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2014-02-02 08:29:44

It’s valuable for a Software Support Engineer to review and shorten a too-wordy draft of their customer support response.

To make a written customer support response focused and concise, it’s valuable for a Software Support Engineer to review and shorten a too-wordy draft of their customer support response.

Recently I spent at least 15 minutes writing a detailed response to a customer’s concern. I wrote at length about the case, its symptom, its problem, and the proper action/solution.

And I almost posted it. But I did a full read-through of the response before sending it. (which is also another good support technique on its own)

And I found that the response was far to lengthy, verbose and not focused enough.

So I edited it to take out the lengthy, unfocused parts. And unfortunately for me that took another 10-15 minutes in this case. I ended up with a shorter article where i had taken out about 75% of the content from the original response! I felt a little frustrated that i had spent so much time and ended up with such a short response. But then I did another read-through of this final result. And I became satisfied, because knew finally that I had responded concisely and accurately to the customer’s concern, with a focused response that contained just the information it should, no less and no more.

The point of this story is that regardless of the time spent or the length of the response, its important to have a focused, concise reply. And therefore that means as a software support engineer, if I see my response is to long, verbose and unfocused, then I should be shorten and focus it before being sent to the cusotmer.

*2014-12-05 edit: previously published at http://w̶i̶e̶l̶d̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/?p=69


[2020 edit: Moved to: https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2014/... .html.]