Sharing customer context with developers: 9 ways how to

I had a presentation recently during the Product Tank Brno, where I mentioned that in Kentico we try to share as much customer context with developers as possible. After the session, several people stopped by wanted to know how exactly we do that. That’s why I decided to share with you my tips about what worked for us.

But before we dig into them, let’s answer the question “Why is it important to share context with developers in the first place?”. Providing your teams with more context allows you to give them also more freedom. They will understand the problems your customers are facing, they will understand the business value they’re helping to create and therefore they will be able to make qualified decisions themselves and faster.

So how can you share customer context with your developers?

Forward interesting emails

Did you just receive an email from a customer with interesting insights? Or an angry email with a list of complaints? Forward it to the development team. Simple as that. I can guarantee you that everyone on the team will read it. Even though they might get dozens of email notifications from various internal systems, emails with subject “Feedback on latest release” will stand out.