David Cummings on Startups

Customers Finding Bugs

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David Cummings

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Yesterday I was talking to an entrepreneur about their recent product launch. The application looks solid and has a minimum respectable feature set (one level above a minimum viable product). Only, he thought the product was sufficient for now and wouldn’t need as much engineering attention for a month or two.

A new product never survives contact with customers. Never. Customers always find bugs, problems, inconsistencies, and issues. In fact, it never stops, and it’s a good thing.

Here are a few thoughts on customers finding bugs:

  • Acknowledge the bug when found and graciously apologize to the customer
  • Allocate some amount of engineering time on a recurring basis to address bugs
  • Incorporate exception handling software that automatically registers product errors in a third-party service that notifies the engineering team (e.g. Airbrake)
  • Add automated tests (e.g. unit tests, integration tests, synthetic browser tests, etc.) as new issues arise to ensure core elements of the application are always working

Customers finding bugs is a normal part of the software experience. Develop a process and best practices for handling them when they occur and work hard to make customers happy.

What else? What are some other thoughts on customers finding bugs?

Comments

3 responses to “Customers Finding Bugs”

  1. Franco Arda Avatar
    Franco Arda

    Excellent post as always, but …. I don’t understand where you can see “bugs are a good thing”?!

    Reply
  2. Sharon B Avatar
    Sharon B

    Murphy was right was he said that “there’s always more one bug”. It’s important to understand that not all bugs should be resolved, but all customer issues must. There’s a fine line separating a “bug” and an “issue”. Another important thought is to plan ahead how to address more severe issues that are privacy and security related. In my experience it is never too early to start thinking about SLA when handling customers, especially those that trusted you to keep their data.

    — Sharon

    Reply
  3. James Avatar
    James

    Engage with the customers in dialogues about their experiences, both positive and negative and make it as seamless as possible for them to share this valuable data. When we designed SwiftLaunch, which helps vendors of enterprise applications provide roll-out support, onboarding, engagement, troubleshooting, milestone management and best-practice collaboration communities to customers, our vendors’ customers are acknowledged for sharing the top defects they find, as well as the top best practices they’re willing to share with their peers. This way, it’s not embarrassing for the “buyer” to hear from his staff that the product is not performing to expectation, and he has to relay that back to the seller. Or worse, the seller never discovers the flaws in their products.

    Reply

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