Interview: Angie Seaman, Head of Customer Enablement and Engagement at Salsify

This is the third installment in our series of interviews with software documentation writers. We wanted to shine a light into the exciting world of software documentation, and hopefully provide some handy tips for aspiring docs writers. First we interviewed Kelly O'Brien, Self-Service Content Manager at Kayako, and Bri Hillmer, Documentation Coordinator at SurveyGizmo. 

Our latest interviewee, Angie Seaman, is Head of Customer Engagement and Enablement at Salsify, a company that sells product content management software.

How did you get into writing documentation?

Salsify is the first place I've officially written documentation, and I actually started out with Salsify as a customer. Before Salsify, I was an e-commerce director in charge of a website and customer support, and Salsify was my favorite platform and team to work with. 

When I started looking for new opportunities, Salsify was a natural fit. Salsify luckily was, and still is, growing like crazy. I started out in Customer Success, working with clients who I helped to get started with the platform. When the documentation position was created, it was a good fit for my experience and skillset, so here I am.

What is your current role and what team are you on?

I'm Head of Customer Education and Enablement, and I'm a tiny but mighty team of one. We also have some freelance help when we need it. Technically, my role sits on the product team. My role involves build one-to-many enablement for our customers, which means providing self-service content that can help many users at once. It currently includes knowledge bases for the various versions of our product, and in-app enablement.

What is one thing you think your current docs site does really well?

Our current docs are very thorough, and I think we cover the "how to" of our platform pretty well. I've been focusing on making sure that we create an explanation of how to use all the features that our platform offers. I also spend a lot of my time keeping up with our awesome engineering team as they roll out new features.

What's one thing you would like to improve in your current docs?

I want to find more ways to get all of our customers loving Salsify as much as I did when I was a customer, and still do. We do a good job of the "how to", and now I want to expand the "why to", "when to" and "the best way to" for more complex workflows to make the content more engaging. 

Our platform is super flexible and supports a lot of use cases, and there are a number of ways customers can use the platform to achieve their goals. I want to find ways we can build  more documentation that shines a light on common use cases, workflows and time savers. These will give our customers more ideas about how best to use Salsify in their own organizations to accelerate their goals.

What's your biggest personal challenge in your role?

Our office is in Boston and I work from home in Chicago. There are only a couple of us who are remote. Since Salsify is a quick-moving group, my main challenge is staying in the loop of what's happening and what's coming up next, to be sure I'm ready to help support it.

How do you collect feedback on your documentation to make things better?

We ask for feedback on the documentation itself and we do receive some feedback from customers that way. But it mainly it comes through our Customer Champions, who work closely with customers as they're onboarding, and our Customer Success team, who provide continued help to individual customers.

What company/product docs do you really like and why?

I really like Cloudinary's documentation - maybe partly because I find their features so magical. They do a good job of being comprehensive about very complex topics without making it feel overwhelming. And they make it easy to jump around to find what you need.

I loved the SurveyGizmo documentation when I was using their product, too. I could always easily find the right answer to my question, even when it was complicated. And almost every time I went looking for one thing, I'd find something that would spark yet another way I could use the software to solve a problem.

How do you see self-service sites changing in the next few years?

As the technology improves, I think the documentation that lives on self-service sites will migrate more into applications. Content should live as close to where it's needed as possible to keep customers doing what they want to get done. I think in the future, we'll have better ways to use help site content to drive the in-app experience.

What advice would you give to anyone looking to breaking into this type of work?

I'd say first off, know that you'll need to learn how the software works, then be able to translate it to people who are more interested in getting their work done than learning how your software works. Be willing to jump in and be a curious user. Figure things out, ask a lot of questions, then write documentation from customers' points of view.

Thanks, Angie! Now you've read Angie's interview, check out Kelly O'Brien, Self-Service Content Manager at Kayako, and Bri Hillmer, Documentation Coordinator at SurveyGizmo. We've also got a great article on the popular Write the Docs software documentation community.