A smart way to understand customers Audience Analysis A smart way to understand customers Praveena Sabarish Senior Information Developer, Arm

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Agenda Significance Process Outcome Impact

Audience Analysis An effective tool to gather information about our target audience. Helps to understand customer needs and usage patterns. Helps to deliver a better user experience.

Why is it important?

Significance Identify the audience type for documents. Understand their expectations and needs. Understand how different customers use the product. Understand the level of detail that specific audiences need. Reduce the number of customer queries and defects.

Process

Identifying a set of questions Types of customers. Location of customers. Knowledge levels of our products. Familiarity with the technology. Market pressures in their geography. Documentation usage trends. Need for translation or other formats of information delivery.

Classifying questions Demographics. Needs. Knowledge levels. Usage trends. Goal.

Audience analysis questionnaire

Interview customer-facing people Identify stakeholders for each product. Interview based on the questionnaire.

Who did we interview? Field Application Engineers (FAEs). Technical Marketing Managers (TMMs). Application Engineers (AEs). Design Engineers/Tech Leads. Product Marketing Managers. Project Managers (PJMs). Customer Account Owners.

Managing and storing information Created an Audience Analysis page for our team in Confluence. Different page for each product.

Analyzing information Document key stakeholder conversations based on our findings. Analyze and provide a conclusion for each section. Separate space to provide the status and deadline.

Analyzing information

Arriving at action items

Tracking Used the defect tracking system to track Action Items against each product. Regular meetings with stakeholders to close the action items. Outcomes or findings are presented to the team on a quarterly basis.

Outcome and impact

Outcome Focus on Quality Improved sections. Added new diagrams and tables. Created videos. Added more examples. Focus on Quality

What else did we gain? Enhanced our technical knowledge. Better relationship with customer-facing people. Enhanced the quality, flow, and effectiveness of the content. Improved and customer-friendly documents delivered in different ways. Proactive feedback and inputs from customer-facing people. Satisfaction and Pride. 

How did we find the time? The 30-minute meeting trick. Reusable topics using DITA.

Lesson learned Question existing content, keep up with evolving market needs. Do not wait to implement all improvements in that one document. Take small steps.

Simple, Easy, and Effective!!!

Questions? You can find me at: LinkedIn: Praveena Sabarish