A Podcast by IrisAgent

The Support Leader

Conversations with the people running modern customer support teams. No fluff. No vendor pitches. Just the tactical lessons you can use on Monday.

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Now playing · Episode 01

The Support Leader, Episode 1: The AI rollout nobody told you how to plan, with Emre Tekoglu, VP of Customer Support at Zywave

The AI rollout nobody told you how to plan

With Emre Tekoglu, VP of Customer Support at Zywave · Hosted by Palak, founder of IrisAgent

Every support leader is under pressure to "do AI" and almost nobody has a playbook. Emre actually did it. We get into his rollout end to end: the 30 days before kickoff, what he expected versus what really happened, what broke, the hardest internal conversation, and what he would change if he restarted tomorrow.

"I am a storyteller. Every customer case tells a story, and my role is to tell that story to the rest of the organization."Emre Tekoglu

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What you will take away

Where to start

Define the problem in crisp terms before you evaluate a single vendor.
Set shared success criteria with the vendor up front. The honest ones will tell you if they can hit them.
People and process before technology. Review both before you click "buy."
Start with repetitive, low value work humans should not be doing.

Why data quality is the hard part

Garbage in, garbage out: stale knowledge base articles surface wrong answers.
Less data can beat more data when the quality is higher.
Zywave's first use case: auto labeling inbound email cases, a job that used to take a two person daily rotation.
Second use case: AI driven QA, lifting coverage from about 8% of cases to 100%, with less fatigue and less bias than humans.

Voice of the customer

Support conversations are the richest source of customer signal in B2B SaaS.
AI surfaces trends, spikes, and sentiment no human could read across every call, chat, and email.
MCP integrations are now a table stakes vendor question. Zywave uses Claude as a launchpad into Snowflake and other sources.

Change management and pricing

Name the "AI takes jobs" fear directly. Even a single slide helps.
Break the rollout into small milestones and celebrate each one. Emre even ran an internal "Shark Tank" to turn fear into excitement.
On pricing: outcome based sounds great but creates billing complexity. Emre prefers a fixed fee with clear success criteria, or letting the customer choose the model.

Clips from this episode

Short, sharp moments from the conversation. Watch one, then dive into the full episode.

More knowledge base articles is not better. Stale content surfaces wrong answers. Emre on why less, clean data beats more, messy data.

Why this show exists

Running a support team in 2026 is a different job than it was three years ago. AI changed what your CEO expects. Ticket volume changed what your agents can handle. Customer expectations changed what "good" looks like.

The Support Leader is a weekly interview show for the people figuring this out in real time. We talk to VPs, Directors, and Heads of Support at companies you know. Not about strategy decks. About what they actually shipped this quarter, what broke, and what they'd do differently.

No pitches. No panels. No guests who have not actually led a support team.

Coming up next

The next conversation, dropping soon.

Episode 02 · Coming soon

Customer experience as a system, not a department

Director of Customer Service at a global B2B ecommerce platform · 15+ years across gaming, ERP, and SaaS support

Our second guest leads customer service at a B2B ecommerce platform serving manufacturers and distributors around the world, after running CX operations at an enterprise software company and cutting his teeth in one of the largest consumer support orgs on the planet. We talk about operational excellence, sentiment-driven programs, and what it takes to build a CX function that compounds.

What "operational excellence" looks like in a modern support org
Using customer sentiment as a leading indicator, not a rearview metric
Program leadership across sales, product, and support functions
The one thing most CX leaders underinvest in (and shouldn't)

Want to come on the show?

We're looking to talk to support and CX leaders actively running teams of 10 or more. If you've shipped something interesting in the last 12 months, a new tool rollout, an org redesign, an AI deployment that worked (or didn't), we want to hear about it.

20 minutes of your time

A conversational recording, no script, no prepared slides. We handle everything around it.

A polished clip pack

You get the full video, short-form clips for LinkedIn, and quote cards. Yours to share however you want.

Distribution to peers

Your episode goes live on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, reaching thousands of support leaders.

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Presented by

IrisAgent

IrisAgent is the AI support platform trusted by modern support teams to automate ticket resolution, surface incidents early, and give agents the context they need to move faster.

Learn more about IrisAgent →