ago did you start the company?

Caity Cronkhite: 3:00

So I started freelancing in 2015, and I actually incorporated the company in 2017. But the company definitely grew out of my own freelance work.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 3:11

That's fantastic. That's amazing. So how was that journey like?

Caity Cronkhite: 3:13

It was really fun and really interesting. So the way it started was in 2015, I was actually working as a full time solo technical writer at a drone startup in San Francisco. And unfortunately, that startup started to go the way of the startup. They were running out of money and had gone through a couple of rounds of layoffs, which is unfortunate. But it became pretty clear to me at that time that I needed to start looking for something else. And before I had taken that role, I had worked in several large enterprise Technical Writing teams. And so I started looking for new career options. Initially, I was just looking to take on another technical writing role at another company. But as I was looking around, I was mostly finding roles that were very similar to what I had already done. And I wasn't finding a lot of opportunities that really inspired me or that I felt were going to help me grow in my career. So I had considered for a while trying freelance projects or consulting or contract work, and at that point, I basically just didn't have any better ideas. And and I thought, you know, why not? Why not try it now. So I took my first freelance project, which was a small part time freelance technical writing project for Airbus. And I was actually working on new designs for commercial airliners, which was really interesting. And I was just trying it out. I just wanted to see you know, if it might be a good fit for me, and I wasn't sure. But after that first project, I was totally hooked. And I'm lucky in that technical writing actually translated really well into a sustainable freelance career. So I got to work on lots of interesting projects and for lots of interesting clients as a freelancer so I worked on everything from, like I said commercial airliners to new experimental blockchain projects. And at a certain point, I had too much work. And I had too many clients and I had too many interesting things to work on. And so I sort of hit this fork in the road at that point where I could either turn down some of those projects that I didn't have time to take on, or I had the opportunity to bring on another writer to my team to kind of help take on some of those projects that I didn't have time for. And I just kind of went for it and decided to hire a couple of writers that I had worked with previously in my career. And that was sort of the birth of Good Words. And since then, we've grown, like I said, to about 20 writers, working for clients in a variety of technical industries, you know, all across the US. So that's been really exciting.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 5:53

That's awesome. That's impressive, actually. So it's not, it's not really that long since you started.

Caity Cronkhite: 5:59

It really hasn't. But there is definitely a marketplace for this kind of work. I mean, people Technical Writing is a niche market. And it's hard for companies and clients to find people who are well versed in this industry, and who know the industry standards and best practices. So it's been a really fortunate niche for me to be in in my career.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 6:24

That's awesome. So when you said a couple of things that I think I would like to ask, one is, are these writers full time with you now?

Caity Cronkhite: 6:32

So we have a flexible work model. So most of our writers are full time, they do opt to work 40 hours a week, but we also have plenty of writers on our staff who are halftime or part time or who work on multiple projects at once. So we'd like to be really flexible with our consultants, one of the reasons why I started the company and one of our values actually is flexible work. And one of the reasons why I started the company was because I wanted to make freelancing, the joy of freelancing, that I got from my own freelance days, more accessible to more people. Jumping into a freelance career can be kind of scary for a lot of people, you know. Everyone has the same questions of well, how do I get insurance? How do I know how much to charge? How do I pay for my vacations. And so what we try to do is we try we call Good Words a soft place for freelancers to land. We like to make the joys of freelancing more accessible to more people and also give them more support than they would normally get at a normal freelancing environment.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 7:37

I love that. Because I have sort of wondered, what would it be like if I had to freelance, if I had to pivot and go independent on contract or something? And I've it's always been an intimidating thought for me. To know that you have done it and, with such success, it speaks volumes, I suppose. So congratulations on that success, of course.

Caity Cronkhite: 7:59

Thank you.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 8:02

Awesome. You mentioned that technical writing is a niche field, which is true, it is a very niche field. So now, did you have clients? it appears that when you started this business, this consulting business, you had more work than you could handle by yourself?

Caity Cronkhite: 8:17

Yes.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 8:18

Which is a great thing.

Caity Cronkhite: 8:19

Yeah, definitely a good problem to have.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 8:21

It's a good problem to have. Now, as your business has grown over time, and you've grown your team, do you still have that same, I guess, that same interest where you know, you're getting that business? Like, even with all the ups and downs that we've seen in the economy in the past few years?

