3 ms·

Every Customer-Facing Call Should Have an Engineer on It

19 points by rmason 6y ago

computronus 6y ago
I agree with having engineers on calls to foster empathy with customers. Once in a while, each engineer should get on a customer call. Every call, though? I doubt a typical engineering organization can spare the time. As an engineer myself, I'm usually scoped way down in the weeds of a mass of technical problems. It's an expensive context switch to come all the way up to thinking about broad customer issues, and then get back down. OK to do on occasion, but not regularly. And besides: Why do customers feel less "heard" without an engineer on the line? Why are all the others on these calls under- or over-committing, unless an engineer is there? It seems like the problem isn't with lack of engineering presence, but with what everyone else in the organization is doing.
Traster 6y ago
I think articles like this could atleast address the obvious counter arguments: Putting engineers on call is likely to expose them to issues that are objectively not important but become emotively important because the people on the call asked you to fix them (and you stupidly agreed!). This is okay as long as firm ground rules are set around what engineers are allowed to agree to (and trained on how to be non-commital), the reason people are happier when an engineer is on a call is because they think that someone is actually going to do something. If your standard operating procedure is to waste engineering time sitting in on customer meetings, and then not let the engineers fix the issues they heard about then your customer trust is going to drop. Also there's a buzz when engineers start to meet customers, but once you've met your 5th customer you're pretty much done with that buzz - especially if you're breifed by the company that you're not allowed to commit to anything.
gumby 6y ago
Not just engineers. At various companies I have required every member of the management team to attend one sales call per quarter (enterprise sales; for non-enterprise, a customer). The CFO is always the most interesting: they rarely really have strong domain knowledge of the details of the company's product in the market (they know what goes into making it!) and learn a lot about how our customers think of our product.
m463 6y ago
This has been done before, but traditionally an engineer gets rotated into support or goes with a field engineer for a short time to get the hang of it. It will work against you in large quantities or on-call though. Also, a lot of engineers are introverts, and some are "too honest" to be customer facing. Elon Musk is the only one who could get away with talking about stone toadstools to customers.
hizxy 6y ago
Lol

19 points by rmason 6y ago

I agree with having engineers on calls to foster empathy with customers. Once in a while, each engineer should get on a customer call. Every call, though? I doubt a typical engineering organization can spare the time. As an engineer myself, I'm usually scoped way down in the weeds of a mass of technical problems. It's an expensive context switch to come all the way up to thinking about broad customer issues, and then get back down. OK to do on occasion, but not regularly. And besides: Why do customers feel less "heard" without an engineer on the line? Why are all the others on these calls under- or over-committing, unless an engineer is there? It seems like the problem isn't with lack of engineering presence, but with what everyone else in the organization is doing.

Traster 6y ago

I think articles like this could atleast address the obvious counter arguments: Putting engineers on call is likely to expose them to issues that are objectively not important but become emotively important because the people on the call asked you to fix them (and you stupidly agreed!). This is okay as long as firm ground rules are set around what engineers are allowed to agree to (and trained on how to be non-commital), the reason people are happier when an engineer is on a call is because they think that someone is actually going to do something. If your standard operating procedure is to waste engineering time sitting in on customer meetings, and then not let the engineers fix the issues they heard about then your customer trust is going to drop. Also there's a buzz when engineers start to meet customers, but once you've met your 5th customer you're pretty much done with that buzz - especially if you're breifed by the company that you're not allowed to commit to anything.

gumby 6y ago

Not just engineers. At various companies I have required every member of the management team to attend one sales call per quarter (enterprise sales; for non-enterprise, a customer). The CFO is always the most interesting: they rarely really have strong domain knowledge of the details of the company's product in the market (they know what goes into making it!) and learn a lot about how our customers think of our product.

m463 6y ago

This has been done before, but traditionally an engineer gets rotated into support or goes with a field engineer for a short time to get the hang of it. It will work against you in large quantities or on-call though. Also, a lot of engineers are introverts, and some are "too honest" to be customer facing. Elon Musk is the only one who could get away with talking about stone toadstools to customers.

hizxy 6y ago

Lol