[roberthahn]

I am very much in favor of putting engineers on customer support/success. I believe it is important to develop empathy and understanding of the user's experience with the product you build. Not only will it help you implement what they need, it will also serve as a way to call BS against product managers who try to get you to build things that look good on their resume (but don't help the customer.

But after reading through the comments from those who are against the idea, I wonder if there might be a productive middle ground - have engineers listen in on (but not participate in) any calls between the customer and the Support/Success team. This doesn't need to be done for a solid week, but perhaps a steady diet of 2 calls per week for a few weeks would help.

I'm sure you could imagine other 'middle-ground' ways to achieve this - but clearly nothing will work until engineers at a minimum buy into the reasons why some direct exposure to customers would be a good idea.