"Give your team the keys"
A conversation with Elyse Mankin, Head of Support at Attio
Elyse Mankin leads Support at Attio, an AI-native CRM for modern go-to-market teams. Before Attio, she spent almost 8 years at Help Scout leading their product support team.
This is a ~30 minute conversation about what support looks like when your users are builders: technical use cases, lots of customization, and questions that go way beyond basic troubleshooting.
What I loved about our conversation
Support and success are learning from each other - Not just collaborating — actually learning. Success teaches the consultative approach; support teaches troubleshooting. Then they scale what works through training and self-serve. This feels like where things are headed for a lot of teams.
"I want to invite the team in to decorate the house" - This is one of the best leadership metaphors I've heard. You define the walls (constraints, goals, security), but you let your team decide how to fill the space. It's empowerment without chaos.
Hiring for balance, not just skill - She thinks about hiring as building a portfolio — making sure ownership is distributed across AI, ops, help center, so no one person burns out. Simple idea, rarely done well.
"Claude is one of my best friends" - I laughed, but she's right. AI gets you 80% of the way there. Your job is the last 20% — judgment, craft, knowing when to override it.
Jump to a section
[01:11] Elyse's non-linear path into support — "The closer to the customer I got, the more satisfaction I had"
[03:18] What makes supporting builders different — "CRM should mold to you, not the other way around"
[06:01] The shift from how-to to consultative — "I've read the docs, but I don't know how that translates to my business"
[07:19] Why support and success are merging — and how her team makes knowledge-sharing a two-way street
[10:34] Support as a foundation, not a cost center — "I really view us as the foundation the business operates on top of"
[14:46] How they train consultative skills using transcripts + AI — "It shortens the cycle between learning something new and having it ready to use in the queue"
[16:06] "Claude is one of my best friends" — how she uses AI day-to-day
[18:31] What it means to be a builder in support — "It really means stepping into your own agency"
[21:11] Making space to build: forecasting, learning blocks, and report-backs
[24:25] Her leadership philosophy — "I want to invite the team in to decorate the house"
[27:13] Hiring for balance — why she distributes "ambassador roles" to avoid burnout
[29:02] Advice for founders: pick a North Star feeling, then empower people to execute
[31:46] What Attio looks for when hiring — "Passion in your craft, passion in our vision, and builders"