How 55 Degrees Delivers Documentation and Support for 5 Apps on One Help Site
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Support is one click away
Having JSM request buttons on Confluence pages makes help accessible right at the point of need.
02
Five products; one site — no problem
A simple navigation setup easily accommodates documentation spaces for five separate apps in one site.
03
Data in the EU makes compliance easy
Storing data in Germany made it easier to achieve data-security goals.
Case Study
Documentation, Customer Support
SaaS
Malmö, Sweden
1600 customers, 3 agents and editors
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Refined Sites for Confluence; Refined Sites for JSM
When Malmö, Sweden-based maker of agile development apps 55 Degrees launched a help center built with Refined in late 2021, they had one primary objective: Lighten the load on a one-person support team by making documentation, housed in Confluence, more welcoming, digestible, and easy to find.
Fast forward to today and, despite the company's headcount tripling alongside a fast-growing list of customers, the customer-facing team is just two people. A win they attribute in part to a successful support site that helps users help themselves.
Documentation is overlooked no more
Before Refined, 55 Degrees shared their documentation in a public Confluence space. But there was one problem: No one was reading it.
“I think the big issue was that Confluence can be a bit clunky to use,” says Margaux Fiche, customer experience manager. “It’s hard to have a nice landing page and you’re limited in terms of what you can do, and the colors you can choose.”
The team had a theory that because the documentation didn’t look appealing, and was a bit tricky to navigate to, it was going unread. Too often, support requests could have been avoided if customers had read the article anticipating their issue.
Refined gave the CX team a way to package documentation in a more-consumable format, and evidence that the improved user experience was paying off showed up in the content of the team’s 200 support requests per month.
“We’ve heard way more, ‘Oh, I found this on your documentation, I have questions,’ versus just a question without taking the time to look for the answer,” says Fiche, who heads up the site and manages the documentation it houses.
“They go and dig, and it’s quite nice.“
Integrating Confluence documentation and JSM support helps both customers and agents
55 Degrees used both Confluence and JSM before applying Refined, which meant that they were familiar with both tools. But one thing they found very useful with Refined was the way they could integrate the two on a Refined site to get more from each.
“That’s the nice thing,” says Fiche, “[the documentation and support] is all in one place instead of being in different places, and it’s very easy to navigate from one to the other.”
Refined allows you to embed service points – JSM request type links – directly in the documentation (they appear on the page itself and at the top of the Confluence page), giving folks a quick and easy pathway to ask for help if the instructions aren’t meeting their needs.
Says Fiche, “We quite like the fact that we could have our page where you would report a support issue in the same place as the documentation.”
Building transparency and trust
JSM serves two purposes on the 55 Degrees help site: a product roadmap as well as a tool for support requests.
The site's bug tracker – which comprises a table of issues visible to anyone on the site (note: this functionality is no longer available in the newest versions of Refined) – serves as a transparency tool, enhancing customer trust by showing users what’s being worked on. It also gives them the opportunity to leave feedback.
“Reported bugs land in JSM, and as long as we don’t limit access to a ticket it shows up publicly,” explains Fiche. “It’s something I know our users really appreciate as they can see what we’re working on, comment, and leave further requests.”
Five products; one support site
55 Degrees has five products in their app portfolio, but they have no trouble housing documentation for all of them on one site.
“We have five different products,” says Fiche. “Some of them on different platforms or hosting solutions as well. The documentation needs to be clear on what product we’re talking about as well as which hosting platform.”
Their solution is two-fold: Documentation for all five products is always accessible from the top nav (if users are consuming content about one app, that app is highlighted in the nav bar for clarity); and the home page contains navigation links with app logos, each leading to a space housing documentation for the associated app.
Each app gets a landing page containing key links, such as troubleshooting, release notes, and data/privacy. Landing pages also contain videos to help users get up and running fast, along with links to key pieces of documentation. There are also request type links where users can ask for help.
Peace of mind with EU data residency
55 Degrees recently attained ISO certification, and they were at the end of their SOC2 application process at writing.
Refined offers EU Data Residency for Cloud products. As a European company with data privacy top of mind, this was a huge win for 55 Degrees. It not only made it easier to attain key certifications, it lends peace of mind.
“We have better control over our data, and can make sure it’s stored in the EU,” says Fiche.
