Well, I’ve worked directly with end-users often enough, both on the side of getting requirements from them for new features and supporting them for the existing application features (these were expert users) and think it’s important for engineers to get that kind of exposure.

However working with a limited number of users who are experts in their domain and have high skills in computing is something very different from manning phone lines to provide first line support for a mass marketed product or service whose users are just average people who don’t work on any organized thinking area (so their thinking and ability to express themselves clearly is all over the place) and whose computing abilities are usually pretty low, especially compared to an engineer - the mismatch is so broad that it tends to be an exercise in frustration from which the average engineer will learn very little even if they are open minded and understanding.