Here’s a story from a customer:
They built a customer engagement SaaS product.
It was built by one guy who then decided to move overseas.
Things started out well and for the most part they were happy with the technical output and results.
This is a common story I hear.
Founders are happy with the results they get from their tech leads and offshore/external dev teams.
So what’s the problem?
Well this tech lead decided he didn’t want to do customer work anymore.
He would take 2 days to respond to new customer questions.
He would be rude to customers.
They told me they lost at least $300k revenue in a year because of it, from big brands you would have heard of.
And their hands were tied, because they didn’t really know what was going on in the system he developed.
This happens a lot.
Maybe not due to negligence, but due to different cultures, timezones or maybe your dev team (while excellent) just doesn’t speak and present well.
Your sales team and your top clients need explanations of things in a different way than someone in the weeds would explain it.
Getting this bidirectional communication flowing properly is the key to actually getting the promised cost savings of this setup while keeping your team and clients happy.
This is why CTO expertise combined with intra-personal skills are so important.