[andrewaylett]

Two layers is fine, so long as they're allowed to talk to each other. Adding a third causes a lot more problems.

Once you get beyond having a single dev team, a layer of support is necessary: you can't expect consumers to know which of your dev teams they ought to be talking to.

My employer has an amazing support team, who are effective champions for the user when interacting with development teams. They're fantastic.

[jasonjayr]

That's an important requirement of an effective support team: they have to have a seat at the project management's table. They have to have the power to request features + changes from developers, at the same priority level as the rest of the product development team. IMHO it's important both for the support team morale, as well as ensuring a positive UX.

[andrewaylett]

At a higher priority level, IMO.

That said, most of the issues I see from support are straightforwardly bugs, even if they're not normally easy ones to fix. But when they have information they think is worth sharing, it's always been worth my time to listen.