When I train our employees to respond to customer support issues, I always make sure that in every response they do as much as possible to "drive an issue to a

When I train our employees to respond to customer support issues, I always make sure that in every response they do as much as possible to "drive an issue to a close". Not every issue can be fixed, but at the very least we can give the user a clear understanding of a) precisely what the state of affairs is and why, b) whether or not we can fix it and why, c) if we can fix it, who's responsible for the fix and when it's likely to make it into mainline and d) if we can't fix it, what the workaround is. We never ever just say "we agree with you". It's always "we agree with you, and here's how Bob is going to fix this by March". I know that the political machine is much more complicated then a startup of 12, but they don't even try. After having read the whole thing, I'm left with no more understanding of where things are going than I did before I read it.