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Hi, I'm Bill Kerschbaum from Intext Writing. I'd like to show you some product instructions.
My wife recently bought me a beard trimmer, and I looked at the instructions when I was
first using the product, and I had an interesting experience with it that I'd like to show you.
Let me set this down. And, this is the packaging. As you can see, it's real attractive. The
images are real nice here. And you can tell that they spent a lot of effort at making
this product interesting for the buyer. They wanted this to be appealing on the shelf.
What's it look like inside, though? Let's take a look. Now the trimmer isn't in here
because I've been using it, but the first time I opened it, I saw this. Now I was pretty
impressed, because at first glance I thought this was the product instructions - that it
was a booklet. And I was impressed because it's just as attractive as the packaging.
But then I realized that this is an advertisement to buy an extended warranty. So, basically,
they're asking for more money, and they wanted you to make another purchase. So they spent
a lot of effort at making this look attractive, again. But when they're not asking for your
money - once you're already a customer - this is what they give you. And it is cheap paper,
it's huge, and - uh, well, this is Spanish - and it's really hard to read. The formatting
is horrible, the text is very small, all of the graphics are contained in this panel here
and here. They're extremely tiny. They're not in color. The paper isn't nice and glossy.
Um, frankly, this is ugly. And it requires a lot of work to read, because your eye is
going back and forth between the instructions and the images. And because the instructions
are so small. It's hard to know where to start. And, uh, frankly, this is a very - this was
a really frustrating experience to have to read through this. I didn't feel like I was
cared for as a customer. In fact, I felt like if they were asking for money, they worked
really hard at making me impressed, but if they weren't asking for my money, once they
had it, they really didn't care what my experience was like. Uh, even trying to fold it up again
is like trying to fold a map. It's kind of hard to do. And it takes more effort than
you want to spend on it. So, so let me encourage you in your own product documentation, that
you spend time thinking about the entire customer experience. Your customers want to know that
they're cared for, that you value them even after you have their money. Creating product
instructions that are just as beautiful as your packaging makes a big difference for
the customer's experience. They know that, um, that you care about them, it shows consistency,
and really it helps them enjoy the product much more. So, um, thank you for watching,
and I hope that this was good food for thought for you.