Whether you have no docs yet or docs that no longer match your product — the result is the same. Users get confused, support gets buried, and engineers get interrupted. That's the missing step.
Shipping fast, docs haven't happened — and users are starting to feel it.
🔁
Support on repeat
The same questions every week. Your team answers them. The docs don't.
📦
Docs don't match the product
The product moved on. The docs didn't. Nobody knows which is right.
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Onboarding is stalling
Users sign up, hit friction in week one, and quietly stop coming back.
The cost of the gap
You're already paying for it. You just can't see the invoice.
Whether you have no docs yet or docs that don't work — the cost is the same. It's buried inside your team's week, spread across Slack threads, support tickets, and engineering time that should be spent building.
~4hrs
per engineer, per week
Engineering time explaining instead of building
When there's no docs, users go to whoever built it. Engineers get pulled into Slack threads and onboarding calls — explaining behaviour instead of improving it.
30–40%
of support tickets
Questions a single doc would have answered
Support teams at underdocumented products spend a significant chunk of every week answering questions that a well-written help article would have killed entirely.
Week 1
is when it matters most
Confused users don't come back
Most users decide whether a product is worth figuring out in their first week. Hit confusion, find nothing — no guide, no context — and they don't raise a ticket. They just stop.
This isn't a docs problem. It's an engineering cost, a support cost, and a retention cost — running quietly in the background every single week.
The approach
The same problem, every company, every stage.
I've spent years inside product teams watching the same thing happen at every stage of growth. Products would scale. Product understanding wouldn't. Nobody owned the gap between what was built and what users actually got.
The Missing Step fills it.
01
Start with the product, not the pages
The diagnosis begins by understanding how your product was built and where the gap between intent and user experience opened up. The docs come second — always.
02
Work across product, support and engineering
The clearest signals about what's missing live in your support queue and sprint retrospectives — not your help centre. That's where the work starts.
03
Build a system, not just better pages
The goal isn't a one-time rewrite. It's a documentation system your team can maintain as the product grows — with clear standards and ownership built in from the start.
Sophie Torcello
Product Communication Strategist
Services
Three ways to work together
Every engagement starts with The Diagnosis — free, no commitment, and by the end of it you'll know exactly what the gap is costing you.
Free to start
The Diagnosis
Free
First 3 engagements only
A structured diagnosis of where documentation is creating friction — or where the absence of it is costing you. I trace your key user journeys and map exactly where users stall, drop off, or raise avoidable tickets.
Docs review or gap analysis if no docs exist
Key user journey analysis
Prioritised findings tied to business impact
Loom walkthrough of findings and next steps
2 weeks · no obligation to proceed
Most common next step
The Rebuild
$8,000–$18,000
Scope confirmed after The Diagnosis
Whether you're starting from zero or fixing what's grown messy — the process is the same, scoped to where you are. A documentation system built around how your users actually think, with standards your team can maintain as you scale.
Information architecture — built or rebuilt
Priority pages written with real-world context
Terminology aligned across product, docs and support
Content system, writing standards and team handover
6–10 weeks · guided or full execution
Ongoing
The Retained
$2,000/mo
Post-Rebuild
New features ship. Docs go stale. The Retained keeps documentation current — new features documented before they ship, existing articles updated as the product evolves, and a quarterly review to catch emerging gaps before they compound.
New feature documentation
Ongoing article maintenance
Quarterly support ticket review
Continuous outside perspective on product clarity
Monthly · cancel anytime
💡 Every engagement starts with The Diagnosis. That means no guesswork on scope — by the time we discuss price, I already know exactly what needs fixing and why. There's no obligation to proceed beyond the audit.
Example case
Real engagement. Real results.
Relay is an enterprise communications platform used by 40,000+ users across a highly regulated industry. When a mobile app launch created the opportunity to modernise everything at once, the documentation problems that had been quietly compounding for years finally had to be solved.
Example case · Relay · Enterprise communications platform
500 pages. 40,000 users. One mobile app launch that changed everything.
Users40,000+
TriggerMobile app launch
High impact
Terminology didn't match the UI
Docs referred to functions by different names than what appeared on screen. The same functions had different names in the docs and on screen — consistently, across every workflow. Users couldn't find what they were looking for because the words they knew from the UI didn't exist in the documentation.
High impact
500+ pages built around the UI, not user workflows
The entire documentation structure mirrored the product architecture — not how users actually worked. Completing a single workflow required navigating across multiple disconnected sections. Information repeated without signposting. Nothing was outcome-based.
Medium impact
Legacy content never removed
Old features, deprecated flows and outdated screenshots sat alongside current content with no distinction. Users couldn't tell what was still relevant. Support teams using the docs to answer tickets were working from the same unreliable source.
Before
✕Two functions that did similar things — with no explanation of when to use which
✕The same feature called different things in the docs and on screen — users couldn't find what they were looking for
✕500+ pages with no workflow logic — users read instructions but didn't know if they'd done it right
✕Support teams relied on the same outdated docs they were trying to help users navigate
After
✓Every function named consistently across docs, UI and support materials
✓Documentation rebuilt around user workflows — not product architecture
✓Every article outcome-based — users know what success looks like before they start
✓Support ticket volume dropped — support team finally had docs they could trust
✓Workflow-structured docs became the training data for the platform's AI model — only possible once terminology and structure were clean
✓500 pages condensed to 160 — one clean product user guide, no repetition, no legacy content
"The mobile app launch was the forcing function — but the real work was understanding how 40,000 users actually thought about their workflows versus how the product was built. Those are almost never the same thing."
— Sophie Torcello, Product Communication Strategist
🤖
Unexpected outcome: AI training became possible
Once the documentation was restructured around workflows and terminology was consistent across every surface — docs, UI, support — the platform was able to use it as training data for an AI model. That wasn't the original brief. It became possible because the underlying work was done properly.
The methodology
Sat with every team member before touching a single page
Before any rewriting began, time was spent with long-tenure team members, support staff and product leads to understand the intent behind every workflow — how the product was supposed to work, not just how it did. Weekly check-ins throughout kept the work grounded in reality.
The methodology
Reviewed every UI label against documentation terminology
Every function name in the docs was mapped against what appeared on screen. Discrepancies were flagged, discussed with the product team, and resolved — ensuring the terminology users saw in the product matched exactly what they'd find if they went looking for help.
Real case. Company name and identifying information have been changed for confidentiality.
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