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If you ask customers what they value, they will tell you. Obviously, first you have to be smart enough to ask them, and then you have to be smart enough to listen.

In 2024, a major firm asked its customers what made them likely to recommend that firm. The ten most frequent responses were ranked from 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important.

The most important factor was customer support. Fully 12% of customers said that mattered more than any financial considerations, including payment terms and price.

The most recent time I was considering and being considered for a new technical writing position, I got a surprise. One of the managers mentioned my recent posting on this blog, Technical writers are not helicopters.

That was the first indication I had had that anyone ever read any of this blog.

Even in the smartphone age, writing is still like dropping a stone in a well and waiting to hear the splash. In fact, writing into the void has become more prevalent, at least in terms of the number of people “publishing,” which can mean that fewer people are reading.

Over the years, I have been blessed by working with terrific people.

Testers. Managers. Developers. Software architects. Customer support people at various levels. Fellow technical writers. Executives. Subject matter experts.

Quite a lot of these people could write a lot better than they thought they could. When they wrote, they thought about the user.

Some of them couldn’t write well but they were great at talking about what they wanted to write… if only I could get enough of their time to interview them. Below-average writers, but still way better-than-average communicators.