Writing samples
| Pleasing customers by the numbers published article | Help desk agent work instruction | Laptop user’s guide | Open-source contribution | SaaS user-assistance information |
As a help desk process manager
When I produced these items, I worked as an internal help desk agent and process manager for an international reinsurance corporation. As process manager, I performed technical writing tasks such as contributing information to the knowledgebase used to answer customers’ questions and solve their issues, producing work instructions for help desk agents, and providing information to the rest of the company from the information technology department.
I was asked by the editors of Support World magazine to write an article about the help desk’s experience collecting, analyzing, and acting on customer service metrics we collected as a customer satisfaction survey. I interviewed my manager, coworkers, and managers of other parts of the information technology staff for the article and worked with the publisher’s editors on refining it.
The audience of the work instruction was help desk agents. It provides instructions to complete a process as part of a larger effort to solve a networking issue. Information in the knowledgebase would guide them to this process and then direct them to the next part of the effort. I produced it in Microsoft Word and from a template I created to automate including information in the first-page header using VBScript.
The selection of pages from a laptop user’s guide I produced in the same role. At the time (approximately 2000), the company was issuing laptop computers to some employees in replacement of the desktop computers. These people were expected to use the laptop computers while in the office as well as while working remotely. However, no training in doing so was provided.
We at the help desk became aware of this as calls and questions came to us about laptops and their use. Aware of this trend and with customers’ questions and issues recorded by help desk agents, I went to management with the idea to provide an introductory training course and user’s guide on the use of laptop computers and working remotely. My idea was approved and I produced the guide, had it printed internally by the corporate print shop, and arranged the details and resources of conducting the courses. Over approximately the next two years, I conducted the courses bi-monthly or as demand dictated, laptop users were provided copies of the guide when their desktop computers were replaced, and help desk metrics showed a decrease in questions about basic laptop use and working remotely.
This sample contains descriptive, procedural, and troubleshooting types of information and artwork describing parts of a laptop. I produced the guide in Microsoft Word.
As a contributor to an open-source project
In 2013, I volunteered to write user-assistance information for an open-source software system to play board games through Google Hangouts. I wrote the information in Google Docs and the project leader and primary software developer made the information available through the project’s Web site and kindly thanked me. The information includes descriptions of how to set up the server software and how to use it to play games.
As a contractor for a SaaS product
Most recently, I produced user assistance information for electronic health record (EHR) software delivered online as a service (SaaS). I did this work as a contractor and the information was developed in the customer’s docs-as-code environment, using Atlassian Confluence, markdown files, a GitHub repository, and a hugo static site generator server. I installed and maintained a development version of the toolchain and site on my computer and published the information through the GitHub repository.
These are some of the topics I wrote. I did not then nor now control the presentation or appearance.