Can I talk to that William fellow? He was so helpful.

This story is mostly true, although it's not quite how I remember it. In 1989 I was a product support services intern working at Microsoft's Lincoln Plaza campus. I worked for the 'System Languages' team, or SysLang as we called ourselves. We supported Micorosft C 5.x, QuickC, and their Pascal product and associated tools like the M editor and CodeView. One day (I don't remember if it was November or not) Bill came through on a tour of PSS. I mentioned to another intern, Nadine, that it would be cool if Bill took a call from a customer. When he came by our area with a group of other management types she bounded up to him with a huge smile on her face and asked if he'd like to see how things worked for himself, and take a call from a customer. The people he was with tried to dissuade him of this idea, saying something about schedules and the like, but Bill liked the idea and wanted to do it. At the time, I was a real clean freak, and my cube was very clean and devoid of clutter, so I suggested he sit down at my desk. I explained to him how the Aspect phone system worked and how to look up things in our STARS knowledge base using an OS/2 terminal program connected to a DEC minicomputer. He got settled in, and eventually took a call, greeting the customer like:

"Hello, Product Support Services, this is William, how may I help you?"

Just about everyone who wasn't currently on a call with a customer was gathered around my cube listening. I seem to remember the customer having a problem with the linker. Bill queried the knowledge base, which was normally painfully slow, but this time it was snappy and responsive. The first result looked like it might have addressed the customer's problem, and Bill went with it. I of course only heard one side of the conversation, but it sounded like the customer wasn't satisfied with the answer. Bill was firm yet polite, reassuring the customer that we had seen this problem before and that his solution was correct, and the customer eventually agreed to try the solution mentioned in the STARS article. An hour or so later, my friend Tad got that customer again, and he mentioned that William had helped him with his problem earlier but his solution didn't work. Tad let the customer know that he had in fact talked to Bill Gates, and helped him with his problem. I don't remember how/if it got solved though.

That was quite a big day for me. For years I had saved the yellow pad that had Bill's notes from the call.

The best thing you can ever do for your company is to put every employee in front of customers. One of the things that attracted me to FreshBooks was that they rotate everyone through customer support continuously. As a (former) developer who was tired of consistently building the wrong thing because sales and marketing jealously guarded the customer, this was very refreshing.

This isn't a novel idea. Many companies with customer service orientations have done this. If you're selling Software-as-a-Service, that ought to include you!

What amazes me about this story is that back in '89 MS had a knowledge base that worked so well that a person not trained for customer service was able to provide the help needed just by looking in the knowledge base. Many companies still don't have a system that good yet.

Repost but if you have not yet read it:

My First BillG Review by Joel Spolsky

"He was flipping through the spec! [Calm down, what are you a little girl?] ... and THERE WERE NOTES IN ALL THE MARGINS. ON EVERY PAGE OF THE SPEC. HE HAD READ THE WHOLE GODDAMNED THING AND WRITTEN NOTES IN THE MARGINS. He Read The Whole Thing! [OMG SQUEEE!] The questions got harder and more detailed."

There is a nice little koan about technical management in that essay too: "he just wants to make sure .."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

And another classic billg story (related by Jeff Raikes of Sales):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=553965

Huge respect for CEOs that regularly visit the front lines. Apparently Bezos swears by it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-jeff-bezos-work...