Alaina Franklin

''Why did you decide to build Intryc (YC S24) and in the CX Quality space?'' This is one of the most common questions I get asked in founder and friend circles. For 6+ years as a CSM and a CS leader at Navan and Confluent, I frequently dealt with our most serious and urgent customer issues. Truth is most of those issues didn't need to happen in the first place. Most seemingly 'came out of nowhere' and 'nobody could have predicted them'. Every time I'd wonder, "Why does this keep happening?" I spent many evenings digging through details, trying to understand what went wrong. Usually, the answers were right there; missed customer notes, incomplete onboarding, overlooked messages, misunderstood instructions, or simply put lack of compliance to our team's best practices and onboarding guides. At first, each situation felt unique, but soon I saw common threads: 👉 Important guidelines or instructions were dropped by teams. 👉 Unclear product or CX expectations were set. 👉 Customer details were missed or communication between teams and customers wasn't clear. Unfortunately, we only saw these things after they had already grown into major problems, for both the customer and the business, and now needed a full team effort to sort them out. Teams always worked hard to fix these issues, but constantly solving problems after the fact was tiring and frustrating for everyone involved. My co-founders saw similar issues in their previous roles at Revolut and Amazon, dealing with fraud and transactions handling. That's why we decided to build Intryc (YC S24). Today, most customer interactions happen online, making it easy to connect quickly with many customers. This is great, but it also means CX teams have a lot more to manage. Customers often feel frustrated when automated chatbots or systems can't really understand their problems. Instead of feeling excited about a new product or service, customers end up disappointed and frustrated, wishing they could talk to someone who really cares. At Intryc (YC S24), our mission is to help teams show that they really care. To get ahead of issues before they snowball into becoming huge headaches, media headlines, or simply and most importantly break their customers' trust. Customer support doesn't have to be exhausting or reactive. In the words of one of our customers, 'it's the company's last opportunity to earn their customer's trust back'. I would also add that it could the company's best opportunity to earn their customers' trust at every single interaction. P.S. Intryc is the best-performing AI QA engine for Customer Support in the market. World-class teams at companies like Deel, Blueground, Deliverect, SadaPay, Djamo scale their QA operations efficiently while reducing overall operational costs and maintaining human oversight. If you're in the journey of scaling and streamlining your CX QA, drop me a DM! Always happy to chat and share notes!

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What’s common between Gong, Intercom, Zendesk and Front? The all integrate with Solidroad. And it has become our biggest competitive advantage. Instead of just positioning ourselves as a platform that reviews support & sales conversations; We’re building deep integrations with every tool that teams use to talk to customers. Live chat, email, phone, even the niche stuff: if it’s a customer conversation, we want to be able to pull it in. So instead of hopping between 5 different platforms (and 20 browser tabs), you can just plug everything into Solidroad. It becomes your aggregation layer…sitting on top of it all. Every conversation, from every main channel, in one place. Review, QA, and train: all without chasing down data. That’s how we’re trying to make “customer conversation intelligence” actually work, not just sound cool on a slide. DM me or drop your favorite platform below, I’d love to chat integrations. 🚀

