The team you build is the company you build.
Treat customer support as a product.
Some people can't learn to play the guitar by reading a book. You have to actually try to manage a bit and you won't do well at first.
The people that work with you should generally come up with their own initiatives.
I'd actually argue forging a company is far more harder than forging a product
It's never a metric, it's where the person is going or not. Metrics are used to make things work better, but don't necessarily make a business better.