Mary Help College

Department of Information Technology

Level III

Unit of Competence :-Create

Technical Documentation
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Support clients in A courteous and professional manner

Establishing a polite and professional manner
 Most jobs in the IT industry require you to interact regularly
with clients.
Some of these interactions include:
 attending to customers’ enquiries and complaints
 determining a client’s needs
 obtaining feedback from a client with regard to an
installation, customisation, or support issue
 providing a client with information
 providing instruction to a client.
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Establishing a polite and professional manner

 When dealing with clients, it is important for you to

ensure you establish and maintain a courteous and

professional manner.
Courteous and professional manner
 To be courteous means to show good manners and

respect for others’ opinions and needs. To be

professional means to conduct yourself in a manner
that is mature, responsible and fair
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Reflect
 Imagine you are a client and you ask an IT Support
person for help. What behaviour would you expect
from the IT Support person if you were to consider
them courteous? What behaviour would you expect
from them if you were to consider them
professional?
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Courteous Behaviour
 Being friendly
 Showing respect for the other person, and
 Assisting the other person.

Note: Being courteous is an important element of

being professional.
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Professional behaviour
 When dealing with clients in a workplace setting,
professionalism is critical.

Behaviour that is considered professional is:

 Being courteous
 Focusing on the needs of the client.
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Professional behaviour
 Assisting the client to meet their needs
 Following organisational policies and expectations of good
conduct.
 Ensuring the client’s needs have been met.
 Another key element to professionalism is doing all of the
above within an appropriate timeframe.
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Sometimes it is not easy to interpret exactly what

your clients want. How do you determine a client’s
requirements particularly if the client is not very
clear about it?
Reflect
 When was the last time you asked for assistance

from the IT department? Did you know what you

wanted? Did you know what was causing the
problem you had? How did the IT Support person
get the information they required from you to solve
your problem?
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Gathering information
 It’s important, of course, to collect as much
information as possible about:
 what is happening
 when it started happening
 what may have caused it to happen
 how urgent it is.
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Giving feedback to your client

 You’ve analysed your client’s requirements and
decided on a solution. You then:
 Tell the client whether you (or your organisation)
would be able to meet their requirements.
 Let them know of other options or possibilities of
which they had not been aware.
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Applying organisational policy

 Every client interaction should be guided by the
policies and guidelines of the organisation.
 These policies and guidelines are often
documented, but can also be established ways of
behaving that form part of the culture of the
organisation.
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Types of policies and guidelines

 There are policies and guidelines that govern how

staff:
 Answer the telephone
 Document client requests
 Provide follow up to clients.
 You have see how things should be done by

observing other IT staff and seeing how they

interact with clients.
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 Reflect

Think about a situation where you have contacted an

organisation for assistance. It may be as simple as
calling a telephone company for a telephone number.
Do the people you deal with follow pre-determined
steps? Do they always follow these steps no matter
how many times you telephone them? .
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The need for organisational policies and guidelines

 To show staff what the organisation considers
professional conduct.
 To standardise the interactions between IT staff and
clients.
 To ensure the process of supporting clients runs
smoothly.
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Reflect
 Think about how you and your colleagues answer the
telephone at work. Is there a standard way you do this?
Were you told when you started work how to answer the
telephones, according to organisational policies? Most
organisations require their staff to answer the telephone
with a greeting, identifying the organisation, the
department/section, their name and offering help with an
opening statement. For example:
 Good morning. ICT Services. This is chaltu Melese.
How can I help you?
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Cultural differences
 ‘Culture’ refers to the values, beliefs and attitudes
shared by a group.
 When it comes to communication and interaction,
it is important to have respect for the differences
between cultural groups within your organisation.
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Cultural differences

Reflect
Can you think of any differences in communication
style you have noticed when interacting with
someone from a different culture?
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 The following differences can make

effective communication difficult:
 language
 behavioural expectations
 the written word
 values
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Cultural differences
 By standardising how interactions should
occur, organisational policies and guidelines
can help solve problems arising from cultural
differences. When there are clear guidelines,
everyone knows what is expected.
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Maintaining client contact

 Obtaining client feedback is an important part of
maintaining contact with clients. Feedback is the
information that you gather from your clients.
Reflect
 Think of the last time you requested help from the IT help
desk. In order to get assistance, what type of feedback did
you have to give to the help desk support person?
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What sort of things do you need feedback on?

Some of the things the IT Support person needs feedback
on include:
 A need — What does the client need? Have I understood the
needs of the client correctly?
 The solution — How can I meet the client’s needs?
 The implementation — Has the implemented solution worked?
 The IT department will require the three types of feedback if it is
to resolve client problems.
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How to obtain feedback

 Whether you are trying to find out what people need

or trying to obtain client feedback, you have a

number of ways of obtaining your information. You
might decide to phone your clients, visit them face-
to-face, send an email or get them to complete a
feedback form over the intranet.
 Questions are the main way we obtain feedback.

