The "No Plan" Method

For Efficiently Answering Customer Questions With ScreenSteps Live

One of the most difficult steps in preparing customer tutorials is planning what you will and will not cover.

So we suggest that you skip that step.

We’re not joking. Skip it. You will find that you will instantly become more productive if you stop wasting your time planning. You just need to plan not to plan. Follow these simple steps:

  • Write down questions your customers have actually asked.
  • Create lessons in ScreenSteps that answer each of those questions.
  • Post the answers as a manual to ScreenSteps Live. You can see an example here.

You know that your lessons will be useful because they are responding to actual questions, not imaginary ones. The lessons will be much easier to write as well. Think about it, what is easier to respond to?

  1. How do I use your product?
  2. How do I make my account private?

To answer the first question would take some planning. But nobody actually asks questions like that. They ask questions like “How do I make my account private?”, and that is easy to respond to.

So, when a customer asks a question do one of two things:

  1. If you have a lesson that answers their question, send them a link to that lesson.
  2. If you don’t, create one, add it to your manual, and then send them a link.

It sounds too simple to be true but it really works. Following this simple methodology you can start decreasing your customer support requests from your first day of using ScreenSteps Live.