Close the gap between R&D and Customer Support

Note: This article is written from the perspective of technology development and leading R&D teams.

Developing technology is a relatively simple task when compared to the challenge of getting it diffused and adopted throughout the intended ecosystem. Although there are others, understanding customer needs, wants and overall psychology is one of the big hurdles that has to be overcome for success. This journey starts at home with your Customer Support team. Yet, there tends to be a gap between R&D and Customer Support teams during the innovation process. Here are my experiences on where the gaps can occur and strategies that worked for me for closing (or, when needed, widening) them.

Prioritize Customer Support correctly

On the road to your product release, you may be tempted to prioritize Customer Support behind everything else. After all, what could be more important than schedule, cost, functionality, … Believe me, it will happen, I have been there. And everyone in the program team will agree to that prioritization…. However, for new products and innovations, it is the wrong decision. Innovation is about change. Your Customer Support team is there to help your customers manage that change effectively. By prioritizing Customer Support low, you are under valuing the role that they play in supporting and hand holding the users of your products.

Unfortunately the implications of this decision could go deeper than just a damaged relationship between two teams. If the Customer Support team does not have the knowledge to support your products, continuous customer escalations could impact your team’s morale, damage the product’s reputation, and impact schedules as resources are pulled to address various issues. So, perform a risk analysis of your product, and evaluate how challenging it may be for your customers. As optimistic as you are, remember Murphy will be there.

Get to know your extended family

Whether you call them partners or customers, customer support, field engineers, and your sales team are all part of your extended family and, in loose terms, are customers of R&D. They sit between you and your end-customer, managing the day to day relationship, activities and issues. If they don’t believe in your solution and your vision, they will not be able to sell it either.

Take your time. Get to know these partners. Learn to speak their language. Learn how to make them your eager customers, your cheerleaders. Definitely share the power and beauty of your technology and product. However, be ready to do that from their perspective using their language and reflecting on their experiences. Where possible, be ready to walk a mile in their shoes. Be prepared to learn a lot about your end customer through these experiences.

First impressions count

I have been a WordPress user and administrator since I started this site. Over the last few years, the WordPress team have done amazing work to improve the overall administrator experience during upgrades and infrastructure updates. Deployment, installation, upgrades and migrations may not sound sexy, but they go deep into your technology, product and architecture strategy. They also play into first impressions. Compare that to my Microsoft experience, where after 15 minutes of validating, acknowledging and thanking me for having a valid copy of Microsoft XP, the next product that they suggested I install started the exactly same cycle…….. Btw, did you catch Apple’s announcement on Mac OS X Snow Leopard: refined from installation to shutdown. First impressions count!

Make it timely

Documentation seems to be the arch-nemesis of technology developers. Yet, it is one of the time tested methods of knowledge transfer, especially in large corporations and virtual teams. Lack of documentation and support can make or break deals. Recently, I took a 3 week detour as I evaluated using Zope for a prototype idea. After giving my full attention, and trying to work around all the “lack of’s” (lack of working sample code, lack of newbie documentation, lack of knowledge on what functionality maps to which release version…) I moved on to Django. The difference is like night and day.

Knowledge transfer is one of those challenging areas that requires work. It doesn’t happen by itself! So, set up a methodology that makes sense for all parties involved. Establish a process to ensure right knowledge is being captured and communicated in the intended way. It can be as simple as an email snippet, a brown-bag discussion, or as formal as a documentation library managed by a volunteer librarian; i.e. an R&D engineer. Either way, make it work and make it timely.

Move in together

Good customer experience is key to your success. Achieving this can be quite a challenge during the early days of your product and technology. Sometimes you may need to ship your products with dedicated engineers, other times it might make sense to move in with Customer Support to ensure timely customer resolution and effective knowledge transfer. Some of my fond memories are from the time when I moved into a Customer Support team on a temporary assignment. I was leading a small, hand picked R&D team with the task to transition our technology and product knowledge to Customer Support.

This may sound extreme, however if the situation demands, it is the quickest way to turn things around, rebuild damaged relationships and gain internal support for your product and technology. It is important to note that if you are building a transition team, you need to ensure that:

1. You select bright and knowledgeable engineers from the actual pain points; i.e. where customers have issues.
2. You select at least 2 engineers with personality and style (and the ability to stay calm under the most stressful situations) to effectively interface with internal and external customers.
3. Individuals on your team must have good relationships with bigger R&D team, and willingly share their learnings with all.
4. At least a small percentage of the team must work full time to ensure successful transition of knowledge.

Managing the timing, goals and milestones of the transition team is crucial. You cannot afford to be there indefinitely. It is not good for either party. So, set goals and expectations on both sides and be ready to pull the plug if people are not pulling their weight. Needless to say, at the time I wasn’t the most popular person in the R&D organization, but through the work of the transition team we built internal support and established a shared vision.

Immerse yourself in their language

Sometimes closing the gap between R&D and Customer Support might require everyone on the R&D team to become part of Customer Support. Though this may not be the most efficient solution (and also not the most popular), establishing a rotation for R&D escalation support will ensure everyone in your team experiences the challenges and issues that Customer Support sees. If you do choose to go this route, make sure to dedicate an accountable resource to make sense of the constant change; in my case my QA Manager was responsible for managing the rotation.

Though it was painful at times, this process did help my R&D team to have a better understanding of:

1. How our customers were using our products;
2. What major issues our customers were seeing and why;
3. An insight into how the overall product worked (vs. just focusing on their own silos);
4. Building a one-to-one relationships with Customer Support;
5. Ultimately building a better product and technology platform.

In conclusion

Through experience, one can learn a lot about what not to do…. Innovation is a system, and it needs to be managed as such.

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