They may be used in a range of situations, from

informal face-to-face encounters to well-structured
formal questionnaires.
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IT help desk database

 A good tool to assist IT staff to maintain client contact is the IT
help desk database.
 This is a database that records all of the requests coming in from
the organisation to the help desk.
 The IT support staff take clients’ requests from the database and
obtain feedback from the client directly about the specifics of the
problem.
 When the client is visited, the database is updated. Any feedback
provided by the client is recorded on the database.
 When the problem is corrected, the database is updated and the
request is ‘closed off’.
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 How to Write Technical Documentation

 Technical communication or documentation is the
process of conveying/transmitting "user-friendly"
information through writing about a particular topic
to an intended audience.
 Technical documentation is less expensive than
technical support calls.
 Before you can develop good technical
documentation, you need to know that effective
technical documentation is a well-planned and
executed mission.
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Instructions
 Determine purpose and audience:- You need to know why you
are creating this documentation and who will be reading it. The
type of documentation you create will be different if your
audience is a car mechanic than if your audience is a software
engineer.
Gather information:- The person creating the documentation is

often a writer and not the subject matter expert. It is important to

gather the information so that you can document it. Collecting
the information can mean doing research, interviewing a subject
matter expert, or experimenting with the product itself, as in the
case of a software program.
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
Organize and outline information You may start with
an existing document or a template. It’s important to
enter what information you have and leave the areas
blank where you need to gather more information.
This will be your working document, and you will
build on it. Jotting(quickly written short notes)
down what you do have even if you have large areas
of empty space will boost your confidence that you
are moving forward in the project.
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 Write the first draft This is when you start filling in

the blanks and allowing for a flow of ideas to
stream from your Realization. Do not stop that
flow by revising at this stage.
 Revise and edit You may want to put the document
away for a period of time so that you can give it a
fresh look. Then focus on topics that need more
attention; shorten, expand or delete sections; or
rearrange paragraphs, sentences, or entire topics.
You will also want to edit for style, grammar and
context
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 Writing technical documentation is easier if you

have the proper training and a road map to follow.
 Technical writing encompasses(including wide
range of idea) the development of documentation,
manuals such as for hardware and software, help
documents, troubleshooting guides and technical
white papers and brochures.
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 According to the website Clarity, some of the

skills required to be a technical writer is excellent
product knowledge or the ability to quickly
understand the technical aspects of a product, and
the ability to effectively communicate technical
information to non-technical people.
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 Plan
 Develop a technical documentation plan. The plan lists what
types of technical documentation are required and the target
audience of each. Are they technical staff who are well-
knowledgeable/Experienced in what you are writing about?
Or are they end users who have limited technical knowledge?
 For each document list who will develop it, who must
approve it, and estimated start and end date for the
document.
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 Review
 Have your document reviewed by a competent
proofreader and editor who is acquainted/familiar with
the technical subject you are writing about.
 Be open to suggestions.
 If the intended audience is the end user, send a draft of
the document to an end user to review to make sure your
document is easily understood.
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 Outline
 Develop an outline for each document. An outline is the structure
for how a document is written.
 Not outlining your document first is like getting on an airplane
without knowing where that airplane is going.
 The outline should follow a logical sequence with outline items
indented so that similar or related items are at the same level.
 Write
 Begin writing the documents. Follow the KISS principle (keep it
simple stupid), particularly when writing for non-technical users.
For task-oriented documents, consider using the play script
procedure writing style.
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 Graphics
 Graphics break up the written technical information,
making it easier to read. One common form of
graphics to consider is a flow chart that shows relevant
items, such as the steps involved in a procedure. Other
relevant graphics might include photos of a product
being described with different views of that product.
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 Definition of Technical Writing

 Technical writing can turn into printed manuals or online guides.
 Technical writing is a method of researching and creating
information about technical processes or products. That
information can then be distributed to users as printed manuals or
online guides so they can perform tasks. Examples of technical
writing include car repair manuals, help text for database
software and FAQs for troubleshooting cameras.
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 Judging Quality
 Good technical writing is brief, easy-to-read and organized

according to task (e.g. "how to erase files") rather than

feature (e.g. "file erase menu option"). It must make
information easy to find through the use of a
comprehensive table of contents, extensive index, well-
organized tables and useful diagrams.
 Hard Copy
 Printed manuals are expensive to produce, distribute and

update, but they don’t require a computer to use. They may

be the only alternative where portability is needed, such as
for on-site repair or field work.
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 Soft Copy
 Online writing is inexpensive to produce, and easy to
distribute and update by computer media or the
Internet.
 Because they require a computer to use, they are
required for computer software.
 Learning the Profession
 Technical writing combines a technical background
with writing skills. Community colleges can teach the
basics of both.
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 Jobs
 Writing samples are the quickest way to assess the
skill of a potential hire. How do his writing and
technical skills balance? The more a writer is
expected to work without the help of a technical
expert, the more important his technical expertise
becomes.