Caity Cronkhite: 8:40

Oh, yeah, definitely, it's been a really interesting time to be supporting our clients. So I would say that in I mean, we have also seen those ups and downs. Certainly, I would say that we are kind of in a unique position, because we're consultants. And because we work on a contract basis that we actually tend to get more work. And we tend to get busier when clients are or when there's a more difficult kind of economic time going on in the marketplace. So, for example, right now, several of our clients are really nervous about having to implement hiring freezes, or perhaps cut down on full time employees. But because of that, they tend to turn to their vendors and to consultants to take on more work on a more temporary basis. So for better or worse, it actually tends to help our business a little bit, it tends to bring a little more work our way, which is always kind of an interesting shift from the rest of the marketplace.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 9:40

That's interesting. I wouldn't have expected to hear that. That's good that when the times are gonna get tough, your business hopefully becomes more secure, in the sense that companies kind of become more reliant on you.

Caity Cronkhite: 9:55

Yeah, and it's, we like to be able to be a trusted resource. and partner for our clients who are going through this difficult time. I mean, it's very hard to have to make decisions to either lay people off or to cut back on full time hiring. But one of the things I always try to encourage my clients to think about is documentation and technical writing can really help your company stay stable and scale during times of change. So, you know, we appreciate our clients who, who stick with us, and we try to be as helpful resource during difficult times as we possibly can.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 10:32

It is sad, oh, when the layoffs happen, no doubt. But at the same time, I believe the flip side of that is, those who are freelancers, it's a good opportunity for them to sort of take ownership of where your career is going and probably join you. So that if they've been laid off, then they can have this source of income.

Caity Cronkhite: 10:50

Yes, definitely. And I actually encourage writers who are interested in possibly in trying contracting or freelancing that don't be afraid of the downturns, because those actually tend to help contract, consulting and freelance workers just in terms of there tends to be more work available, a wider variety of work, a bigger demand for people to work on a consulting and contract bases. So it actually could be a really good time to explore that as a career option for people who are interested in it.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 11:20

Fantastic. Now, you mentioned something very interesting, or at least I think it is very interesting is that when there is the sort of a downturn that happens, you tried to convince companies to sort of create stable documentation. Is that right?

Caity Cronkhite: 11:36

Yeah, it's part of what I said, the message I tried to give to all of our clients is that good documentation, well maintained documentation can help your company scale, and can help your company be more stable during times of change, whether that's times of growth, or, you know, times of layoffs, or anything in between.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 11:58

I want to dig into that. Yes. What does that mean, in your, in your opinion? What does that mean, you know, when you say, it allows you to scale? How do you pitch that to a client. And I have seen where many companies are not convinced about documentation, or they don't see the value that documentation sort of brings to the bottom line, the very fact that you said that it allows you to scale? Please tell me, what does that mean? How do you do it? I really want to know more about that.

Caity Cronkhite: 12:28

Totally, totally. And I would say that I You have given me so much of information there. have had the same experience that you have had. In talking to dozens and dozens of clients over the years that I've had my business, the perception of documentation, by most people tends to be that documentation is boring, is a burden on the business. It is something that they have to do for compliance reasons or whatever, but no one wants to do it. So it's usually an afterthought, in most companies and in most businesses, but I try to help them see the immense opportunity that lies in documentation. And it comes from a number of places. So the first is that documentation is a customer support tool, first and foremost. So your customers and your clients want to go to documentation first to solve their own problems. Usually, they usually want an easy to use self-service option to answer their questions. And, you know, we've worked, for example, with several startup clients, who have put documentation on the back burner and haven't invested in it. And then they come to us because they lose a critical deal. Or they lose a critical customer, because they didn't have their product documented well. And their customer or their prospect went with another company whose product was maybe just as good but better documented, that's something that I really advise my clients to consider is how can you use documentation to engender trust in your product, and also help advance the sales process? Sometimes documentation can be an effective sales tool, if you use it that way. Most people don't think about doing that. But I have seen it be quite effective in a couple of my clients conversations with our prospects. In addition, you know, most of these companies that aren't investing in technical writers to actually work on their documentation, you know, some of our clients will come to us and maybe they even have some documentation already. But usually, it's been written by engineers, or by product people. It's usually out of date. It's usually been written by someone within the company who didn't really have time to do it in the first place and didn't have the training to do it and certainly doesn't want to maintain it going forward. And then I always try to encourage our clients and our prospects to do a cost benefit analysis, you know, really think about how much money are you already spending to write documentation that isn't any good and isn't serving anyone. So for example, you know, a really easy example is, you know, if your engineers are spending five hours a week contributing to the documentation, one, that documentation probably isn't going to be very good, because they're not writers. And they, they don't do this for a living, they don't know the best practices in industry standards. But number two, an engineer is a highly trained, highly paid, and revenue generating employees. So every time you ask an engineer or a PM, or someone in your executive or VP team, to contribute to the documentation, you're actually incurring a huge hidden cost, there, you are getting a product that's not as good as something you would get with a professional writer. And you are taking those people away from their critical revenue generating roles and functions within your company. So I think that those are some things that most people don't think about when they think about documentation and how it can work for them in their company. And the last thing I will say about how documentation can help you scale and help impact your bottom line is companies without documentation often rely on customer support people, or professional services, implementation teams, to provide support for their products, those roles, and those functions That that was a lot. I am sorry. are incredibly expensive. There was a report that I read some

