Lifecycle Events

Overview

Lifecycle Events automatically detect meaningful moments in customer relationships by analyzing communication data across emails, meetings, tickets, and chats. When Staircase AI identifies a significant shift, such as a spike in negative sentiment, a period of disengagement, or a new stakeholder entering the conversation, it surfaces the event on the account timeline with full context.

Staircase AI automatically tracks standard customer events such as Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR), commercial discussions, and extreme sentiments. You can extend this capability by creating Custom Events that match the specific meetings and milestones important to your business. For example: Onboarding, Kick-off, or Referrals.

Custom Events appear in the Customer Journey Cycle and the Events Report, giving you a complete view of client engagement. Staircase AI scans communications (emails, meetings) to detect these events and can sync the most recent event date to your CRM platform or Gainsight Customer Success (CS).

Out-of-the-box Lifecycle Events

Staircase AI automatically detects the following lifecycle events out-of-the-box:

• Account personnel changes
detects changes in the client’s team, such as new hires, departures, or role shifts.
• Organization personnel changes
 detects changes in the vendor’s team, such as new hires, departures, or role shifts.
• Commercial discussion
captures any conversation involving contract terms, pricing, or renewal conditions.
• Renewal
flags updates when the renewal date is extended.
• Churn notification
detects when a client officially and explicitly communicates their intent to terminate a contract or service. For example, “we’re not renewing”, “terminating contract" and so on.
• Highly positive message
recognizes strong positive feedback related to product, value, or exceptional service.
• Extremely negative message
captures strongly negative feedback, often concerning product quality or escalations, example, in the support channel. 
• Churn risk
identifies early or more subtle signals of potential churn, such as references to competitor pricing, lack of perceived value, reduction in licenses, and so on.
• Executive-to-executive touch-base
detects direct communication between executives of both organizations. This setting requires the customer role of Executive Sponsor to be defined and vendor executives to be tagged in your Staircase AI settings.

Customize Lifecycle Event Categories

To customize event categories:

1. Log into Staircase.ai. 
2. From the left navigation pane, click the Settings icon.
3. In the Configurations tab, click Lifecycle events.
4. Review the list of available event categories.
5. For each event category:
   • Turn on toggle: Keep the event active for detection.
   • Turn off toggle: Prevent the system from detecting this event type. 
     
     
      
6. In the Exclude lookup terms field, enter terms to exclude and click Add.
   Note
   • Use quotation marks (" ") to search for exact whole words.
   • Omit quotation marks to search for partial matches within words.
7. (Optional) To rename a lifecycle event, enter a new name in the Label field.
   For example, you may want to rename Extremely Negative Message to Customer Friction or simply Negative Message if that better fits how your team talks about these situations.
   Tip: Choose names that are intuitive for your team. Event names appear on the account timeline, in reports, and in notifications. Clear, organization-specific names help teams respond faster.
8. In the Included Signals section, select or deselect the signals you want to include in Lifecycle events. 
   For example, the Extremely Negative Message event type may include sub-signals such as Customer Escalation, Product Complaint, or Contract Threat. The admin can uncheck the sub-signals that are not relevant to their customer base, reducing noise and improving event relevance.
   Note: By default, all signals are selected. Changes apply to new events going forward and do not retroactively modify existing events on the timeline.
   
   
9. From the Include communication types dropdown list, select applicable communication types that you want to include for a lifecycle event.
   
   
    
10. Click Update.

Effect of Customization

• Adjust setting to tailor event detection according to your business priorities.
• Use the Events report to view historical data for all events, filtered by event type, tier, timeframe, owner, account, and more.
• Deactivate categories to reduce event volume and limit visibility into certain client risks or opportunities.

Create a Custom Event

To configure a custom event:

1. Log into Staircase.ai. 
2. From the left navigation pane, click the Settings icon.
3. In the Configurations tab, click Lifecycle events.
4. Scroll down to the Custom lifecycle events section.
5. Click Add lifecycle event.
   
   
    
6. Enter the following details:
   • Event name (example: Onboarding)
   • Event Color for visual identification
   • Lookup terms for Staircase AI to detect in meeting titles, email subject line and email body (example: Onboarding, Kick-off, Referral). 
     Note
     • This does not reference meeting transcripts.
     • Use quotation marks (" ") to search for exact whole words.
     • Omit quotation marks to search for partial matches within words.
   • From the Include communication types dropdown list, select applicable communication types that you want to include for a lifecycle event.
     
     
      
7. Click Add to save your event.

Edit or Delete a Custom Event

To edit a custom event:

1. Log into Staircase.ai. 
2. From the left navigation pane, click the Settings icon.
3. In the Configurations tab, click Lifecycle events.
4. Scroll down to the Custom lifecycle events section.
5. From the three-dots horizontal menu, click Edit. Alternatively, to remove the lifecycle event, choose Delete. 
   
   
    
6. Modify the lifecycle event details as needed and click Update.
   
   

View Lifecycle Events

Staircase AI displays lifecycle events in the following areas:

• Account Timeline
• Lifecycle Events Report

Best Practices

Here are some of the best practices to help you get the most value from Lifecycle Events and ensure your team responds to signals quickly and consistently.

• Start with defaults, then tune: Run Lifecycle Events with all sub-signals turned on for a few weeks to establish a baseline event volume. Once you understand the patterns, turn off sub-signals that generate noise for your organization.
• Rename events to drive adoption: If your team does not use terms such as "Extremely Negative Message" in day-to-day conversations, rename the event. Terminology that is familiar to your team drives faster recognition and response.
• Use signal details for CSM coaching: The AI explanations and direct quotes available in the side panel are valuable for coaching Customer Success Managers on effective event follow-up. Gainsight recommends reviewing real examples during team meetings to reinforce best practices.
• Review the Lifecycle Events report weekly: The Lifecycle Events report is a fast way to identify patterns across your portfolio. A cluster of similar signals across multiple accounts may indicate a product issue, a process gap, or an emerging trend that warrants escalation.