Yes, this is critical stuff!! I've seen a lot of effort put into unguided documentation efforts that put out huge, unapproachable times that helped nobody.
Indeed. We have simple process to create maximum support impact with minimal effort in documentation.
With every support request we ask ourselves: Why is this person contacting us? Is there a simple ui change or wording to prevent confusion. Basecamp coined the term "wordsmithing" for this endless process of fine tuning. [1]
Only after we are happy with the amount of support request a feature generates, we document it.
Doing it this way has a couple benefits. You kind of create a long term user test. You can't spoil the user with knowledge from documentation. There is no way you can give hits to the user to perform a the task. With every support request you can multi variant test your explanation.
