I watched this happen to our CS team at previous employer. Having a close relationship with CS folks was enlightening. I had a direct feed into into issues tha

I watched this happen to our CS team at previous employer. Having a close relationship with CS folks was enlightening. I had a direct feed into into issues that I never would have known existed, because of conversations at the coffee maker. Our CS people had a keen eye for "emerging issues", and by the time they became bad enough to make it through the management filter I had already thought through solutions to the issues I knew were going to land in my lap.