Alternatively, for real-world processes, photos demonstrating the process or graphical illustrations are ideal. Screenshots and images often need a couple tweaks to truly get their point across.
Usually this means adding annotations like arrows, shapes, and other callouts. Another nice touch is to remove or hide sensitive or unnecessary information.
Use the drawing and editing tools in Snagit to edit your images so they convey the right message and have unnecessary or sensitive information blurred or removed. Now is when creating a training manual usually becomes tedious. The process of adding images to a template, document, or another source involves formatting frustrations, image sizing issues, and other similar, unforeseen challenges.
In this case, an easy solution is to create from templates in Snagit. This lets you select the images you want to include in your manual, add text, arrange the order, and make selections about the appearance in one quick process. Snagit comes with a number of professional templates you can choose from, and you can find more free and premium templates and other resources in TechSmith Assets for Snagit.
This is a great method to use because you can take on each process or task you need to cover and create a separate section of the manual. Then you can save the each as a PDF or an image for sharing, compiling into a complete guide, or posting individually in a company intranet. Of course, making individual stand alone documents might not be the right approach.
In this case, you might consider using tools like Zendesk or MadCap Flare to create a knowledge base support center or a help file document. If you are creating an online knowledge base, you should be able to use video, image, and written content all at the same time. So, get creative and make content that covers everything your audience might need. If you interact with your audience, listen to their feedback about the help you provide.
Based on what they say, see if there are topics that need to be expanded or ones that are not yet covered at all. Not everyone can learn by reading 20 pages of text, so include ways for users to apply what they read and get hands on experience. Give a scenario and ask the reader to solve a problem of some kind. Allow for discussion and collaboration among trainees. You want to cater to different learning styles so the manual is useful for as many people as possible.
The goal of the training manual is to help employees learn what they need to know, so aim to make it easy for as many people as possible. Enhance the manual with videos or audio recordings. If you are writing a printed manual, consider whether or not you can give trainees access to extra materials, such as videos or audio recordings.
For learners who would struggle to read an entire manual, you can work to ensure they still learn what they need to. Many times the written manual will be the primary training tool, but a few extras may make a big difference. Take stock of the specifics of your manual and judge whether or not extra materials could be created.
Method 3. Include a section for user notes. As you are writing each section of the manual, people using the manual will be trying to take in a lot of information. When you purposefully include blank spaces for writing notes, you encourage the users to jot down what they are learning.
This will increase the amount of information that they retain. This helps people avoid having separate notebooks that they might lose track of. Utilize images and graphics. Any time you can show the reader something visual, it can have an impact on how much they understand. You don't want to clutter your manual with too much, but use visuals if you can.
You can have screenshots of steps in computer work. You can include charts of important data. Pictures of tools or machinery the person will use are good, too. There really is no limit to what types of visual aids you could include, so think about what you are training for and what would be most helpful for the user to see.
Include checklists of important steps. For many manuals, you'll be detailing the steps of various processes, and checklists are a great way to sum things up. When a user needs to refer back to a section that includes specific steps, the checklist will refresh their memory and can be checked much more quickly than multiple paragraphs of text.
Checklists could include materials needed, sections for before, during, and after completing a task, or how to evaluate work once it is done. Include activities and quizzes that measure learning. You want to ensure that users of your manual are learning as they go, so write up small tests of their knowledge.
Include the answers in a separate spot so they can check how they did. You could have multiple choice questions, fill in the blank and matching, or scenarios for problem solving. The purpose would be to help them along the way in gauging how much their are learning. If you want to create a training manual, you could use any word processing software, like Microsoft Word, Pages Mac or Google Docs. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 2. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Once the manual is complete, gather a test group to see if it makes sense and is an effective training tool.
However, others opt to have managers make decisions. Whichever option you choose, express it in your customer service manual. Ideally, your training manual should give clarity on the power of customer service reps — for instance, can they offer special discounts, provide warranties, or give refunds?
Often, these are the issues that build or break customer relationships. If you want customer service agents to escalate the problems to their seniors, be sure to include in the manual:. Providing this information in the customer support training manual helps in ensuring that:. In this section, you should provide all the information your customer service team needs to know while interacting with customers.
The training manual should provide your employees with instructions, guidance, and advice on how to interact with customers. For retail businesses, this could mean face to face or even phone interactions. Your manual can also include how to address queries over emails. This will give teams an idea of how to go about it.
Emphasis should be made on non-verbal communication, as well. For instance, the customer support training manual should provide advice on:. To ensure that your staff understands what is expected of them, you may proceed to provide some examples of how they should deal with frequent issues or complaints.
Also, provide information on:. If your business sells products, you need to have a clear policy on refunds that your customer support or service staff can access and execute with ease.
Refunds and returns are common customer service issues. As such, you must provide information on how they should be handled effectively. For large B2B companies and service providers, the execution of refund policies is more nuanced. In this case, you can request customer service reps to escalate refund issues to their seniors and explain the escalation process in the training manual. The manual should also include information on the methods you use to make refunds or returns.
Feedback from customers and employees can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your customer service manual and improve it over time.
To capture feedback from customers , you may carry out a survey or, better still, talk to your major clients to find out about their experiences with your online manual. In addition to your customers, consider talking to employees too. As they spend a lot of time interacting with customers, your frontline staff will have valuable insights into the challenges they face while dealing with clients and the perception of customers regarding your offerings.
Seek feedback from them and make relevant improvements in your service manual. You can either write this information from scratch using an online editor. This speeds up the content creation process, and you can have your manual ready in no time.
Once you have the content in place, edit it as you want. Add headers and footers to the pages, change font type, styling, and paragraph format. Pick your favorite colors and themes to give a unique touch to your user manual. According to Forrester , 1 minute of video is equivalent to 1. This is precisely why people prefer understanding concepts via images, videos, and screenshots than plain text. Make your manual a valuable information resource by adding relevant images and videos wherever possible.
This will give your employees a deeper understanding of processes. Executing these processes across departments will then be a piece of cake, with chances of errors reduced to a minimum. The video will demonstrate the process clearly, giving employees a quick understanding of the guidelines to be followed while sealing a deal.
As you can see in the image below, its help desk manual has screenshots to explain concepts to the members of the IT department. Scroll through this manual, and you will find that each topic is explained clearly via images. Here is another example, where Mimosa uses videos in its product manual. Image Source: Mimosa Help Center. You must have come across manuals that do not provide the right direction to readers.
This help can be delivered in the form of tooltips, lightboxes, and popups. Use them appropriately at the right spots to explain the jargon, clarify concepts, or provide additional information.
Each of these has a different use case. A tooltip works well for explaining complicated terms, policies, and much more. Add a tooltip to provide information clues wherever you feel the reader might get confused.
It looks something like this —. Lightboxes are perfect for providing product tours and exhaustive procedural help. These are interactive and come with a scroll bar effect.
A pop-up is a small window that suddenly emerges on a page to provide extra information about anything. Embed it at places where you feel the reader might require more details.
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