[htanirs]

My take, having managed dev and worked closely with Support, for a growing company.

During Initial days, Initial Dev team is involved in support. And it is amazing. You get real feedback and good insights into how user uses the system. This pays off immensely.

Once the product and team grows, the real need of exclusive support becomes evident. And it becomes quite clear, just like not all support folks can code, not all devs can support. It requires some unique skill set.

Not all requests from customers are critical and even if there are issues, hot fixes need not be necessary. Apart from devs becoming anxious, they may be too eager to comply with requests immediately. Also support requires the team to talk the language user is comfortable with, too much technical communication may not be relevant.

But what has worked for us in growing stage, dev some spending time with support. They can (only) listen to important calls and sharing information between the two teams regularly.

[gwbas1c]

Great answer!

What's also important is that management is good at prioritizing what's important, and what isn't.

Depending on many circumstances, you just can't fix everything.