A friend of mine is the VP of Product at one of Boston’s hottest startups. I am leaving him anonymous, though I do plan to send him this post and see if he wants to be recognized. <Update> The company is Yesware and my friend is Jake Levirne. His CEO and him came up with a brilliant move – they made customer support report to the VP of Product.
This is amazing.
Customer support has often been perceived as a cost center. As a place where we explain to the “pesky users” how to use our brilliant, clearly intuitive, ‘who-wouldn’t-understand-this’ product. Users still screw up – that’s why we send them to a department designed to solve their problems as soon as possible and get them away from us.
No more.
The brilliance of this move is what it signals:
- Making customers/users successful is the Product’s job. If users are having trouble with your product, it is because your product is not as easy to use as you thought it to be
- Customer support is no longer a pure cost center – it is one of the primary ways to engage customers, get their feedback, and make the product better for all
This startup has gained tremendous traction by making their product easy to use, and engaging with their customers. More companies should consider this.
Inspired 
Hi Shobbit… 99% sure you’re talking about us over here at Yesware =) Thanks for the great post!
You are welcome Jake!
By reporting to Product VP, how exactly do you do it? Do you have daily / weekly meetings, how big is your customer support team, how many products do you have in development / maintenance, how big is the company? How do you plan to manage that in the future when company gets bigger and when you scale up the teams? Or when you expand to let’s say other countries / continents?