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Predictive Enablement is transforming how we equip our revenue leaders. No longer just about delivering content or training on demand, predictive enablement leverages data and AI to: * Anticipate Skill Gaps: Imagine knowing which reps are about to struggle with a particular objection, product feature etc before it impacts a deal. Proactive, targeted coaching and training. RingCentral's enablement & Ops teams Kelly Molkenbuhr are launching The Revenue Standard which will be the framework to do just this. * Proactively Deliver the Right Resources: Instead of reps searching for answers serve it up. This is where Ringo I've talked about before is coming in for RingCentral. * Optimize Coaching & Training: By analyzing vast amounts of sales data – from call recordings to CRM activity – AI can pinpoint patterns in successful interactions. We are leveraging RingCentral's RingSense and Aviso AI to power this. * Accelerate Onboarding & Time-to-Quota: New hires can be brought up to speed faster with personalized learning paths and simulated scenarios Heather K. has a lot on deck to do just this! * Improve Forecast Accuracy: Account planning, opp planning and deal planning with AI Ratnadeep Chatterjee, MBA Michael Throssel and I have a few things up our sleeves to roll out in Q3! Predictive enablement isn't just a buzzword; it's a strategic imperative powered by AI and robust data analytics. It moves us from reactive problem-solving to proactive performance optimization, ensuring our go-to-market teams are always one step ahead. CC: Akshay Srivastava Joe Jacob Joe Fahrner Ayub Mohammed Amir Hameed Brandon Thomas Are you already exploring predictive enablement within your organization? What impact have you seen, or what challenges are you anticipating? #PredictiveEnablement #SalesEnablement #RevenueEnablement #AITech #Coaching #GTMStrategy

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Today, many teams are kicking off Q4. A quick framework I’ve used for quarterly content meetings that the PMMs actually enjoyed: For context, when I was leading content strategy for Sales Cloud at Salesforce, we had a VERY cross-functional team. PMM, creative, demand gen, and content/editorial all had their own stakes in the game when it came to our quarterly planning. Lots of cooks in the kitchen, and recent reorgs prompting a need for clarity on roles. Everyone developed an integrated planning template, and my team adapted it for a quarterly content planning and reporting meeting. We even had some of the PMMs start to tell us it was their favorite meeting. 👀 Here’s what we would share quarterly. REFRESHER: What is this meeting? I find that a lot of meetings jump right into the subject matter without establishing what success looks like in the next X minutes. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: Do we want questions at the end? Questions in the Google Meet Chat? Say how we want folks to engage. WHAT’S NEW? Everyone gets excited about innovation! What’s new since the last time we met? People updates are key. We shared things like new website and blog updates, team member changes, new authors or featured speakers, and a new top-performing social post to amplify (bonus points if people repostes during the meeting). PERFORMANCE: Quarterly and rolled up annual metrics. Show how we are performing against goals and, more importantly, what we will do differently and optimize because of the results. One of my favorite things to share in a quarterly performance update is “an anatomy of a great blog / social post” section. Pull up one of the team’s favorite top performers (can be a video, article, whatever you’re focused on) and point out all the things that made it great, whether that’s a strong hook, visual, and so on. INTEGRATED PLANNING UPDATE: Has the messaging changed? Are we still aiming for the same audiences? Share any cross-functional updates that change the high-level direction for the team. Another key thing to highlight here is roles and responsibilities. We did this in a “four wheels of a car” slide where we showed how PMM, content, creative, and demand gen were all critical wheels of the car to make it go. We showed a few quick bullets of what each team was responsible for to reduce confusion about swim lanes. CALENDAR UPDATE: Show what’s coming up next in the integrated plan! This is your roadmap for the quarter and the big bets everyone should know. In this section, you make all the high-level strategy real. Making it real is what leaders and practitioners alike get excited about. How do you run your quarterly planning sessions? I’m working on developing a couple frameworks around this for my new professional chapter, and would love to hear!

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Mandatory call reviews don't work. An enablement leader we work had an amazing idea that made them addictive instead: One Slack channel replaced their entire call review process. No more mandatory listening sessions. No more enablement-driven training. No more hoping managers would find time to coach. Here's how their Call Spotlight channel works: Anyone on the GTM team can spotlight a snippet from any call. They select from a dropdown who they want to highlight and pick a category: - Demonstrating value. - Asking good questions. - Handling competition. - Discovery techniques. But the big thing is that they can't just drop the snippet. They have to explain WHY it stood out as good. The result was organic peer-to-peer learning that happens in real time. Instead of enablement saying "Here's what good looks like," teammates are saying "Here's what Sarah just did brilliantly." This is the gangster approach because: - Recognition comes from peers, not managers. - Examples are fresh, not months-old library calls. - Discussion happens naturally in threads. - People actually want to listen to 30-second snippets vs. full calls. The best part was that it created competition for the right behaviors. Reps started asking better questions because they knew good discovery might get spotlighted. They put more effort into demos knowing peers were listening. For new hires, the channel became their real-time training library. Instead of ancient role-play videos, they heard exactly how current prospects were responding to current messaging. Plus, the enablement team went from content creators to content CURATORS. They built folders matching the spotlight categories, pulling the best submissions for formal training. Think about it...you turned call reviews, which feel like homework assignments, into something that feels like highlight reels. The difference? Nobody skips highlight reels.

