Your customers are frustrated. But your product isn’t the problem.

Maybe Feature Adoption is in a deep freeze. Your Customer Success team is burning out. And Renewals are an exercise in deep discounts and feature promises that rack up technical debt.

Your product isn't the problem. You've got the features, you've got the answers. What you don't have? A customer base that can actually leverage all those awesome features.

I turn complex products into videos and docs that walk customers across the bridge from "how do I do this?" to "this product does exactly what the sales team promised."

It's what I've done for over 20 years: as Technical Writing Manager for Workday, Technical Writer and Project Manager at Haemonetic's FDA-regulated DoD blood management system, and Technical Writer and Product Manager at a SaaS GovTech that got acquired.

Now I work with B2B SaaS companies that have outgrown their scrappy, DIY beginnings and have a customer base demanding more help than a single Zoom recording 3 versions old and a documentation system a founder cobbled together at 2am out of desperation to have "something."

The Problem Isn’t Your Product

When customers complain your product is too hard to use, struggle to adopt your best features, and fail to renew, it’s probably not your software.

Sure, UI updates, improved workflows, and added features always help. But the real issue might be that they just don’t know how to effectively USE your product. Only they don’t know how to articulate that.

So support tickets pile up. You see they’re only using about 20% of your product and not getting what they paid for. The relationship is icy at best and hostile at worst. Come renewal time, to keep some ACV, you’re selling your soul with discounts or promises of splashy new features.

Give Your Customers the Help They Need to Succeed

Your initial customers liked that you were scrappy and you kind of ran by the seat of your pants. Those innovators and early adopters are usually ok with figuring things out mostly on their own.

But as you grow and increase your brand awareness and market share, the new customers you’re getting aren’t quite as accepting of your lack of supporting tools. So they hit you with the questions: Where’s the training? What videos do you have to share? Can you give us the docs to help us use this product? How do we set this thing up right?

The reason? They actually want to succeed with your product. And they need help to do so.

The Difference Customer Education Content Can Make

Users are usually hungry to get any kind of help, with documents being the most common. But when you say you have videos, their ears perk up, they look a little more interested. And I say this having been a Technical Writer for a lot of years, and having written a lot of documents.

Videos Just Hit Differently

We live in a YouTube-TikTok kind of world. More people now prefer videos for learning over text or audio. Apparently our brains are hardwired to prioritize visual information, which drastically improves retention rates over text.

One recent client reported that their users felt more confident just knowing that they had videos available for learning. And the quality of their support calls actually went up - from really basic questions, to more advanced questions that showed a better understanding of the product.

It’s why I shifted to include more video offerings as part of my services, although I still provide a lot of documentation. This way, I can take my 20+ years of Tech and Technical Writing experience, and my ability to turn complex material into material people can actually use, and apply that to Training and Onboarding videos that help your customers learn and succeed with your product.

“These videos are a huge step forward and I feel we are pushing above our weight regarding our size and scale. I believe the consistent and standard approach will help speed up CS discussions and expectations.”

-Jonathan Thompson, CEO, Eproval

How I Can Help

I focus on two types of content, for both docs and videos:

  • Onboarding Materials that get new customers set up and and dramatically increase time-to-value.

  • Ongoing Help and Training Resources that help existing customers go deeper with your product.

Onboarding Materials

Good onboarding or implementation content reduces the time it takes to get new customers productive, which means their time to realizing actual value from your product is faster. Setup and implementation activities can be very complex and involve multiple stakeholders. And, let’s face it, there are times when not all of the stakeholders are thrilled with the work of implementing a new system or product.

Effective onboarding materials reduce those barriers. They also increase overall product adoption, because your customers not only understand your best features, they can actually see how they benefit from them.

The better users adopt your features, the “stickier” your product becomes. The more ingrained and essential your are to their daily workflows and outcomes, the less chance there is of them looking for a replacement.

Examples include:

  • Quick Start guides to get customers to achieve success with your product as quickly as possible.

  • Getting started videos that walk through initial setup.

  • First-use tutorials that show core workflows.

  • How-to videos that explain complex processes and set-ups (the areas your customers always struggle with).

  • Quick reference guides for common tasks.

Ongoing Help and Training Resources

These are the videos and help documents that enable customers to learn the features that matter to them, at their own pace. Churn happens when customers lose confidence in a product, or stop believing it can produce the outcomes they need. As a former Product Manager, I know the frustration of hearing a customer complain of a “missing” feature you implemented over a year ago.

It’s there, but they don’t know how to use it.

The best videos are short, 2-5 minutes long, and cover a specific problem or outcome. Users want to solve specific problems when that problem comes up. A well-stocked Video Library of solutions that help them solve those problems makes that a reality. Help documents are there to support the videos, go deeper into topics, and give users different learning options.

Examples include:

  • Feature-specific video tutorials

  • Advanced workflow guides

  • Best practices

  • Tips and tricks for power users

  • User and Admin Setup guides

Increasing Your Customer Lifetime Value

By focusing on your customer’s overall success with your products, you can realize a much greater Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

If you could increase each customer’s LTV by just 5 or 10% YoY, what would that mean to your business? Your investors? Your rate of growth?

  • Reduced Customer Churn

  • Higher Rates of Product/Feature Adoption

  • Increased Customer Satisfaction

  • Increased Customer Share of Wallet (more products/services bought over time)

  • Customers Who Champion Your Product

  • Increased Reference-able Customers

  • A Reputation for Delivering on Expectations

All of these lead to an increased Customer LTV, and a much easier path to YoY revenue growth. Constantly having to find new customers to replace revenue lost from high churn is way more expensive and extremely hard to maintain. Eventually, you’ll run out of prospects. Decreasing churn and increasing the LTV takes care of that.

The One-Stop-Shop Advantage

Videos get expensive when you have to hire production companies. That’s because you have to pay for the overhead of an entire team: someone to write the script, someone to edit the video, someone to do the voiceover, someone to do the motion graphics. And of course someone to manage all of them and keep the project on track.

Plus when you want to add written documentation to the mix, you’ve got to engage with a whole other team.

I do all of that, and you only have to ever deal with one person.

  • Scriptwriting and Documentation: You get my years of experience as a technical writer and trainer who knows how to convey technical information in a digestible format.

  • Professional Voiceover: I use a Rode NT1 Condenser Microphone in an acoustically treated room, recorded into Ableton Live for the best results. Want a different voice? I also use the top AI models, in conjunction with my recording skills, to get AI narration that doesn’t “sound AI.”

  • Video Production and Motion Graphics: I use Camtasia, which is great for screen recordings, graphics, and video editing. It’s really built for these types of videos. I also use Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion for more advanced outputs. For images and video footage, I use either stock footage or AI generated content. Either way, none of those costs are transferred to you.

  • Project Management: I’ve managed projects both big and small and know how to hit a deadline and keep things on track.

All of this just means a lower cost without sacrificing quality. Plus I work mainly with small tech companies, so I understand that “doing more with less” is an operational reality.

Let’s Talk About Where Your Customers Are Struggling

And see how we can make that next round of renewals less painful and more profitable.

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