At Basho engineers would often spend time working support to get a better view into customer pain points. Outsourcing support sounds like a giant middle finger to customers.
I'm biased, because I came up through support before I went into engineering.
But to me, the question has always been "Do I think I'm omniscient as an engineer? Do I think I can imagine every way the customer is going to try and use this product? Every way it can interact with other systems? Every quirk of a specific customer environment/dataset/etc.?"
Well, if not, then good news! The support org should be capturing, categorizing, documenting, and forwarding all those cases to me.
And each case is an opportunity to make the product better!
But to me, the question has always been "Do I think I'm omniscient as an engineer? Do I think I can imagine every way the customer is going to try and use this product? Every way it can interact with other systems? Every quirk of a specific customer environment/dataset/etc.?"
Well, if not, then good news! The support org should be capturing, categorizing, documenting, and forwarding all those cases to me.
And each case is an opportunity to make the product better!