I was recently told, apparently with a straight face: "If a company gets a direct request from a customer, that is not on the backlog or on an ideas pool backlog, it means that the product team is weak and not doing their job as good [sic] as they could."
Currently, in my company, it is a freakin' mess. Our group reports up through the COO, and that is ... sub optimal.
But there is another set of product management (don't ask) that reports to the CTO.
From what I know I think we have it better, slightly. But they both have huge drawbacks