Bill Myers

When writing instructions about how to use your products, never take it for granted that your customers know how to do anything.

We recently fielded a number of support questions about how to use a CD we produced.

A surprisingly frequent question was, "When I put the CD into my computer, nothing happens. When I click the CD icon, I get the error message, "NO CD in drive".

It took us a while to figure out what the problem was.

The customers were placing the CD in their computers upside down.

We shouldn't have assumed they knew which side of the CD was up.

Another customer contacted us and said, 'When I place the CD in, nothing happens.'

Again, it took a while to figure this one out.

The customer was placing the CD into a boom box stereo, thinking the computer CD would play in their audio CD player.

Again, we shouldn't have assumed they knew a computer CD wouldn't play in a music player.

The first step of our CD instructions now reads, "Place this CD disc, label side up, into the CD ROM drive of your Windows compatible computer.'"

Look at your own instructions. Do they assume too much? If they do, change them now and reduce customer problems and potential support issues.