Of the many activities at a software company, customer support or customer care is one of the toughest to provide. Sometimes I think that to avoid burnout, you need to approach the whole business the way an athlete deals with a sport. Realize that it’s a team effort, and that you will win some and lose some. In fact, you may lose by falling flat on your face some days. But a losing game is just one part of a longer season, and the support of teammates helps you pull through.

This doesn’t sound like the kind of function towards which people gravitate, does it? So it is with most Product Managers. They understand the necessity of customer support, but breathe a big sigh of relief that they’re not the ones who have to provide it.

Yet when a Product Manager participates in customer support, right on the hotline with struggling users, it can bring tremendous value to the product. Manning the support lines is an intense way of living the customer experience, with no watering down of the struggle, time expended, and confusion that comes with working with a software product.

Read below for some guidance on how you can enrich your understanding of the customer experience by actively participating in the customer care effort at your company, and as a result develop great requirements for new product capabilities.

With the tips provided below, you can have the confidence to go outside your comfort zone into the customer service trenches (a war zone if there ever was one).