As a former Partner at McKinsey who has guided Fortune 100 companies through complex AI transformations, Mina Alaghband has seen firsthand where ambitious AI initiatives succeed and where they falter. Now, as the first Chief Customer Officer at WRITER, an agentic AI platform for the enterprise, she is tasked with ensuring its clients achieve tangible, scalable results. In this discussion, we explore her strategy for making AI transformation a reality, delving into why customer success is the linchpin for ROI, how to drive adoption across vast organizations, and the hands-on methodology required to overcome common implementation hurdles.
You’ve driven major AI transformations for Fortune 100 companies. What specifically about WRITER’s agentic platform convinced you to join, and how will you structure your customer-facing teams—like forward-deployed engineering and AI adoption—to ensure enterprise-wide success?
What truly drew me in was the realization that WRITER’s DNA is fundamentally customer-obsessed. This focus is palpable, and it’s the engine driving its momentum and adoption ahead of the market. It’s one thing to have powerful technology, but it’s another to have an organization built around deep customer partnerships. My role is to amplify that strength by building out a robust global customer operations unit. I’ll be overseeing our professional services, forward-deployed engineering, AI adoption, and transformation director teams, structuring them to work side-by-side with executives. This integrated approach ensures we’re not just selling software; we’re directly partnering with leadership to redesign how their organizations operate and achieve outcomes at scale.
Many executives report that AI deployments fail to scale or deliver ROI. How does WRITER’s “full-stack platform” combined with a “hands-on delivery methodology” concretely address these common failures for clients? Please share a practical example of this in action.
It’s a story I heard constantly from executives—they’re inundated with reports of AI projects that never get off the ground. Agents fail in production, compliance controls break, and the promised ROI never shows up. WRITER directly confronts this by combining its full-stack platform with a hands-on delivery methodology that genuinely bends the odds in the customer’s favor. For instance, instead of just handing over the keys, our teams work hand-in-hand with a client to transform a specific workflow. We build alongside their leaders and enable their frontline teams, ensuring that the AI is not just implemented, but deeply integrated and raising the bar on operational and efficiency metrics from day one. This partnership is what turns a promising pilot into a scaled, enterprise-wide success.
The idea that “AI transformation lives or dies in customer success” is a powerful one. Can you walk me through what this philosophy looks like in the first 90 days with a new client, and what specific metrics you use to define tangible ROI?
That philosophy is the bedrock of our engagement model. In the first 90 days, it’s all about collaboration and momentum. We work directly with leaders to identify the most critical business challenges and redesign core workflows with AI at the center. It’s not a theoretical exercise; it’s about tangible change. We’re on the ground enabling frontline teams to use the platform, gathering feedback, and iterating quickly. Success isn’t just about usage statistics; it’s about moving the needle on key operational and efficiency metrics that matter to the C-suite. We define real ROI by measuring improvements in things like content creation speed, sales cycle velocity, or operational cost reduction, ensuring our clients see a clear and immediate business impact.
WRITER aims to empower everyone from the CEO to a copywriter. What are the practical steps your team takes to drive adoption across such diverse roles within a complex organization like Marriott or Prudential, and how do you measure that success?
Empowering everyone from the C-suite to a sales rep is exactly the mission. The key is to make the platform’s superpowers relevant and accessible to each specific role. For an executive at a company like Marriott or Prudential, this means partnering with them to see how agentic AI can reshape business strategy and drive major efficiency gains. For a copywriter, it means enabling them to create high-quality content faster and more consistently. Our customer success and AI adoption teams don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach; we work with individual departments to build alongside them, tailoring the solution to their unique workflows. Success is measured not just by login rates, but by the tangible outcomes each team achieves and how their operational metrics improve.
With new customers like e.l.f. Beauty and TikTok joining, it’s clear your client base is diverse. How do you tailor the customer success strategy for a fast-moving consumer brand versus a highly-regulated financial institution, ensuring compliance and security are never compromised?
That diversity is a testament to the platform’s adaptability, and our customer success strategy has to be just as flexible. For a fast-moving brand like e.l.f. Beauty or TikTok, the focus might be on accelerating creative workflows and go-to-market speed. With a highly-regulated institution like Vanguard or Prudential, the priorities are fundamentally different. For them, we lead with a security-first mindset, ensuring that every AI agent and workflow is built with robust compliance controls from the ground up. Our full-stack platform is critical here, as it prevents the breakdowns in governance that executives fear. My teams work closely with each client to understand their specific industry constraints and opportunities, ensuring our hands-on delivery methodology meets their unique needs without ever compromising on security.
What is your forecast for enterprise adoption of agentic AI over the next 18 months?
Over the next 18 months, I predict we will see a major shift from isolated AI experiments to strategic, enterprise-wide deployments of agentic platforms. The initial hype is giving way to a demand for real business impact, and executives are realizing that a patchwork of single-purpose tools won’t deliver the transformation they need. Companies that can provide a full-stack platform combined with a deep, partnership-based delivery model will lead the way. We’ll see enterprises move beyond basic chatbots and content generators to deploying AI agents that fundamentally redesign core business processes, from sales and marketing to operations. The focus will be squarely on measurable ROI and embedding AI as the central nervous system of the organization.
