Resource Roundup

Sometimes we find so many good things that we can’t help but stand back and let others speak. This is one of those weeks. So, without delay, some links we love.

1. In a recent installment of his Eye on Service blog, John Ragsdale tells a sad story that’s all the sadder because it’s so familiar. Running into technical problems when deploying two Christmas presents, he laments

“I ran into the same problem I have any time I attempt self-help–my problem doesn’t exist in the knowledgebase. It is beyond frustrating. You encounter a problem that many new customers are likely to run into, and there is nothing online to address it. Usually, you can find hundreds–or even thousands–of conversations in a forum about the problem, yet the knowledgebase contains not a single reference to the issue.” (Read more…)

Isn’t it time that we all have a single knowledgebase for internal and external use? And isn’t it time that we use KCS, or some way of making sure it’s up-to-date? This is old news to readers of the DB Kay blog, I trust, but our industry still has a ways to go.

2.  Steve Krug, author of my favorite web usability book Don’t Make Me Think, promised that he’d follow up with a more detailed book on lightweight, DIY usability testing.  Nine years later, here it is:  Rocket Surgery Made Easy. If you have anything to do with a web self-service site, or any other web experience, please buy and read these books immediately.  Oh, and while I’m recommending books about the web, check out the wonderful Letting Go of the Words by Ginny Redish, who provides practical and interesting coverage of the KCS topic “complete thoughts, not complete sentences.”

3.  Finally, Social Success, our paper on social support, has been published by the Consortium for Service Innovation.  This summarizes several meetings’ worth of insights from Cisco, Yahoo!, Lithium, Salesforce, EMC, and many other Consortium team members.  Read the paper…