Why Support Isn’t a Department—It’s a Design Input

Wearing multiple hats at a startup isn’t new. Small teams competing against fully staffed companies have no choice but to embrace the age-old corporate adage: “Do more with less.” In my case, that has meant serving as both project manager and customer support. And after nearly two years in both roles, I can confidently say: our platform wouldn’t be what it is today without that overlap.

Repeating Patterns

When you’re both the project manager and the person reading every customer support message, you start to notice patterns quickly. If you were solely in support, you might flag those patterns in a shared runbook or macro to respond more efficiently. But when you’re also driving the direction of the product, your instinct shifts: this isn’t just a support issue—it’s a product opportunity.

When multiple clients raise the same question or struggle in the same part of the app, that’s not something to patch with a templated response. That’s a signal. And because you’re in a position to act on it, you can do more than respond—you can fix the root of the issue.

This blend of roles allows you to not only better support customers in the moment but also improve the product over the long term.

Proximity to the User

Every product manager wants more exposure to users. You’ll hear people talk about the value of onsite visits, focus groups, surveys—and yes, those all help. But they rarely capture real, in-the-moment user friction.

Support, on the other hand, does. When a customer reaches out mid-task—confused, frustrated, or lost—you’re getting unfiltered feedback powered by actual usage. If you can take that energy without flinching, you’ll gain a direct window into how your product really feels to the people using it. And that’s where the best design decisions come from. 

Idea Generation

Customer-facing roles—support, success, service—all revolve around the same golden rule: the customer is always right. But too often, that means support teams saying things like “We’ll pass this along to the tech team,” or “That’s on the roadmap for Q3,” knowing full well it may never happen.

But when you’re the project manager fielding that request directly, you can give real answers—and more importantly, you can take those moments and turn them into direction.

You don’t need to guess what your users want when they’re literally telling you every day. Working support as a PM doesn’t just improve empathy—it streamlines ideation. Your roadmap becomes a reflection of real needs, not assumed ones.

Support isn’t just a department—it’s one of the most honest, unfiltered sources of product insight you’ll ever have. When the person building the product is also the one hearing what’s broken, confusing, or missing, iteration happens faster. Priorities become clearer. And the distance between your team and your users shrinks.

If you’re building something new and wearing multiple hats, don’t just survive it—leverage it.