Kustomer COO & President, Doug Hanna, on Building Agentic AI, Running Sales, and Structuring Modern Ops Teams for the AI Era
Get 90 days of Fellow's AI meeting assistant at fellow.app/coo Doug Hanna, President & COO of Kustomer (acquired by Meta), returns to the pod for Episode 51 of Between Two COOs. This time, we’re talking about AI—specifically agentic AI—and how it’s reshaping customer service, GTM workflows, and operational leadership. Doug shares real examples of how Kustomer’s AI agents are resolving tickets, not deflecting them—and why the real power lies in agent-to-agent collaboration. We also cover RevOps structure, sales forecasting frameworks, the problem with over-relying on generic playbooks, and how to operate with high context at scale.
Get 90 days of Fellow's AI meeting assistant at fellow.app/coo
In this episode, Doug and I cover:
- Why “AI agent” is more than just a buzzword
- The difference between deflection and resolution in AI-powered support
- How Kustomer structures RevOps, GTM, and forecasting
- What it means to operate with high-context vs. generic playbooks
- How Doug thinks about team structure, ownership, and cross-functional clarity
- Predictions for agent-to-agent communication: “Your AI agent will talk to my AI agent—and we’ll both just read the summary.”
Timestamps:
(02:00) Defining agentic AI in customer service
(06:30) From deflection to resolution: Kustomer’s AI in action
(10:15) How AI is changing the org chart and team design
(14:00) The problem with low-context playbooks
(17:45) RevOps structuring and ownership
(22:00) Forecasting: visibility vs. execution
(27:00) AI tooling, integration, and buyer psychology
(31:00) Agent-to-agent interactions and AI futurecasting
(34:30) What Doug’s watching next in ops and AI
Links
Doug Hanna on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglashanna1/
Kustomer - https://www.kustomer.com/
Michael Koenig on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/michael-koenig514
Between Two COO's - https://betweentwocoos.com
