Share difficulties with customers

In an interview with Werner Vogels (Amazon's Chief Technology Officer), he described how Amazon developers kept communicating with their users:

Remember, most of our developers maintain good contact with customers, therefore, they have a good understanding of "what customers like", "what customers do not like", and "what are our own shortcomings.

We received a lot of feedback from the customer service department. Many Amazon employees must be called for customer service every two years. They need to answer customer service calls and reply to customer service emails, in this way, we can understand the various effects of the work they have done when they are technicians. This practice works very well because they began to realize that our users are not engineers with a strong technical background. On the contrary, you may receive a call from an old lady from a computer in the library, saying that she saw her grandson, who is still studying at the university, very interested in things on Amazon, she wants to help him buy ......

Customer Service statistics are also a good early sign that it allows us to know whether we are doing wrong in some ways, or what aspects of our customers are struggling. Sometimes, during a meeting, we reference "voice from customers"-a true story about how a customer uses a specific Amazon service. This can help the management and engineers to get in touch with the actual situation and keep in mind that their technology is truly intended for human services.

People accidentally fall into the trap of the ivory tower-style software development model. In many cases, software developers just rush to pass through their code. Of course, the code is written by them, but they won't be used as frequently as their customers do. Although they will also go back from time to time, they lack a user perspective and cannot understand users, however, these users will spend every day with the bad software (whether voluntary or forced ). What are the results? There are many problems and it is difficult to communicate! The customer's voice was so weak that it seemed to have flown through the distant sky ......

Note: The word Ivory Tower is from the Old Testament songs. It was originally used to praise the beautiful neck of the bride. Now, it refers to the dream of a real life.

When you meet customers, why didn't you want to spend much time talking about the problems they encounter when using your website or software. Do you remember the last time this happened?

It is essential to bring developers to the customer's "trench", because after the developers deliver the code, the customers are the people who truly share the code. If you lack the most basic understanding of your users and customers, then you cannot make intimate software. If you want to know the users, it would be better to push the developers to the first line for support. I do not recommend that all programmers have the same role: both technical development and customer support. This will only make people lose focus and accomplish nothing. But as Mr. Vogels described, if developers rotate for customer support in a short period of time, the miracle is that the quality and availability of your software will be greatly improved!

Dog food is hard to eat! However, it is not difficult to provide short-term customer support.Software developers should share difficulties with customers.I know this is not nice. However, if you do not show your willingness to help customers effectively use the software-more importantly, understand why they need help-you cannot really complete software development!

Share difficulties with customers