Thanks, I’ll try to keep the posts coming. I totally agree this could be taken too far and swamp engineering. Both support and engineering need good filters to differentiate product bugs from customer bugs and features/support for a specific customer. You also need to look at the customer and judge them… a good customer will usually be successful and help you make the product successful. A customer who is not as skilled may cause unnecessary churn and ultimately fail themselves so not helping you out in the long run. Another reason a product sold by a slide-deck and not solid engineering may prove difficult to monetize long term – as a business, it attracts the wrong kind of customers.

You should post more often…it’s really interesting, and unfortunately there are not too many senior engineers having blogs.
I completely agree with the direct communication between engineers and customers when dealing with bugs, without scary formal processes. On my previous job I also used quite successfully this approach with good results. The only mention is that the developers should be taught how to discuss with bully customers.