Why Devs Need Deep Customer Understanding for the Win
“What the actual f***? I didn’t sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this.”
Last month, a frustrated DoorDash software engineer complained on social media site Blind about the company’s new WeDash program. Despite earning $400,000 a year coding, he was unhappy with the requirement for all DoorDash employees to spend one day a month delivering food along with the “Dashers.”
Thousands of Blind readers chimed in with comments both supporting and disparaging the developer’s gripe. The thread worked its way onto Twitter — again, with mixed reactions. Here, one developer says he’s paid to code and that’s it, while someone else responds, “Engineering teams w/a deeper connection to the product are worth 10x those without.”
The Sketchy ROI of Forced Developer Fieldwork
Certainly, when developers have a good understanding of how customers are using the product, they’re more effective. By observing how the product is utilized, developers can also potentially see gaps in the solution. They can more quickly make useful changes. But sending them out into the field is not the most lucrative way to foster dev/cust relationships.
First, customers are busy doing their jobs and unlikely to provide much meaningful feedback. And limiting interaction to only one day a month makes the probability of obtaining actionable insights unlikely. A month is a long time to go between making product adjustments and possibly seeing how the changes play out.
Sending developers into the field is also expensive. If, for example, a developer earns $400,000 total compensation including FICA and other benefits, then spending one day a month interacting directly with customers costs the company around $20,000 a year. If the company employs 50 developers, this amounts to $1M a year. That’s a steep cost to pay for a process that even in the best case is not likely to provide a lot of actionable customer feedback. This doesn’t even factor in concerns such as safety issues, transportation, insurance, and other related costs.
Another problem, as the thousands of DoorDash thread comments attest, is risking dissatisfaction among a significant number of developers who feel their job is behind a computer screen, not a delivery vehicle, bank teller window, or really — anywhere else. Demand for top software engineering talent is exceptionally high. Organizations need to balance the risk of losing these folks with any possible gain from forcing them to work one day a month with customers.
Everybody Wants to Know Their “Why”
I spoke with VC and former developer, Aneel Lakhani, who said that developers don’t want to be businesspeople. But as Dheeraj Pandey, CEO of DevRev, points out, “’Businesspeople’ is an overloaded term. Developers all want to work for a purpose and know their ‘why’. And that is the customer.”
In many organizations, even SaaS, developers work without really understanding the customer. They get their direction from product managers and are often not in sync in terms of prioritization, customer needs, the scope of grandiose engineering projects, and iterative delivery.
Developers also lack an easy way to obtain customer feedback that would provide insight into how their product modifications are playing out. Without that connection to the customer, they lose sight of both the bigger picture and of day-to-day customer challenges that could be addressed before they balloon into something bigger.
While most enterprises use a CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) program to connect with their customers, these programs are designed for salespeople, marketing folks, and front-office personnel. They’re static by design and do little to help developers understand their customers. The opportunity is ripe for a developer-centric CRM that remedies these deficiencies and lets developers know their “why” while both reducing friction and enhancing customer value. A Dev CRM can enable developers and customers to communicate and collaborate with each other in real-time, resulting in more efficient and personalized workflows that quickly build stronger and longer-lasting relationships.
Unlike sales-centric CRMs, a Dev CRM should utilize modern AI-based capabilities to dynamically provide developers with the information they need. Think of Facebook providing customized posts, pictures, and suggestions for new friends as opposed to a typical sales-centric CRM which, at best, enables user access control. This machine-learning driven discovery is critical to enabling the personalization and efficiency developers require to optimize a product-led architecture.
The Future of Devs in a Product-Led Era
We’re quickly moving into a product-led era and seeing companies like Amazon, Netflix, Zoom, Slack, Calendly, and hundreds of others utilize the product to largely sell itself. Think of Amazon suggesting other products based upon your purchase or Netflix recommending other movies based upon your viewing.
As important as the developer’s role is in traditional SaaS, PLG (Product-led Growth) increases it still further. While a PLG company may utilize traditional salespeople for enterprise opportunities, and marketing teams for driving certain initiatives, by far and large the developer is key to the success or failure of the enterprise. Code now drives all interactions across the customer lifecycle, placing developers at the center. The tendency for PLG to drive down prices to $9.99 per user per month or a few cents per API call forces the SaaS company to behave like a B2C company. This includes offering self-service, freemium, and real-time support.
A Dev CRM is imperative to optimizing the developer’s effectiveness in a world where a product-led revolution is happening and here to stay. It lets developers achieve deeper customer relationships without ever leaving their laptops. It also helps create empathy.
In this new world, those with deeper connections to customers win.