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 16:42

No, no, that is great. If I had to pick time ago, I don't know if I can find it. But it struck me because it said that every time a customer picks up the phone to talk to a customer support representative, depending on your product and the technical complexity of it, those calls cost anywhere between 50 and$500. apiece. So if your customers are picking up the phone, and calling you with the same problems over and over and over, then you're just spending money to try to support those people with those issues. When you know, it's entirely possible that maybe a couple of good, well placed topics or documentation pieces can help them resolve those problems on their own. For a much lower cost. apart all of that, I would probably have a lot of questions. But I was taking notes as we were talking about it. I think, like you said, you know, the perception of documentation is everything that you said, you know, it's boring, it's, it's an afterthought. I think, in many places that is true, it is looked at as an afterthought, which is so sad. And I would like to share this, you know, as you were talking about scaling, I was with this company where they were working with a prospect and the client was not willing to sign until they had seen what the documentation looks like, which was empowering in a way. But the team, the leadership also invested that time in making sure that the documentation was of quality.

Caity Cronkhite: 18:19

Yeah, that's amazing.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 18:21

So those stories are probably far and few. I worked at several companies. And out of the many companies that I have worked at this was probably one of those few companies where the customer wanted to see documentation and it was a 3 million deal. $3 million that was banking on it. And we had to provide that documentation. And they were like, is it going to be as detailed as this because the product was still, it was a pilot. So the customer wanted to be convinced that it is going to be as detailed as what they're seeing for an existing product. So they will really invested. So the company was invested, the customer was invested. So I definitely sort of what you were saying it resonated with me that I've been in that seat where I got to contribute to the ROI. Yeah, totally. And I had forgotten about it.

Caity Cronkhite: 19:12

Uh huh. And I think that's an empowering anecdote for documentation writers, technical writers and documentation teams and other companies as well as if you skillfully. And if your documentation is good and supports your customers, well, it can help close $3 million dollar deals. I've seen it happen. So have you.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 19:32

Right, right. I'm sure that you've seen this far more than I have. So has there been a time when you know a customer had documentation that was just being maintained? And you have to sort of review that and say, Okay, these are the deliverables that you might want to update, like you help the client evaluate what should be maintained what should be updated, so that probably they're coming with a tight budget.

Caity Cronkhite: 19:58

Oh Yeah! We do a lot of projects like that, especially for our startup and smaller business customers. So many of our customers will come to us with some degree of documentation. And many of them come to us with documentation that maybe has been written by engineers, or maybe it all lives in Google Docs, and they need a new system for that. So it's a huge part of what we do is to kind of evaluate not just what's in the documentation, but holistically look at documentation and how it's working for these companies. So, you know, maybe you have documentation, but what are the bottlenecks? What are the challenges with it? Is it hard to update? Is the tool difficult to use? Are customers getting lost? Are they unable to find the information they need? You know, or do you need maybe a new tool or a new platform for writing and maintaining documentation? Do you maybe need new internal operations and systems to support keeping documentation up to date. So that's a huge part of what we do, especially for some of our smaller clients who maybe don't have mature documentation environments yet. And I would say maintenance is a huge reason that people come to Good Words and come to us and talk to us about documentation. Documentation isn't too hard to write the first time. But what our clients run into is that maintaining it is a much bigger job than they ever anticipated, and that they need someone who's sort of dedicated to that task, from release to release or from month to month, to be able to make that sustainable for their organization. So that's a lot of what we do, as well.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 21:39

Awesome. Awesome. Caity, you mentioned good documentation. In my experience. So far, I have struggled with how do I prove documentation is good. Please share with us your insights. And what in your opinion stands as good documentation.

