Are You Flushing Money Down the Drain?

Printing product manuals is a major expense.  Turn yours into a revenue-driver instead

Product manuals don’t come cheap. Take a look at Air Force One: the presidential aircraft’s instruction manuals are currently being rewritten at the cost of $84 million. 

Of course, not every product is as complex as a customized Boeing 747. But even for manufacturers of simpler products, user documentation can be a big expense. It’s been estimated that printing costs can eat up 3% of an organization’s total revenues, and user manuals often account for a big chunk of that spending.

Worst of all, the money that companies spend on product manuals is largely wasted — because the unspoken truth is that while product manuals contain incredibly valuable information, most of the time they go completely unread by end-users.

Go digital to reduce your costs 

Part of the solution, of course, is to go digital. Eliminate paper manuals, and you can cut down not just on printing costs, but also on associated production and distribution costs, including storage, packaging, and shipping. Going digital is also a great way to shrink your environmental footprint, and capture sustainability benefits without increasing your ESG costs.

At Conveyer, we specialize in helping companies make just this kind of transition. Using patented machine learning technologies, we can take your paper or PDF manual and turn it into a rich, engaging digital knowledge base that your customers will actually enjoy using.

That means lower costs for your business: one of Conveyer’s customers, an automotive industry leader with $120M in annual revenues, recently pivoted into digital instructions and was able to reduce their operating costs by over $1M a year.

But it gets better: our customer’s $1M saving only reflects the top-line benefits from cutting out printing and distribution costs. The reality is that when you partner with Conveyer, you don’t just save money — you also turn your digital documentation into a driver of new revenues.

Unlock the value in your product manuals‍

How does that work? Well, at Conveyer we understand that a user manual isn’t just a dry depository of information. It’s an opportunity to connect with your users at the precise moments when they most need help.

Users seek support when they’re first learning to use your product, when they’re trying to understand an advanced feature or a new use case, or when they encounter problems. By  engaging and supporting users in these critical moments you can reduce no-fault product returns, drive loyalty and increase return business over time, and even unlock upsell opportunities for add-on products, extended warranties, and more.

Crucially, companies that create engaging digital support hubs can also unlock new sources of valuable data. Each user interaction becomes a valuable data point: by tracking how and when users seek support, and feeding that intelligence back into your product roadmap, you can create new features or push out quick fixes to better serve your customers’ needs. 

A big opportunity‍

The bottom line: when it comes to your product manuals, printing costs are just the beginning. If you aren’t using your documentation to drive engagement, boost loyalty, and forge new revenue streams, then you’re missing a big opportunity. 

So stop flushing money down the drain. Get in touch with Conveyer today, and turn your user manuals into a new revenue driver for your business.