Tech Salaries Rising: It’s Time to Harness Data & Share Knowledge

February 9th, 2012 | | Content in Context, Guest Blogger
Barb Mosher

A recent salary survey by Dice.com says that senior tech salaries are on the rise. There are a few things we can learn from this change in direction, and it’s not only that good tech people deserve more money.

Harnessing Data…

The Dice Salary survey was conducted online with 8,325 employed technology professionals between September 19 and November 21, 2011. The results showed an average 2% increase in annual wages over 2010 (from $79,384 to $81,327). Bonuses looked even better jumping up 8%.

The salary stats speak volumes about the importance of harnessing data properly for businesses and finding intelligent ways to both understand and use it.

It is our technical people that both create and support the systems that capture big data, and use the tools that analyze it. And it’s big data that many are saying is the key to developing truly great customer experiences. Darren Guaranccia agrees with this saying:“ Today’s analytics compress their collected data into summary statistics to save space. Big data is the promise of retaining this beautifully detailed data, and helping us plumb its depths to better engage and interact with our customers, even in real-time.” Read more…

Content in Context: Support & Sell Without the Sales/Marketing Pitch

January 26th, 2012 | | Content in Context, content strategy, Guest Blogger
bmosher3

When it comes to customer support for products and services, most organizations look to support processes such as online communities, help documentation, customer forums, etc.. But are these tools being used to their best advantage? The truth is, in most cases, they aren’t.

Moving Support into Sales & Marketing

We often take for granted the content used in support processes. Take help documentation as a prime example. It’s probably one of the most hated jobs in the organization, creating help documentation. Nobody reads it, it’s impossible to keep up to date as patches, bug fixes and major updates are completed. It’s shoved in static help documentation files, and placed on CDs, DVDs or in hard to reach places on the website. Is it ever read by a customer? Do they find it useful?

Tech writers and organizations should be happy to know that it doesn’t have to be this way. Read more…