
Let's see a huge international software company do that! - staunch
http://www.antair.com/blog/2007/08/30/choosing-to-buy-software-from-a-small-company/
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trekker7
Cool. Do you think big companies could do this if they wanted to? All it
involves is having technically proficient customer service representatives, or
at least reps that can quickly query engineers for help. But maybe there's
just no incentive.

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philh
There would be a couple of problems with that.

\- Engineers generally wouldn't want to do it. Adding layers of indirection
between them and the customer would make them happier, but also less
effective.

\- Optimally, the engineers should be familiar with the software internals.
They'd have to specialise in one or two products. If they're actually working
on the product at the same time, it's less of a problem. But you're still
going to need more CS reps than otherwise.

In a startup, the engineers will have more invested in the product, so they'll
be more willing to do it. In any case, there's likely to be nobody else. And
there's probably only one or two products, so the CS reps can all be familiar
with all (both) of them.

I don't think it would be impossible, just hard. You'd need the CS reps to
recognise when a problem is more than just user error, to take a good bug
report, and then to be able to get a hold of the right person to get it fixed
quickly. Which also requires that it _can_ be fixed quickly; this may be
something else that large companies have problems with.

(edit for formatting)

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davidw
Maybe they wouldn't have released it with the bug in the first place, having
had access to that model to test on;-)

I actually appreciate the point, I'm just a cynic by nature.

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chmac
That's what I call service, if only I had a Blackberry... :)

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henning
strangely, the customer might be happier than if the error never occurred at
all.

