Customers expect business-savvy developers: results from our customers feedback survey

At 2024, we executed a comprehensive feedback campaign to understand and serve our customers even better. Also, we’ve always presumed that our customers do not expect only technical skills from us, but for us to help solve their business problems and be strong communicators and partners. We wanted to confirm that hypothesis and show our developers that customers truly value the so-called “softer” values. 

This was no small task – our consultants met face-to-face with customers and collected nearly 120 detailed insights.

The survey was a combination of:

1. Feedback forms: participants answered open-ended questions.
2. One-on-one sessions: personal interviews with each participant.
3. Development conversations: assisted analysis during discussions.

The results clearly showed that customers don’t just want good developers. They want proactive business-savvy partners.

Skills customers expect from software development partners 

Our clients praised us most for two things: 

• leadership, ownership, and proactivity, 
• communicating effectively, both within and across teams.

Things like continuous learning, documenting, and following design patterns were also appreciated, but not mentioned as important as those pointed out.

Here are the key skills our customers expect (ranked by importance)

Hard skills:

1. Deep business knowledge, including impact analyses, 
2. Back-end and DevOps expertise, 
3. Code quality and thorough code reviews, 
4. Strong adherence to engineering principles, including an MVP mindset, 
5. Expertise in security and monitoring domains, 
6. Good documentation practices, including diagrams and ticketing.

Soft skills:

1. Good communication and collaboration within teams and across teams, 
2. Thorough preparation for meetings and presentation skills, 
3. Timely feedback delivery and issue addressing, 
4. Strong leadership, delegation, and coaching abilities, 
5. Extensive knowledge sharing within teams.

Attitudes:

1. Empowerment through leadership and ownership, 
2. Self-confidence and positivity, 
3. Challenging assumptions to ensure clarity, 
4. A customer-first mindset with a focus on the bigger picture, 
5. Curiosity and consistent learning, 
6. Proactive team support.

This feedback gave us valuable input for improvement, particularly in the fields of cooperation and communication. So much so, we decided to make regular feedback surveys an integral part of our development process. 

Also, we already held a 6-month leadership training for all our leadership positions from tech lead and the CEO, to product managers and team leads. If we want our team members to be empowered, and strategic partners to our customers, we need to create an environment where every person feels valued, listened to and their potential used to the fullest.

What does this mean for development partners and their customers? 

The message from our customers was loud and clear – they don’t see us as mere service providers. They see us as strategic partners. They expect us to:

• understand their business deeply, 
• challenge assumptions when needed, 
• help set priorities and shape strategies.

Ultimately, this feedback campaign showed us that better serving our customers isn’t just about writing better code. It’s about thinking better – about business, clients, and the big picture. 

And that’s the key message to other software developers – and people looking for one. True partners don’t just follow instructions, they innovate, solve problems, and treat customers’ problems like their own. Finding and building such a partnership is well worth the effort for both parties.