AI Expansion Analysis

Overview

AI Expansion Analysis helps you identify potential revenue growth opportunities across your accounts by analyzing recent customer interactions. This capability uses AI to uncover both explicit and implicit expansion signals in the Accounts page, ensuring Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Account Managers never miss a growth opportunity hidden in day-to-day communications.

How does AI Expansion Analysis Work?

The AI Expansion Analysis feature identifies potential expansion opportunities by analyzing customer communications and surfacing actionable insights. It helps you evaluate, validate, and act on opportunities directly within your existing sales processes.

Process Overview

• Detection: The Expansion Analyst automatically scans customer communications to identify potential expansion signals.
• Review: You review the detected opportunity details and supporting evidence provided by the AI.
• Decision: Based on the insights, you decide whether to pursue the opportunity.
• Action: Create or update the opportunity record in your connected CRM system.
• Execution: Use the AI-generated insights to inform and guide your sales strategy.

This feature provides data-driven intelligence to strengthen decision-making and uncover both account-level and cross-account expansion opportunities.
Note: Future enhancements will expand this functionality. Share your ideas and feedback in the Staircase AI Community. 

The Three-Agent System

AI Expansion Analysis uses a three-agent system that learns from historical successes and applies those insights to current accounts to identify new expansion opportunities.

• Agent 1: Experience Curator
  • Monitors customer communications (emails, meetings, support tickets)
  • Identifies explicit and implicit expansion signals 
  • Flags conversations mentioning growth, additional products, new use cases
• Agent 2:  Signal Scout
  • Evaluates each detected opportunity
  • Assigns AI confidence score
  • Assesses budget and technical readiness
  • Calculates potential impact
• Agent 3: Opportunity Analyst
  • Synthesizes all signals for each account
  • Generates natural language summaries
  • Provides context and evidence
  • Creates prioritized recommendations

Add Expansion Analyst

Users can filter and access accounts with AI expansion opportunities from the Executive Dashboard. To do so:

1. Navigate to the Executive Dashboard page.
2. Scroll down to an out-of-the-box insight card, Expansion Potential. It highlights accounts with identified expansion potential.
3. Click the Expansion Potential card. This takes you to the corresponding Accounts page for deeper insights. 
   
   
    
4. Click the Filter icon and select Advanced filter. The Advanced filter dialog box appears. 
   Note: The default filter is set to show accounts with an Expansion readiness level above three (on a one to five scale). You can modify the value as needed between one to five with five as the highest readiness level. 
   
   
    
5. From the Select Field dropdown list, select AI expansion opportunity summary. 
6. From the Select Operator dropdown list, select Is defined. Alternatively, you can select the required operator and the corresponding value.
7. Click Done. 
   
   
    
8. Select an account from the filtered list. The AI expansion analysis tab is added next to the AI summary. 
   
   

The AI Expansion Analysis displays key account insights, including momentum, readiness score, and the date the summary was generated. It also shows the ARR potential (if a value was discussed) and lists the products mentioned in the expansion-related discussions.

The See details section highlights:

• Executive sponsor: Identifies key executives involved, their level of interest.
• Momentum context: Displays current engagement momentum.
• Recent activity: Displays account interactions from the past 14 days, providing visibility into recent communication trends.
• Timeline pressure points: Surfaces any timing constraints or deal-related urgency that may impact decision-making.

Note: Expansion Analyst can generate insights even when no past experiences are available in the Experience Library.

Expansion Readiness Score

The Expansion Readiness Score evaluates how likely a customer account is to grow based on conversational and engagement signals. Scores range from 1 to 5 that helps identify accounts that are ready or nearly ready for expansion opportunities.

Score Definitions

• Score 5: Extremely Ready Accounts with multiple strong signals that closely match the behavior of recently expanded accounts (if available). Examples include executive engagement, active pricing discussions, and increasing communication frequency. For instance, A VP joins recent calls, the team asks about pricing for additional seats, and email sentiment trends are positive.
• Score 4: Very Ready
Strong signals are present but slightly less intense or fewer in number than a Score 5.
Example: A champion is discussing new capabilities or asking about future possibilities, but executive involvement is not yet visible.
• Score 3: Moderately Ready
Some positive indicators are present, but they are weaker or ambiguous.
Example: One mention of potential growth or a new stakeholder has appeared, but there’s no clear expansion intent. These are worth watching, additional signals could move them to a 4 or 5.
• Score 2: Weak Signals (Not displayed in opportunity lists)
Limited signs of readiness. There may be positive sentiment or stable engagement, but no clear indicators of expansion intent.
• Score 1: Not Ready (Not displayed in opportunity lists)
No discernible expansion signals. The account may be healthy, but communication shows no interest in growth at this time.

Key Factors Influencing the Score

• Executive or leadership participation in meetings and emails.
• Discussions around growth, new capabilities, or additional seats.
• Trends in sentiment within conversations.
• New stakeholder involvement.
• Support ticket topics, such as scaling or new use cases. 
• Frequency and pattern of communication.
• Similarity to patterns seen in accounts that have expanded.
• Historical experiences, if available.

Note: Product usage data is not integrated with Staircase AI, and does not influence the score. However, conversational signals are the primary input.