Ask Staircase

Overview

Ask Staircase is an AI-powered tool that helps you quickly uncover insights from customer communications across email, meeting transcripts and support interactions using simple, natural language questions. Instead of manually reviewing conversations, you can ask direct questions and get instant, actionable insights with linked source references.

Use Ask Staircase to spot early risks, save time on meeting preparation, uncover details and previously hidden account signals, identify customer champions, and reduce churn.

Ask questions using Ask Staircase across multiple views:

• Executive Dashboard (Cross-Account Ask Staircase): Analyze customer engagements across multiple accounts. If your question targets a specific account, the system automatically triggers the Account Ask Staircase agent for deeper, account-level analysis.
• Account Page (Account Ask Staircase): Focus your questions on a single account to uncover detailed insights about customer engagement and sentiment. For accounts with child accounts configured, you can also query across the entire account hierarchy using the child account icon button in the Ask Staircase input box.
• Topics Page (Topics Ask Staircase): Explore customer sentiment and feedback across key themes and trends derived from conversations.

Ask Staircase is canvas based, but it is still conversational as subsequent questions keep your previous queries in context.

To Ask Staircase across multiple (or all) of your accounts, navigate to the Executive Dashboard page.

Here are the different options user can use in the Executive dashboards page:

• Filter icon: Click the Filter icon to apply filters and refine your result based on specific parameters like Status, Tier, Owner, Health score label, Sentiment score label, Insights, and Lifecycle events. These filters help you refine the context you want the AI to analyze.
  
  
  • Advanced Filter: Click Advanced filter to create additional filters for precise views. For example, adding the Total activity filter lets you set a minimum engagement threshold. Enter a value such as “greater than or equal to 1” to include accounts with at least one activity, or set higher thresholds, such as, 3 or 5 to see only accounts that have been engaged with more heavily.
    
    
     
• Child account icon: Click the child account icon in the Ask Staircase input box to include data from all child accounts in your query. This option is available only on parent account pages.
  • When turned on: Ask Staircase includes data from the parent account and all its child accounts in the response.
  • When turned off: Ask Staircase queries only the selected account.
    
    
     
• Ask a question: In the Ask a question text input field, ask questions in your own language, just like having a conversation, and receive AI-powered analysis. For example: Users can ask “Which accounts mentioned competitive solutions?” or “What feature requests have been mentioned across my accounts?”
  The default model used is GPT-4.1 (Azure), which delivers quick summaries and clear insights. It’s ideal for analyzing health checks, sentiment trends, and recent customer interactions.
  
  
   

• Ask Staircase Starters: Click /Starters on the right side of the Ask Staircase input box, or type / in the Ask bar, to open a prompt menu with pre-built prompts tailored to the account you are viewing. For more information, refer to the Ask Staircase Starters section.
  
  
   

• Active filters icon: A filter icon appears inside the Ask a question input box when active filters are configured on the page. By default, the active filters are applied to your query. Click the active filters icon to turn off the filters and generate a broader response that ignores the currently defined filters.

  Note: 

  • In cross-account Ask me anything, such as the dashboard and search pages, the active filters can include any filter applied on the page, such as account, tier, owner, or lifecycle event filters.

  • The active filters icon is hidden by default when no active filters are configured.
    
    
     

• References: The Ask Staircase responses include linked references with brief summaries to provide context at a glance.
  
  
  
  Clicking a link opens the communication summary in a side-out panel, allowing quick review without leaving the current view.
  
  
   
• Clear Chat: Click the Close icon next to the question to clear the chat.
  
  
   
• Arrow icon: Click the back or forward icon to navigate between questions and answers when multiple questions have been asked.
  
  
   
• Feedback: A built-in Was this helpful? feedback component lets users provide direct feedback on AI outputs for summaries and Ask Me Anything replies across the platform. 
  You can rate AI responses as positive (thumbs up) or negative (thumbs down). Use the optional comment field to provide specific feedback or suggestions to help improve response accuracy. All feedback is captured and routed to the data science team for model tuning and evaluation. 
  
  
   
• Copy to clipboard: Copies the content to your application clipboard so you can quickly paste it elsewhere using Ctrl + V (Windows) or Cmd + V (Mac).
  
  

Ask Staircase Starters

Ask Staircase Starters are pre-built prompts that run with a single click on the account page. The prompts are tailored with common use cases, available directly from the Ask Staircase input box for the account you are viewing.

To use Ask Staircase Starters:

1. Navigate to the Account page.
2. Click /Starters on the right side of the Ask Staircase input box, or type /  in the input box. A prompt menu opens with a list of available Starters.
   
   
    
3. Select a Starter from the list. The prompt text appears in the Ask Staircase input box, allowing you to edit it before submitting your query.
4. Click the down arrow icon to run the prompt. The results display in the Ask Staircase panel.

The following Starters are available on the Account page:

Sample Prompts for Ask Staircase

Below are some sample queries that users can ask using Ask Staircase:

Customer Sentiment Analysis:

• What customers are talking about [specific features]?
• What is the sentiment around our new pricing model?
• Summarize what customers are saying about our [feature]?
• Show me the latest sentiment score for [customer]?

Product Feedback:

• Which customers have mentioned issues with [feature]?
• What are the most common complaints in the last quarter?
• How are customers responding to our latest release?

Account-Specific Questions:

• What was the last issue reported by [customer] and was it resolved?
• What is the current health score for [customer]?
• Summarize the last meeting with [customer]
• When did we last talk to the decision maker at [account]?
• When is the contract renewal date for [customer]?
• What were the key topics discussed with [customer] in the last 30 days?
• Are there any expansion opportunities with [customer]?
• Are there any critical alerts for [customer]?
• Show me recent emails regarding 'XXX' for [customer].
• What was the outcome of the call on May 5th with [customer]?
• Have any new significant risks been identified for [customer] recently?
• Were there any complaints mentioned in the last communication with [customer]?
• List action items from the QBR with [customer]
• What is the status of the onboarding plan for [customer]?
• Are there any open high-priority tickets for [customer]?
• Show me any critical events logged for [customer] in the past week

Cross-Account Analysis:

• Show me all customers unhappy about feature XYZ
• Which accounts might have upsell opportunities?
• What topics are trending across our enterprise customers?