You know that and I know that, but often it's easier said than done to convince them of it. I've had users get indignant because I dared criticise their favourite enterprise bloatware like I insulted their mothers. Even as they themselves were struggling with some misfeature keeping them from doing their actual work.
But it does mean that it's easy to exceed their expectations, for example by making the browser back button take the user back to the previous view instead of crashing the entire user session. I tend to try to justify spending time solving technical debt by making development of new dazzling features faster and cheaper, but as long as the users (and more importantly their managers) are sufficiently dazzled if you only throw them a pittance once in a while, that becomes hard to sell.
But it does mean that it's easy to exceed their expectations, for example by making the browser back button take the user back to the previous view instead of crashing the entire user session. I tend to try to justify spending time solving technical debt by making development of new dazzling features faster and cheaper, but as long as the users (and more importantly their managers) are sufficiently dazzled if you only throw them a pittance once in a while, that becomes hard to sell.