Caity Cronkhite: 21:58

I think good documentation is documentation I think that makes complete sense to me. Again, I'm kind of that solves a real problem. So one of the ways that if you have access to these metrics, or if your listeners have access to certain metrics, that I like to measure whether documentation is effective or not, is look at customer support cases, look at the questions that your customers are asking when they pick up the phone. And are those, or is the volume of those calls going down? Or is that being improved? Is the time that customer support reps spend getting to resolution on those questions is that going down? Lowering that is a very concrete way if you have access to that data to be able to tie it to you know, not just effectiveness, but also cost savings as well. But in terms of good documentation, you know what, one thing that many of our clients do before they start working with us is they think more documentation is better. They assume that if you document everything in the kitchen sink that your documentation is thorough, that means it's good, and it's effective for your customers. And then if you actually look at customer behavior, and using the documentation, you know, customers will go to that documentation. And it's overwhelming to them, they can't find what they need. Because every single label, every single button, every single edge case is documented in some kind of Frankenstein documentation system. So what I always encourage clients to really focus on is have a streamlined documentation strategy, and philosophy. And usually what I recommend is document the top 80% of what your customers are trying to do. So in that 80% is where most of your customers are spending all of their time, you know, they're trying to do these few core tasks, they're trying to accomplish these few core goals. And anything that's kind of outside of that 80% is probably, you know, those are probably edge cases or information that you know, most of your customers don't need to know. And I find that kind of sticking to that 80% rule usually makes documentation systems much more streamlined and much easier to navigate for your actual customer. going back into my past. I was at a company where they wanted tech writers to document everything. Absolutely everything. And we were a small team. It was not easy for us to keep up with the like you said maintenance is a big task. Yeah. And information has to flow for us to document. We did not have access to SMEs. And every time documentation was reviewed. It was very toxic. The feedback was very negative. Oh,

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 24:56

And yeah, and this was one of those companies that I I believe hopefully is a rare is a rarity?

Caity Cronkhite: 25:03

I hope so.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 25:04

Yeah. But it was, and they would always ask us your documentation is not good. And I was advocating for this exact scenario that you suggested. So you sort of validated for me looking at what is that 80% that the customers are doing? Now, if you are having a startup that is coming to you, and they don't know what the user behaviors are, you know, what is that 80%? How would you determine what that 80% would be?

Caity Cronkhite: 25:32

Sometimes we as writers do that ourselves, you know, I think the hallmark of a really great tech writer is a writer who can act as a user advocate, and who can go into a new product environment, and look at the product or look at the service the way a new customer would and ask all of the questions that a new customer would ask. So you know, that's one of the things that we love to do on my team of Good Words. All of our writers are really into getting in there testing the product and making sure they understand how customers are actually using it. That is, I would say the first way, definitely. And then, if possible, I think it's an always an interesting exercise for writers or any member of the team really to try to listen in on some customer calls, see what questions your customers are asking of your support people or of your PMS or your product owners and people like that on your team to just kind of get a sense of what our customers really up against, like, what are they asking questions about? What do they care about? How are they talking about your products, or your services or, or the goals that they're trying to achieve? I have found that to be incredibly enlightening over the course of my career and various clients that I've worked with. So that can also be a good way.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 26:53

That's great advice, especially for somebody who is at a company and they don't have that data. Or if they want to start tracking that data, I think your suggestions really make a lot of sense to see what you can obtain, like, you know, as you're doing your research, your analysis, you have this baseline, and then you can sort of start measuring from that point onwards. Even internally, what if you're creating an internal document? For example? What are some of the pain points that you're trying to solve? Yeah, that is fantastic. I think you've already sort of given us advice on what tech writers can do if they are either solo writers or if they are small teams, and they are struggling with how do they prove their contribution to the bottom line? Is there anything else you would like to add Caity.

