“Support.” The word itself is an obstacle.
It comes with predefined perceptions for everyone: reactive, tactical, fix-what’s-broken, the place you go when something fails. The name is the cage that keeps support from running free. As long as the conversation is about “support,” the imagination is bounded by what that word has always meant, and no redefinition can escape its bars.
So stop saying it. To define the future, stop talking about support at all.
Not because the function doesn’t matter—it matters more than the business currently understands. Stop saying the word because the word hides the capability. Describe the capability instead, with no name attached, and watch what an executive sees:
A team with deep technical expertise in how the product actually works. Intimate, current knowledge of how customers are really using it—and where they are getting stuck. The ability to see friction before it becomes failure, and to engage before a customer stalls. The standing to drive the product improvements customers actually care about, and to guide customers to the outcomes they paid for and the consumption that grows the account.
Describe that and you have described something an executive recognizes immediately as strategic. Nothing in that description is aspirational—it is what the best support teams already do, when the work allows. The capability is real, but it is the label that limits the perception of what that capability can make possible.