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The Customer Gap
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Gordon Diggs
July 19, 2017
Technology
1
110
The Customer Gap
Presented at Code Climate Summit with Abby Armada on 20170719
Gordon Diggs
July 19, 2017
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Transcript
The Customer Gap Abby Armada & Gordon Diggs Code Climate
Summit 20170719
None
Likes running and eating tacos. Abby Armada Customer Support Lead
@mygiantrobot
Gordon Diggs Director of Engineering Collects records and cooks lasagna.
@gordondiggs
Many companies list customer focus as a core value, but
few engineers spend time talking to their customers.
The customer gap: The delta between a stated customer focus
and the reality of how engineering spends its time.
None
• Building empathy within engineering • Processes to improve collaboration
• Closing gaps to other departments
Engineers with Customer Empathy
We have it kind of easy.
None
Build empathy into your engineering culture
Building Empathy: • Talk to customers regularly • Read their
tweets • Answer their issues • Update them about incidents • Watch them use the product
Building empathy is harder with bigger teams
Helping Each other
Escalations
Escalation Sources:
Before: • Weekly rotation of an engineer to work on
escalations • Didn’t have a consistent way to track the work • Confusion and sadness
Quarterly Support Engineers
Triaging Issues Severity 1 to 4
None
SEVERITY 1
Proactive Education
Resolution time per month New process
Escalations per month New process
Product / Support Sync
None
None
None
Meeting Agenda • Work in progress • Upcoming releases •
Customer communication needs • Feature requests
How it Helps
Feature Requests
Before: • Bad GitHub repo • Bad Trello board •
No review process
None
None
None
25% of feature requests were actioned by product
You have to work together to solve these problems
Closing the Gap to Other Departments
Marketing
Sales
Sales + Engineering • Building features for potential customers •
Technical lead review • Installation • Customer rapport
Customer Support
Customer Success
Well-Rounded Engineers
The Engineer Remembers
More experience with customers leads to better features
Support is nagging you for a reason
None
Summing It Up
Build empathy within your engineering team
Build empathy within your engineering team — and start small
Customer Support and Engineering collaboration is key
Include engineers in every stage of your customers’ life cycle
Happy Customers == Happy Business
Thank you! @mygiantrobot @gordondiggs Thanks to: Ashley Baldwin-Hunter, Devon Blandin,
Pat Brisbin, Kathryn Chen, Noah Davis, Alyssa Diggs, Kären Engelbrecht, Emily Fueger, Chris Hulton, Will Fleming, Dave Henton, Mattan Ingram, Max Jacobson, Ale Paredes, Noah Portes Chaikin, Reid Smith