When companies decide to work on their AI visibility, the job usually lands in marketing. It makes sense on paper: it's about how the company is seen. But when we look at who actually does this well, the best people are rarely in marketing. More often, they run support.
The questions models want answered
Think about what AI models are trying to work out when someone asks about your company. Is it any good? What goes wrong with it? How do they handle problems? Is it right for a company like mine?
Those are exactly the questions your support team answers every day. They know which features confuse people, which problems come up most, what the workarounds are and when your product isn't the right fit. They've written the honest answer hundreds of times.
The trouble is where they write it: in private tickets and emails that no model can read.
Why support leads make great students
They already know the answers
The hardest part of community work is saying something genuinely useful about a technical product. A support lead does that in one sentence. An outside agency would need weeks to learn the product and a call with your support lead anyway.
They write like people, not like marketing
Communities can spot marketing copy from the first line, and so can models. Support people are used to writing plainly, admitting limitations and explaining how to fix things. That's exactly the register that earns trust in a Reddit thread.
They're comfortable with criticism
Support teams spend their days with unhappy customers. A critical thread doesn't frighten them. They answer it, which is exactly what you want to happen in public.
Their answers already exist
Your support backlog is full of good questions with good answers. Moving some of those conversations somewhere public, where future customers and models can find them, is one of the fastest wins available.
Where marketing still fits
Marketing has a real role. Marketing and PR teams often hold the journalist relationships that matter for Wikipedia, and they know the brand and the market. What's hardest for them is unlearning the marketing voice. Once that's gone, they're very effective too.
The best setups we see pair the two: someone from support who knows the product, and someone from marketing who knows the story and the press.
What it takes
Not a full-time role. For one person, keeping a Reddit presence and a review programme alive takes roughly three to six hours a week. Wikipedia work comes in bursts: nothing for months, then a concentrated week.
What they need is:
- permission to post in their own name, without a review queue for every reply
- the rules of each platform, so nobody gets an account banned or a page deleted
- the time, written into their week rather than squeezed in around everything else
So who should you send?
Send the person who knows the product, not necessarily the one with "marketing" in their title. Give them the hours and the permission, and teach them the rules. They'll do better than any agency, including us.