Caity Cronkhite: 27:41

The way I like to approach projects with our clients is that it doesn't have to be super complicated or super hard to get a good documentation system in place. As we talked about in with the last question, you know, it doesn't cost a lot of money to sit in on a couple of customer calls, and just kind of listen in to see what customers are saying and the questions that they're asking. You don't have to have the most robust and complicated documentation tools to start out necessarily, you know, we work with a lot of small clients and small startups, for example, who are looking at investing in these huge learning management systems and documentation management systems. And sometimes that's sometimes that's the right answer. Sometimes that's what they need. But often, it's not. Often to really serve their customers, all they need is a couple of good documents that can be easily distributed that live in Google Docs, you know, it's so it's very different for every single environment and every single customer, depending on on just the level of support that they need, and what's going to be maintainable and sustainable for them.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 28:53

Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that definitely would be very helpful. Especially I would apply that to my own self. If I were a solo or a lone writer, especially, I would like to ask you, what kind of deliverables are you our customers looking for? Are PDFs still in demand?

Caity Cronkhite: 29:13

That is a great question. Are you asking more about types of output type.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 29:17

Types of output? Yes, yes. And again, this comes from my own past experience, where we were advising our company, the leadership, to look at different ways of output, because customers were obviously, our customers were looking for information online. But somehow there was this constraint within the company where they believed that customers are not open to online content or embedded help. So PDFs was was a big thing, and it became a burden to maintain that. So I think it's the outputs that I'm asking about.

Caity Cronkhite: 29:53

Yeah, I think it completely depends on your type of business and where your customers work. So for example, you know, most of the clients that we serve are software companies, they create enterprise level or consumer level software products and applications. The users of those applications are online, because those products are online. So for example, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to mail a customer a PDF, or to ask them to print a PDF to use if they're working and doing their entire job on the internet. So in those environments it completely makes sense to invest probably only in online content, or online content that can be converted easily to PDF, you know, without someone actually having to manually do that process. That being said, you know, there are some environments where PDFs are still very useful and necessary. In the work that we've done with some clients, those environments tend to be large manufacturing environments, or, you know, in field work, for example, so if the user of your product is on a factory floor that doesn't have access to Wi Fi, they're not going to be able to find that information online, right? Or if the customer is working out in the field, repairing cellphone towers, and they might not necessarily have access to robust internet connection, a PDF might absolutely be the most appropriate way to go. We also get a lot of questions about video content, people are in love with video content. And I have lots of thoughts on that, you know, a lot of our clients were like, Oh, can you just make our whole documentation library, just a video content library instead. And I always try to walk people back from that for a few reasons. The first is one that you mentioned is video is very hard to maintain. And it's very expensive to maintain and requires not just video production people and things like that to maintain those assets, but also require someone who's familiar with your software products to be able to make sure that that content is accurate. And also, videos are very hard to translate. So if you have any sort of international reach or audience or if you want to have international reach or audience, then you will either have to recreate those videos and all of those languages, or at the very least translate them into other languages. I do think that there are reasons to invest in video perhaps for very specific issues that your customers are running into. But I always caution against investing solely in video for documentation content. But I think the thing that companies should ask themselves is, where are their customers? And where will they go looking for this content? It's probably online, but not always.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 32:54

That was gonna be my follow up question to you. What do you think about video? And you just read my mind and shared your input? So fantastic. I don't have to worry about it.

Caity Cronkhite: 33:05

No, yeah, no worries. I mean, people love video, and video is an awesome, you know, learning tool and sort of supplemental material if you can afford to implement it well. But like I said, you know, it's usually not what I recommend for most of your documentation or kind of your base documentation implementation

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 33:25

That makes absolute sense, you know, and like you said, where are your customers going to look for information? And how is that information? How easy is it to find? And how quickly can it solve their problem? And if you have connectivity issues, then it doesn't make sense. So sometimes probably these considerations are not being made. And this is where your expertise as a writer comes into play. Because you sort of put yourself in the shoes of the customer. And you can speak for the customer, as a customer advocate, as a user advocate.

