I just received some (unsolicited) feedback from a customer who wanted me to pass on their great experience with the Microsoft Office Document Scanning tools to the right team. Although it wasn't feedback for the product I work on, it was nice that somebody actually felt strongly enough about their experience with Office that they took the time to dig out my e-mail address from an old newsgroup discussion and write up a "gee that was cool" e-mail.
Usually all we hear about are complaints and problems. Everywhere you look (newsgroups, e-mails, blogs, websites, TV, newspapers, magazines, you name it) you find stories about how customers are angry or unhappy with Microsoft, about how our products are full of bugs, about how we always imitate and never innovate, about how we don't care about customers, about how we're all just money-grabbing you-know-whats, you name it.
It kind of gets you down after a while.
Even when people say they like a particular product, it's usually saddled with "...but it's missing basic feature XYZ / it's too slow / it's too hard to use / this other feature really sucks / etc." Obviously this is all good feedback and we use it to make the products better, but still, we're only human.
But every now and then someone takes the time to say "Hey, I actually like what you guys are doing," and it all seems worth it again :-). Thankyou, it's very much appreciated.
So what's it like working in a smaller organisation that has a closer relationship with its customers (and isn't always in the public eye)? Do you hear the good stories as well as the bad ones?