What makes software harder for older users?
The W3C's accessibility guidance lists the changes that come with age. Vision, including reduced contrast sensitivity. Dexterity, which makes small targets hard to click. Hearing. And cognition, including reduced short-term memory.
Every item on that list is a design problem you can fix.
Product tours make the memory one worse. Six tooltips in a row ask someone to hold six steps in their head, then repeat them later on a different screen.
What should the first session look like?
- Pick the one real task they came to do, like sending a first invoice. Skip the feature tour.
- Do it on their screen, with their data, one step at a time.
- Say each step out loud and point at the button as you name it.
- Let them make every click. Doing it once beats watching it five times.
- Stop there. The second feature can wait for the second visit.
Can software run that session instead of your team?
For common first tasks, yes. A voice guide inside your product can run it on demand, at 9pm on a Sunday, with nothing to book. agent247 speaks each step, highlights the button as it names it, and waits for the customer to click. Anyone who'd rather not talk can type.
One quirk worth knowing. Chrome blocks a page from playing sound until the person has clicked or tapped on the site, with a few exceptions. So a voice guide can't count on talking the moment the page loads. agent247 shows a small invite first and speaks once it's tapped. For this audience that's a good thing. Nobody gets startled by a talking website.
What should stay human?
Anything about money or account access, and any customer who is upset. Keep a phone number easy to find. Let the guide take the repetitive walkthroughs so your team has time for those calls.
Related reading: supporting customers who aren't tech-savvy, when a customer can't find a setting, and how to add the guide to your site.