You said you wanted to increase revenue and decrease costs, but you’re ignoring a key area.
Dear CEO: 
I am here to help. I represent the customer’s best interest when using our products and services. I am her voice.
When the company hired me as a Technical Communicator I was under the impression that my representation of the customer mattered. That I would be given the authority along with the responsibility to act in the customer’s best interest.
That I would be able to communicate how our products solve real problems. That I’d be given the right tools to ensure our customers receive quick and relevant answers. That I’d be given a seat at the table prior to the product shipping.
I want to help the company communicate our strong value proposition without marketing jargon. I understand our customers and prospective customers. I know their needs. I can communicate with them in the manner they feel most comfortable. And as a byproduct, this information ends up on Google. Which drives traffic to our website. Which means more revenue.
I want to help the company deploy web based documentation and support solutions that are more social – a community even. But our current site isn’t cutting it. PDF’s are not easily searchable and people are turned off by searching through them. They want to connect with experts to find answers quickly. They want rich media, tutorials, and access to other customers in order how to learn how to use our product better.
I want to help the company decrease costs by deploying a dynamic documentation site that solves our customer’s problems without them picking up the phone to call customer service. Because that’s what they do now. They do it first without even checking the documentation. They don’t find it useful.
I’d like you to know that when you ship a product without including me in the go-to-market plan you are ignoring the customer. When all I hear is, “we’ll do the documentation later,” we are not optimizing our chance to communicate the best attributes of the product to our customers. Therefore, I can’t help you.
When I have to print out or email documentation to Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) in order to solicit feedback; receive the changes back the same way, then send it out again, then rinse and repeat multiple times until it’s “good enough”. The process is broken. Thus, I can’t help you.
The company is obsessed with cutting costs and increasing revenue. That’s fantastic. Yet we are not properly investing in the area that can have significant impact. Not only can we help cut costs and increase revenue, we can make the customer experience with our product a WOW experience.
We are that good.
Yours truly,
The Technical Communicator
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P.S. Feel free to cut, paste and send to your CEO. It’s my gift to you 
