This is a great thing to do. I would even add to it. Senior ENGINEERING folks in particular should do this periodically, maybe at least once a year and particularly after product rollouts. Those with the vision and responsibility for design of products all too often are the ones most disconnected from the actual user experience.

Freshbooks does this for a month and it is SO ingrained in their culture. Every company should do it.

Further to the comment by @startupcfo:disqus I just completed my month of training on support at FreshBooks. What I learned about our customers and our business during that month would have taken a lot longer without this front-line training. By far the best onboarding I’ve experienced, and a great example of our focus on customer support. Great article.

At one of my previous companies this was baked into the culture for virtually _everyone_ in the company to touch customers. For engineering it was part of the job (and they were scaled appropriately to handle the workload) that they all did support along with development (there was no separate dedicated support dept). Many engineers scoff at this but IMO the company results proved it out. With a staff of ~10 engineers and ~8 sales folks, the relationship to the customers (7,500+ including nearly all the F500) was super tight, the intimacy between sales/engineering was nearly perfectly aligned and the product iteration (agile before Agile was Agile) was quick. If you remove the distance between the person experiencing the pain (bug, feature) and the person capable of remedying the pain, you not only create a happier customer but the implicit longterm learnings are dramatic. Plus it’s a reminder to the developer that if they create the issue, they will have to hear the feedback directly so get it right the first time (more reliable releases become the norm).

Now that the engineers know the CONTEXT of the pains/needs, (which can’t be under-estimated) product dev takes on a different trajectory based on known need/pain. In conversations about priorities, no longer is it a customer-facing person “on an island”. There are now multiple people speaking from experience whether this client worth $x value is contributing/costing $y/ and what to do about it. Meanwhile you have these clients raving about how they “go right to the engineer”, telling everyone how awesome you are and your product is, generating another 10 inbound leads for you. Trust me, it worked for 6+ years.
The comment argument is “wow, that’s an expensive way to solve problems” but engineering’s ability to help drive business paid for itself in every conceivable way: customers were impressed to be talking to the folks “coding the solution”, time lag went down, risk of miscommunication was minimized, feedback to sales was direct – we now knew who was leading the way in our prod dev and therefore needed to be cared-for when negotiating a new deal or a renewal, reference customers were easy, and the company had a holistic understanding of the customer from the most valued/knowledgeable people in the business.
I acknowledge that this is not possible in every business or at every size of business but the effects were mind-blowing.
The one caveat to this whole concept is it has to be INGRAINED INTO THE CULTURE. Whether it’s a formal part of the job, a 2-week requirement or some other derivation, if it’s not drilled in why it matters and enforced at a cultural level, then it is not more than window-dressing and failure of the model will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’ve been doing this personally for the last 2 weeks and it has helped me immensely. I think answering emails is something that I will continue to do and work on until I feel 110% comfortable fielding any and all questions, no matter what they are.

Thanks Brad.

Zappos has been famous for doing this for a long time. Plus, they pay you cash if after the training period you choose not to work at the company.

very interesting post and the response from the comments is one of overwhelming support. I must say that the ‘break in period’ of the first week is not something that I am experiencing in my new official role at Engagio To be fair I have been working with them for few months prior to that.

From the beginning of our company, everyone spends at a day per month on Support, including me. We have reaped tremendous advantages in customer loyalty, feature prioritization and teamwork. I am a huge believer in the practice.

Amazon has a “Customer Connection” program like this for execs. They spend time doing customer service and also time working in the fulfillment centers.