Why Your Bug Fixes Deserve Their Own Announcements
There’s a pattern I see in almost every changelog I review: features get announced, bug fixes get hidden.
Companies will write detailed announcements for new capabilities. They’ll craft messaging, choose the right words, think about customer impact. Then they’ll ship a critical bug fix that affects hundreds of users and quietly note it as “Bug fixes and improvements” at the bottom of the release notes.
This is backwards.
The Embarrassment Trap
The logic seems reasonable: announcing a bug fix means admitting the bug existed. Nobody wants to call attention to their mistakes. Better to fix it quietly and move on.
Here’s the problem with that logic: your customers already know the bug exists. They experienced it. They filed support tickets about it. They complained in Slack. They maybe even considered switching to a competitor because of it.
When you fix the bug silently, you’re not avoiding embarrassment. You’re just failing to get credit for solving a problem your customers already know about.
The Customer’s Perspective
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. They hit a frustrating bug last month. They reported it. Radio silence. They assume you’re doing nothing about it.
Three weeks later, they try the same workflow and it works. Do they think “Wow, great job fixing that”? No. They think “Huh, I guess it’s working now” and move on. Or worse, they assume the issue was a fluke and continue to work around it.
Now imagine a different scenario: they reported the bug, and a week later they get an email saying “We heard your feedback about X. We’ve fixed it. Here’s what changed.”
That customer now knows three things:
- You’re listening
- You’re responsive
- You fix things that matter to them
These are the things that prevent churn.
The Support Loop Problem
A VP of Product Marketing at an observability company told me one of their biggest challenges: “Churn drivers often relate to customers not knowing capabilities already exist.”
This applies double to bug fixes. Support gets tickets about issues. Engineering fixes them. But the information often doesn’t flow back to the customers who reported the problems — or to support teams who are still triaging similar tickets.
I’ve seen companies where support was still sending workaround instructions for bugs the team fixed weeks earlier. Nobody told them. The fix shipped silently, so support never updated their playbook.
What Announcing Bug Fixes Actually Communicates
Announcing a bug fix communicates more than “we fixed a bug.” You’re telling customers:
You’re actively maintaining the product. Bugs happen. What matters is how quickly and reliably they get resolved. Announcing fixes shows you’re on top of things.
You put customer experience first. You didn’t just ship features and move on. You invested engineering time in making the existing product work better.
You’re paying attention to feedback. The customer who reported it feels heard. Everyone else sees that reporting issues leads to action.
You’re confident in your product. Hiding fixes signals shame. Announcing them signals confidence that bugs are normal and you handle them well.
The Competitive Angle
Here’s something I’ve noticed when evaluating products: I check changelogs. I look for signs of life.
A changelog that only shows new features every few months looks stagnant. A changelog that shows regular updates — including bug fixes and improvements — looks actively maintained.
If I’m choosing between two products and one has a changelog showing weekly attention to detail while the other ships quarterly “big releases,” I know which one is more likely to fix my issues quickly when they arise.
Your bug fix announcements are a competitive signal. They show you’re playing the long game, not just chasing new features.
How to Announce Bug Fixes Well
Not every bug fix needs a press release. But there’s a middle ground between silence and fanfare.
Tie it to customer impact. Don’t say “Fixed null pointer exception in auth handler.” Say “Login is now more reliable for users with special characters in their passwords.”
Credit the feedback. If a customer reported it, acknowledge that. “Thanks to feedback from users, we’ve fixed an issue where…” This encourages more reporting.
Be specific about what changed. Vague “assorted fixes” announcements are almost worse than nothing. If you fixed the checkout flow, say you fixed the checkout flow.
Include improvements alongside fixes. Bug fixes often come with small improvements. “Fixed the slow dashboard load times and added caching that makes it even faster” turns a fix into a positive story.
Route to the right audience. Support teams need different detail than marketing newsletters. A customer success manager talking to a frustrated account needs to know exactly what you fixed and when.
The Internal Communication First
Here’s the real reason most bug fixes go unannounced: internal communication breaks down first.
Support doesn’t know engineering fixed it. Marketing doesn’t know what was in the release. The PM who prioritized the fix moved on to the next sprint. By the time anyone thinks about announcing it, the moment has passed.
Better announcement discipline won’t solve this. Better capture of what ships will. When fixing a bug automatically generates a record that routes to the right people, announcements stop falling through cracks.
A Different Framing
Think about it this way: every bug fix is proof that your product is getting better.
Your customers want to know their product is improving. They want reassurance that you’re addressing the issues they’ve encountered. They want to see momentum.
Feature announcements show you’re building new things. Bug fix announcements show you care about what you’ve already built. Both matter. Both build trust.
The next time your team ships a fix, don’t bury it. Your customers saw the problem. Let them see the solution, too.
If your team ships fixes faster than you can announce them, let’s chat about how Changebot captures everything that ships automatically.
