Patrick Martin, Senior Director of Technical Support at Coveo, joined us in this episode of Knowledgebase Ninja Podcast to share his approach towards documentation knowledge management, how he defines documents’ feature functionality and the significance of quality article index for quality documentation. Check out all the other episodes here.

Key Facts

• Patrick Martin’s LinkedIn
• Coveo’s website
• Patrick holds a Diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engineering 
• Patrick is responsible for the Technical Support team
• Patrick is in the technical field for almost a decade 
• Coveo practices are based on Knowledge Centric Services (KCS) for technical documentation

Key Takeaways

• At Coveo, the documentation team is primarily focused on documenting features functionality and product-related documents
• Coveo’s technical support team make sure everything is well documented so that customers know about the features and how to configure them
• As well as technical support  multiple other teams are involved in knowledge management strategy and documentation 
• Customer success team and professional services team at Coveo contribute to building documentation to help customers self-search 
• Coveo uses workflow for quality reviews, publishing process, which is handled by a smaller group of knowledge domain experts within support
• Knowledge Domain Experts at Coveo use QAI (Quality Article Index), which is a part of KCS to review certain documents samples created by the team to ensure they fulfil the criteria
• Coveo also consists of KCS’ coaching process to make the quality of the documentation process consistent
• Patrick reveals that Coveo is based on a data-driven approach rather than a creative approach. Coveo ensures that the product quality index, product functionality, customer training, and knowledge articles are improved 
• Coveo’s technical support team believes in keeping the documentation simple so customers can easily understand it
• Documentation isn’t about just drafting articles. Nowadays support organizations are involved in communities as well as customers, so you are not the only one building documents. The document could be in the form of threads or forums but the information should remain valuable
• Coveo started investing in knowledge management about two years ago 
• Patrick shares a ratio of 70% known cases and 30% new cases, however that changed recently where the known ratio shifted to 60%, and new to 40%. The motive is to work on case submission flow and make it more like a guided resolution so that at Coveo we can be more efficient on how documents can be presented to the customers
• Coveo’s objective is to focus on measuring actual results coming through documentation effort, publishing knowledge articles and investing in knowledge management
• Coveo also focuses on activities like how many documents are created and published by externally vs internally. It also ensures that publishing time is under two days and content is out there as quickly as possible
• Coveo wants its technical support team to be more efficient by providing them with challenges to keep them interested
• Coveo’s goal is to answer the known technical issues through self-service
• Coveo’s portal is open to public
• Coveo is an experienced intelligence engine and intelligence search running on artificial intelligence

Patrick’s biggest influence

Patrick believes that he has learned the most about documentation from KCS Academy (Knowledge-Centric Service) from a product support perspective, especially the value of creating content and publishing

Key resource

• KCS Academy (Knowledge-Centric Service)

What documentation related advice would Patrick give to his 20-year-old self?

Don’t rely on your head too much; you can’t remember everything. When I started, I wasn’t even thinking about documentation, but the internet has changed so much that everything is available at the tips of your finger. Don’t think your brain can remember everything, create documentation reference as it would help at some point.

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