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🔥 How much time are you spending disrupting yourself? My guess? Not enough! With markets shifting, budgets tightening, and AI rewriting the rules, Customer Success as a department and the CSM role are under the microscope. Some companies are pulling back. Others are doubling down. But one truth remains: 🤝 🪴 Trust and growth are not separate. They are the same unlock. For your customers. And for your business. That is why Customer Success must continue to evolve, and do it FAST. Because if we don’t disrupt ourselves, someone else will. 💡 For example, what Are your CSMs Focused on? Are they still playing support? Or are they creating impact? At DISQO, here is what ours are focused on right now: ✅ Driving real outcomes, based on a deep understanding of the customer's business and the goals of our stakeholders (i.e. retention) ✅ Helping customers connect today’s usage to tomorrow’s value (i.e. growth) ✅ Creating trust by showing up as strategic partners, not just friendly contacts (i.e. enduring relationship) This role is not static. It shouldn’t be safe. The best CSMs are already moving, because the role is changing whether we change with it or not. 🧠 Here’s the mindset shift: The future of Customer Success is not about defending value that already exists. It is about unlocking new value that didn’t exist before we showed up. That is disruption. That is leadership. That is the job. 💬 What about you? What are YOUR CSMs focused on right now? How are you evolving the role before the market forces you to? Let’s challenge each other to go further. Let’s build the future of CS (and in particular, CSMs) on purpose. #CustomerSuccess #CSLeadership #DisruptTheNorm #CustomerGrowth #CreateTheFuture #PostSalesLeadership #TrustAndRevenue #ValueCreation

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Vendor Consolidation vs. Best-of-Breed Tech Stack No doubt, a HOT topic for Enablement leaders facing the quagmire of proving defensible value in the face of increasingly scrutinized budgets. Spoiler alert: this post won't settle that debate (at least today... sorry!), but it sure provides a polarizing caption. Rather, this post is about effectively securing the MOST impact for your internal teams evaluating tools while simultaneously pressure testing how much your external vendors actually want to invest in your success. The answer: propose a win-win onsite vendor day. CASE STUDY: - WHAT: a few months back, we proposed collaborating on an in-person "Gong Day." In exchange for flying Pigment's Enablement team to Dublin (Gong's EMEA HQ) and dedicating an entire day's worth of mindshare, Gong would organize a "Gong on Gong" showcase of how they internally utilize their platform for IC's and leaders across BDR, AE, and CSM personas. - WHY: 1) Pigment's Enablement team, much like many others in B2B SaaS, was not yet harnessing the full value included in its tech stack, 2) Pigment's Enablement team, much like many others in B2B SaaS, aspired to infuse bleeding edge AI-functionality into its GTM motion. - HOW: [see screenshot below] Pigment met Gong halfway in co-creating an eight-hour mutually-beneficial agenda: we walked away with Gong's battle-tested playbooks, and Gong walked away with critical insight into deepening its customer traction. In sharing this story, Enablement leaders should A) feel empowered to make this pressure-testing request of existing (or potential) vendors, because B) this exercise benefits BOTH parties. Perhaps how vendors respond will clarify the conundrum of consolidating vs. renewing. Kudos to Lesley Ronaldson, Karen Carroll, Arne Branagh-Schmidt, Mounir Boulazreg, and the entire Gong EMEA team for exemplifying an unwavering commitment to customer success.

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