> I'm not kidding. They believe it keeps everyone grounded or keeps everyone familiar with the product or some other malarkey. This is a good idea and I'd reco

> I'm not kidding. They believe it keeps everyone grounded or keeps everyone familiar with the product or some other malarkey. This is a good idea and I'd recommend it. Perhaps not as a mandatory forced rotation, but as something that everyone on a team is encouraged to contribute to. Understanding the customer experience, and their problems and day-to-day frustration, are extremely valuable for informing product development and business priorities generally. That said, if software engineers are doing it and it's not their primary job function, then I'd suggest that only where there's no SLA. Full time support is probably necessary for things that have an SLA (probably only an unpaid forums / IRC type of thing). Meeting a fast SLA while giving high quality responses is difficult, especially under high growth, and requires the attention of dedicated people who can be measured on it. But yes I've found involvement in the day to day customer experience to be beneficial and enlightening even for roles that don't directly interact with customers routinely. It helps you understand your customers. The best team will be one where everyone has a connection to and understands the customers, their problems, how the business helps them, and where it can improve.