Does handling customer support directly delay core product development?

When we launched our beta, every developer on our team was assigned to handle incoming support tickets on rotation to stay close to user feedback. While we learned a lot about early usability bugs, our main product roadmap stalled completely because context switching ate up hours every day. We decided to hire a dedicated support specialist and set up an automated ticketing triage system. Our engineers were able to focus entirely on shipping key features, while customer response times dropped by more than half.

​Should early engineering teams stay directly involved in daily support, or is dedicated support delegation necessary to maintain dev velocity?