Customer Awareness as a Developer

Without customers, developers don’t have jobs.

Nothing like a massive generalization to kick things off, but I think it’s true (or if you don’t currently have customers, you’re probably looking for them!). A customer is someone who uses the software you write, which can look like a lot of different things, from businesses or individuals who pay you for your product, other developers that use your tools, or even people within your own company that use them to do their jobs.

For developers to build a product that customers will use and love, it’s important that someone understand their needs and pain points, how they’re using the product now and how they want to use it in the future. In large organizations, there are product managers and product designers and UX researchers and the like whose full time job it is to keep a pulse on this. Smaller companies, on the other hand, often haven’t hired for these roles yet.

Even if your company does have people in these roles, as mine does, I’ve found value in continuing to periodically observe conversations that our customer success or salespeople are having with our prospects and customers. Here are some thoughts on the value I’ve gotten out of it, as well as a brief overview of my company’s “Voice of the Customer” program.

Quick wins for the customer

A few months ago one of my teammates was sitting on a customer call, and they were demoing their workflow for creating an event in our system…