Caity Cronkhite: 33:58

Yes, absolutely.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 34:00

That's awesome. I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you. Because there are many of these things that either we've encountered, or we've thought about and not really articulated. And you are experiencing this in the field, and this is how you're communicating our value to the customers, to your clients. Yes. So that's fantastic. And interesting question that or rather, I was on LinkedIn, and I was on this one group discussion and the question there was technical writing and AI. Artificial intelligence and how artificial intelligence at some point may replace technical writers. I'm sure you have an opinion on that. If you do. Would you like to share what that is?

Caity Cronkhite: 34:45

Yeah, sure. I mean, I certainly have, have a vested interest in in where that field might go. I have yet to see any sort of AI implementation that does work good enough to replace a good writer. So, yeah, I mean, it'll be a very interesting time if it ever gets to that point. But I think something that's interesting about that is that I think people really underestimate the human element of technical writing and documentation. And the reason why we need documentation, the reason why customers ask for it is because there are people with problems that need to be solved and goals that they need to achieve. And the value of having a human writer who is an expert in this field, is that we can, as you said earlier, act as those user advocates, and really put ourselves in a human user shoes, to be able to understand what their problems are in the goals that they're trying to accomplish and the pain points that they might encounter along the way. I think people really under estimate how important it is to have the right person in the right seat writing documentation or working on your technical writing and communications. Because that's how people understand your product and your brand, and the service that you're trying to provide. So I think people want to be able to outsource it to an AI algorithm and never think about it again, realistically, I don't think that the technology is in any place to actually solve a real users problem right now. So

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 36:35

I mean, again, I was thinking along the same lines, and I do believe that the technology hasn't matured to that point. And even if it matures, like you said, you're trying to solve real human problems. And the more complex that technology gets, the more I believe that you need experienced writers, writers who are trained, who can really solve those problems and who come with that mindset of, you know, AI probably is going to have a very one track approach, while the human mind can look beyond what is obvious and try to solve those problems. I may not be articulating this well, but I think you're right, that the technology is not there yet. And hopefully, we will continue to work with that technology and not get obsoleted, I hope.

Caity Cronkhite: 37:24

I also hope so.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 37:25

I think one thing that you mentioned about the branding, and I believe documentation is part of the brand. I've interviewed a product owner, who was mentioning that he bought some product, and it had great reviews. And but the documentation, it was a scrap of paper, the feedback on I don't know where he bought it from, but probably Amazon. The customer feedback was was good. But then when he bought it and he was like, okay, the feedback was great. But I'm going to try and use this for my convenience. And he found that the documentation was not good enough. And he ended up returning the product, or rather his customer, his user experience was not great, and he wasn't impressed with it. So he believes that when he is working on a product, he pays equal attention to the documentation, because the documentation is the brand. And it's part of the product. It's not separate from the product, it's it's a deliverable that is part of the product. So I think that's what you're also trying to probably share with us. Right?

Caity Cronkhite: 38:24

I completely agree with that. And what that makes me think of is, your documentation does a lot of frontline work for you. I mean, imagining let's imagine that that person, you know, buying this product, users go to the documentation when they have a problem, when they are already frustrated, or when they are already confused. And if they go to the documentation, and they get more confused, or more frustrated, that only makes for a worse user experience overall, of not just the documentation, but of your entire product. And if if your customer can't figure out how to solve their problem, or if they can't figure out how to do the thing they came to do, then they'll return the product, or they'll pick up the phone and have an angry phone call with your support rep or something like that. Documentation is an unsung hero in that. If done well. It can really shield you from those negative customer interactions and it can really save your customers interaction with your product.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 39:31

That was so beautifully said. We are the unsung heroes, but like you said it is you have to look at it in the context of the user experience, how it can shield you your brand, if your document if you've invested upfront in your in good documentation. Yes, absolutely. That's an invaluable insight, in my opinion. So that's fantastic. Caity, we've I think sort of touched upon some good questions here. And I hope you found value in sort of sharing your insights with us. Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

Caity Cronkhite: 40:05

I think we have touched on a ton in this interview. I mean, I, this is a topic that I'm really interested in really passionate about. I mean, obviously, my whole company is dedicated to technical writing and documentation. And, you know, as we said earlier, in the interview, you know, most people don't consider technical writing or documentation to be a very sexy topic. But my point of view is that they just haven't thought about it in a broad enough context, then documentation can solve a huge number of problems for you. And it can also open up a number of opportunities for you to go further in your customers journey for you to, you know, engender trust in your products for you to, as we mentioned, you know, increase sales opportunities in some deals and things like that. So I love talking about this stuff. And I'm so glad that you have me on.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 40:58

