"Migrating to Helpjuice has reduced our SLA turnaround time for publishing from 41 business days to 21 days, a 49% difference, with some requests being published in as little as five business days, an astonishing 88% reduction in SLAs. - Misael Cedillos, Senior Business Information Content Designer"
Our knowledge base should always reflect our company’s values: common sense, common decency, uncommon thinking, uncommon results. Helpjuice fulfills every one of those values. It’s common sense that a ragtag team of technical writers, coming together from different departments, different states, and different points of view, would aim to unify over a strong, reliable foundation. A lot of my work depends on the collaborative efforts put in by the clients, members of the QA team, and front-end staff. Achieving common decency means that I have to be engaging, strategic, and flexible. As a result, I need a tool that does the same, and Helpjuice is clearly that. Before landing on Helpjuice, we almost went with another, more old-fashioned platform. Upon discovering Helpjuice, and all of its analytic tools on the backend, we also discovered a platform that delivered uncommon thinking AND uncommon results in one punch. Knowing that we can better understand our audience by looking at the data that shows how they 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘦 our work will forever revolutionize how we 𝘥𝘰 our work. We’re building our reputation, as a technical writing team, on the promise that Helpjuice will deliver a solid, user-friendly platform.
Back in 2015, when the current technical writing team was still under our Lending Solutions branch, we were already looking to make some changes. Over the next four years, we assessed a total of 91 platforms and authoring tools to determine what the best system was, moving forward. In 2019, an in-depth analysis was performed, assessing each one of those platforms, reviewing key features and functions that we were looking to improve. In the end, we selected ServiceNow and SharePoint as our two finalists. With two competing platforms on the table, our business leaders decided to launch the Simply the Best contest, aimed to establish a new standard template based on Assurant standards, feedback from our business partners feedback, and our own desires as a team. Both teams performed UAT for compatibility, features, and functionality. In May, ServiceNow was selected as the platform of choice In 2020, with the outbreak of the pandemic, Assurant decided to proceed with major restructuring, leading to the reformation of our team, as a whole. Our priorities shifted, and we decided to re-evaluate ServiceNow, in light of all the big changes. We determined that ServiceNow was ultimately not the most optimum authoring tool, agreeing that its knowledge base wasn’t designed for technical communication, in addition to several other limitations. That led us straight to Helpjuice.
The restructuring of our team resulted in the complete retooling of how we operate our business. When the dust settled, we looked at ourselves as a team and realized that we needed to establish a brand identity that clearly defined our values, as well as our goals. Helpjuice has become an integral part of that identity. Helpjuice allows us to achieve a sense of awareness, allowing us to better understand our audience and how they view our work. The efficient process flow, as well as the dramatically shortened SLAs allows us to achieve our best sense of timeliness to date. We can finally deliver a sense of consistency, using a standardized template that means every manual looks and feels the same, resulting in an improved end-user experience. Finally, we’re able to build amazing value. Using Helpjuice, we can now provide services for projects and high-priority tickets that we have never before been able to offer. These improvements have changed the way we do everything, freeing up a lot of our time to offer expanded services, an unexpected bonus, all thanks to Helpjuice!
My favorite part of our new Helpjuice knowledge base would have to be the way that it learns every user’s search patterns over time. Unlike with ACORN, our previous platform, or Adobe Acrobat, which I used to use to publish most of my content, we aren’t confined to the simple search methods available we once were. The search function in Helpjuice feels a lot like Google’s. Like Google's algorithmic understanding of its users, Helpjuice compiles every user’s unique data, making it easier for users to find the things they look for most often. Over time, Helpjuice will start to tailor search results on a case-by-case basis. It will evolve, searching for the things best suited for each specific user I love we’re making it easier for our audience to find what they need, and that we’re providing them with a tool that caters to each one of their unique needs. I also love how that data will also allow us to better understand how users navigate through our manuals.
There are a number of reasons we ultimately chose to go with Helpjuice. The team, as it stands today, is made up of technical writers that were originally employed under their respective clients. Once united, we realized that we were all utilizing different methods, styles, and even timeframes for how we created and published our materials. We realized that we needed to come up with a solution that would both meet our agreed standards and modernize the way we all created documentation. We originally intended to use a completely different platform, but it didn’t provide nearly any of the analytic functions, standard templates, or user-specific features we eventually found with Helpjuice. Moreover, those features created a clear path towards reducing SLAs. Before Helpjuice, a new article could take up to 41 business days to publish. Today, we’ve found that our most challenging clients can be published within 21 business days, with other clients taking as little as five business days.
Migrating to Helpjuice has reduced our SLA turnaround time for publishing from 41 business days to 21 days, a 49% difference, with some requests being published in as little as five business days, an astonishing 88% reduction in SLAs. We have been able to achieve these dramatic results because we have changed our ticket intake process, for which we can also thank Helpjuice. Our previous method employed a complicated internal form, which was usually reserved for IT requests. That process meant that users would submit their requests to a team that would take anywhere from two to four business days to determine what group the request belonged to. Upon receiving the request, our team was split up into separate groups, who would analyze and draft the requests, which would then be reviewed by the client. Once it was reviewed, the client would send the content back to the original team for final updates and peer review, at which point it would then, finally, be sent to the team devoted exclusively to publishing the final product. Client review aside, one request would see anywhere from five to ten people before being published. With Helpjuice, requests are sent directly to us directly, and they are assigned to one writer, who will complete the entire process, beginning to end. With that all being said, tickets are now completed an average of 26 times faster, using an average of 85% fewer writers. That is a remarkable difference.
