Last week we wrote about how a true DevOps transformation doesn’t just focus on developers and operations but looks to unclog cross-organizational bottlenecks. One of those areas often overlooked — the one with so much of that coveted rapid feedback — is support. In this episode of The New Stack Makers, we talk to Michael Shelton, VP of global customer support at NinjaRMM, about closing the cultural distance to reach support teams to drive the post-customer experience.

When Shelton joined NinjaRMM five years ago, it was still a tiny team working on the then new remote monitoring and management platform. They didn’t have a support team yet — everyone was support. He admitted that back in the day they had a lot of bugs, but they used that to broach stronger customer relationships.

Shelton said they built an ethos that continues today, talking to customers like partners and, sometimes even therapists:

“You’re not wrong. Sounds like you’re having a really tough time. And sounds like we’re part of the cause of that. Let’s work together to figure out what the solution is.”

The NinjaRMM team realized they could use the close relationship between support and the customer to drive the product. What do the customers love? What are they super frustrated about? What are their use cases?