Oh, absolutely. I think there's one more question that you prompted me right now, you know, you said, technical writing is not looked upon as sexy. And if I had to brand technical writing as sexy, somehow I keep thinking that, are we as writers not branding our field in a sexy way? Now you've been at the front lines, you're now talking to customers and actually trying to solve the problem? In your opinion, is there anything that we can do as advocates of our own profession? How do we make it sexy? That is, the whole objective of the season, actually, honestly, of mine is to is to package it in a sexy manner, but also to sort of elevate our profession in a sense, what would you suggest to make it sexy,

Caity Cronkhite: 41:44

I think, in the first place, you know, being excited about what documentation can bring to an organization and the ways that it can help an organization, you know, I have seen, I've worked in several different technical writing teams over the years and with several different individual technical writers and, and one thing I have seen many times is, tech writers have apologized for being in this space as they need to be in. They apologize for taking up engineers time, or they apologize for sitting in scrum meetings, or on and on. And technical writers should be in those rooms. And they should be part of those discussions. And they can bring a huge amount of insight into those discussions, again, because they are the user advocate in the room. And I think just really stepping into that role. And playing that up with stakeholders is really important. I think that people don't think of technical writing as sexy, because people who aren't technical writers think that writing documentation just means there's someone sitting in a corner at a computer who doesn't interact with anyone who writes PDFs all day. And that's all it is. Whereas, you know, really great technical writers, as we've kind of touched on in this in this conversation do so much in the process of doing their work. And for an organization, you know, they are testing products, they are interacting with engineers, they are usually subject matter experts in the technology, you know, I've worked on teams where I knew more about the product, then the pm did, or than some of the engineers did, just because I had such deep and wide views into how the product was developed. You know, we look at the product through the eyes of the customer. And we're also working across such a wide range of subject matter experts, when we work effectively on our teams. You know, we're working with everyone, from product managers, to engineers, to quality assurance people to designers, you know, so we have a huge broad view of the impacts of the technology that we work on. And I think just just ramp that up, just sell that in your internally, in any organization that you work in and bring awareness to the fact that we do much more than just sit in a corner entitled.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 44:13

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes. I do believe that everything you said, for one not being apologetic. That's something that I have personally also applied to my own self. That I don't want to be apologetic about the time, because we're all working towards a product deliverable, and trying to solve a problem or customer problem. And we are all working as a team. So we definitely have to change that perception of us, and not, and not be apologetic and getting your seat at the table. So very important. And then talking about how you're trying to solve a problem rather than, oh, I'm going to create content, but that content is trying to solve a real world problem. Yeah. Right to everything that you said. I am 100 percent in agreement with you with what you said. And I'm, I'm so thrilled that there are other writers such as you who sort of are trying to advocate for the user and for our profession, and trying to move the needle to making us look more sexy. I love that I love that.

Caity Cronkhite: 45:17

100 percent. And I loved you know, I'm an entrepreneur now. And I now run my company full time. But I loved my years, working on the ground, being a technical writer, looking at products, testing them, learning about new technologies. It was such an awesome time in my career, where I got to learn so much about so many new and emerging technologies and work with a lot of interesting people. So I think that, you know, as you said, we tech writers are the unsung heroes. And it's a fascinating profession. To me, at least it is it is biased.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 45:53

Oh, I'm absolutely biased. I'm passionate about this field. I'm so thrilled I had this opportunity to catch up with you, Caity. And this was really a fantastic conversation at so many levels. I really appreciate your contribution to the field, and to my show.

Caity Cronkhite: 46:09

Thank you, Zohra. I really appreciate your having me on your show. Likewise, this was a super fun conversation, and I hope your listeners get some value out of it.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 46:18

I am absolutely sure that they will. Have a great long weekend.

Caity Cronkhite: 46:22

Thank you. You too.

Zohra Mubeena-Mutabanna: 46:25

Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite app, such as Apple, Google, or Spotify. For the latest on my show, follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or visit us at www dot insight tech comm dot show. Catch you on another episode.