Say What?...
Are your customer facing messages full of techno-babble too?
The early part of this week was spent getting set up with a new client’s various IT systems so we can start work on a project. VPNs, virtual workspaces, a dedicated email account, and more - all went well.
Right up to the point when I went to check out a video recording of a training session on their Sharepoint site. When, after clicking on the link I’d been sent, I was presented with the following :
AADSTS90072: User account '(redacted)’ from identity provider '(redacted)' does not exist in tenant '(redacted)' and cannot access the application '00000003-0000-0ff1-ce00-000000000000'(Office 365 SharePoint Online) in that tenant. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant first. Sign out and sign in again with a different Azure Active Directory user account.
After thirty plus years in the content and technology business, half of which was working for software companies, I like to think of myself as pretty technology fluent. But I had to read through that a few times to parse what it was saying, which was basically:
Please contact your Admin to give this account permission to access Sharepoint.
Just before I started working on this issue of the newsletter I was logging into a different client’s environment and received the following, much more succinct message:
Less verbose but arguably less helpful than the earlier example.
Why, or why, after all these years do we still get customer facing error messages like these? (In these two instances I’m looking at you Microsoft)
Content isn’t something to be ignored, it is the connection between your customers and your product, not just when things go right, but more importantly when things go wrong.
These are perfect examples why we need to ensure that content professionals are part of the software development and testing process.
Alan
A Note of Appreciation
Thanks to all the folks who took up new subscriptions recently or have read the newsletter since its launch. We really appreciate the support.
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Talking About Storytelling
Upcoming Webinars and Conferences
October 22nd - Content Wrangler Webinar - Customer Focused Storytelling for Product Information - Link https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/9273/613816
October 24th - Content Matters Podcast - Developing Persona-based Content - The Good, Bad, and the Ugly!
October 27th-30th - Conference - LavaCon Content Strategy Conference - Portland OR.
Weekly Thought
There are always more smart people outside your enterprise boundaries than there are inside. Any organization today should be listening to, and encouraging, the participation of the smart people outside.
Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops
THE CONTENT POOL is pleased to announce that we are now offering our popular Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops
We are now taking bookings for the rest of 2024 and Q1/2025, and we wanted to make sure that as a newsletter reader you got an early opportunity to lock-in a date.
“Weaving storytelling into the mix makes the content more compelling, accessible, and effective!”
Learn how to deliver content-driven experiences that your customers relate to on our two-day Customer Outcome Focused Storytelling workshop.
In this workshop, we will:
Examine content from the customer’s perspective.
Plan how to adapt content delivery to meet the needs of a rapidly changing marketplace
Examine why every business transaction is a story
Outline the 10 Rules of Storytelling as applied to Customer Experience
Apply proven storytelling techniques to your content.
Identify potential opportunities for incorporating storytelling techniques
into the production of your customer-facing content assets.Facilitate an interactive feedback session on your existing customer-facing content.
If you would like more details, or you like to discuss reserving a date for yourself and your team to benefit from a Customer Focused Storytelling Workshop, just email us at ajp@4jsgroup.com to reserve your date.
In The Bookstore
If you enjoy the contents of this newsletter and would like more, we have three books always available from XML Press.
You can also check out The Content Pool website or follow us on FaceBook.
Please feel free to share the newsletter and pass it around to any friends or colleagues you think might find it of value.
Till next time - have fun paddling in The Content Pool.
Alan J. Porter
The Content Pool™ is a division of the 4Js Group LLC