Susana de Sousa, who leads Community at Plain, discusses the evolving landscape of customer support, emphasizing a shift from traditional methods towards a more proactive, technical role driven by AI advancements. She highlights the pressures faced by support teams, both from job security concerns due to rapid technological changes and from executive demands for leveraging new tools to enhance customer success. Susana advocates for a focus on foundational elements like documentation and product quality before integrating AI, as it can amplify existing issues. She also stresses the importance of support teams collaborating closely with engineering, suggesting that support roles will become increasingly technical as AI handles routine tasks. Susana encourages support leaders to develop technical skills and systems thinking to effectively address complex issues and adapt to the evolving demands of the industry, predicting that by 2026, support engineers will play a pivotal role in modern customer support.