Overview

Use the Topics report to discover what your customers and team are talking about, and take action on what matters most.

To access the Topics report, navigate to the Reports section in Staircase AI.

Topics are keywords and phrases that come up across customer and team communications. There are two types:

• User-defined topics: These are topics you create to track what's most relevant to your business. Examples include product features, customer use cases, and commercial terms.
• AI-defined topics: These are topics that Staircase AI automatically detects across multiple customer conversations. Examples include meeting scheduling issues, product complaints, and challenges with commercial terms or processes.

For more information on configuring topics, refer to the Configure Topics article.

Use the Topics Report

When you open the Topics report, you see a treemap view on the top and tabular view beneath it to view your highest-volume topics. The most frequently discussed topic appears in the top, with volume decreasing toward the bottom.

The table view below displays each topic along with its related terms, associated accounts, total topic items, positive communication items, negative communication items, neutral communication items, topic-related emails, and topic-related meetings.

To explore a specific topic, select Topics breakdown beside a topic. The specific topics page includes: sub-topics table view to see associated accounts, total topic items, positive communication items, negative communication items, neutral communication items, topic-related emails, and topic-related meetings.

You can also add or remove columns and apply filters, such as date range, communication type, and accounts, using the Select & reorder Columns option.

Analyze Topic Trends

Trending topics helps you identify which topics are gaining or losing traction across customer interactions over a selected time period, giving teams a clearer picture of emerging patterns and shifts in customer sentiment.

To analyze trending topics, add the following fields to the Select & reorder Columns:

• Current Period Volume: The number of times a topic was mentioned during the selected time period.
• Previous Period Volume: The number of times the same topic was mentioned in the equivalent prior period.
• Absolute Growth: The raw change in mention volume between the two periods.
• Growth %: The percentage change in volume between the current and previous periods.
• Data Over Time: A time-series graph view showing how topic volume has trended across the selected date range.

These metrics are time-bound and automatically recalculate when you change the date range filter, for example, switching to a 30-day window updates all metrics to reflect that period.

Best Practices

Here are some ways to get the most out of the Topics report:

• Add the trending topics columns in the report to monitor how topics evolve over time and identify emerging patterns or shifts in customer sentiment.
• Leverage the Treemap and tabular view to quickly visualize which topics are currently trending and their relative impact.
• Use Ask Staircase within Topics to analyze the drivers behind positive or negative sentiment, and take upstream actions that can improve experiences for a broader customer base.