Staircase AI Overview
Overview
Staircase AI is an advanced solution integrated with Gainsight CS to enhance customer success by leveraging artificial intelligence to provide actionable insights. Staircase AI automatically analyzes customer interactions across email, meetings, and support channels, surfacing critical insights. These insights enable businesses to predict customer churn, identify growth opportunities, and strengthen customer relationships through real-time sentiment analysis and relationship intelligence.
By integrating Staircase AI's (Staircase subscription required ) advanced communication analytics and AI-powered insights, Gainsight offers a more comprehensive view for customer success teams and executives.
This integration enhances customer health signals with real-time communication intelligence, robust customer health monitoring, proactive risk management, and uncovering new engagement opportunities. It helps identify churn risks, growth opportunities, and sentiment trends.
Important: Gainsight CS users who have purchased Staircase can see the Staircase instance within the Gainsight app switcher. This integration is controlled by single sign-on (SSO), ensuring a unified login experience.
Key Benefits of Staircase AI with Gainsight CS integration:
- Enhanced Customer Health Monitoring: Enrich real-time communication analytics and sentiment tracking for earlier and more accurate risk detection.
- Customer Sentiment Analysis: Analyze customer communication channels such as emails, chats, and call transcripts and help prioritize accounts requiring immediate attention.
- Health Score Customization: Adjust health score parameters based on business objectives such as Product usage metrics, Net Promoter Score, and Sentiment trends.
- Churn Prediction: Identify potential issues with AI-driven analysis insights to detect and address churn risks faster.
- Actionable Growth Opportunities: Surface expansion opportunities by automatically identifying positive sentiment, feature requests, and buying signals in customer communications.
- Unified Customer View: Centralize insights to improve decision-making for CS teams and executives.
- Real-Time Sentiment Analysis: Track customer sentiment across all communication channels to enable timely interventions and relationship strengthening.
- Improved Efficiency: Automate data analysis to reduce manual effort and focus on strategic priorities.
Get Started with Staircase AI
Prerequisites
Customers who purchase Staircase AI must request integration through either the support team or their internal teams. Gainsight enables an integration, linking the Staircase tenant.
Configure Staircase AI
To configure the Staircase AI section:
- Navigate to Administration > 360 Layouts > C360/P360 to configure the Staircase AI layouts.
- In the Configure Sections step, drag and drop the Staircase AI section from the left pane.
- (Optional) Click the name of the section widget to rename them. The original widget name is displayed along with the new name.
- (Optional) To view the Staircase AI section before saving it, click Preview.
- Click Save.
Configure Executive Dashboard (out-of-the-box)
Gainsight provides an out-of-the-box Staircase Executive Dashboard to admins. This dashboard is available in the System Folder of the Dashboard Builder. Admins can access it by navigating to the Dashboard Builder and selecting the System Folder, where the Staircase Executive Dashboard is listed.
The Staircase Executive Dashboard can be customized. Executives or admins can only manage permissions and preview the dashboard.
Admins can assign or revoke access to this dashboard for other users. By default, only the System Administer is assigned. However, admins can add preferred roles such as Staircase Manager, Staircase CSM, or Staircase Admin.
If a Staircase admin wants to assign the dashboard to a non-staircase user, they must first assign an appropriate Staircase role to that user. Additionally, Staircase admins can directly share the Staircase Executive Dashboard with Staircase users.
Access Staircase AI
To access Staircase AI
- Log in to the Gainsight platform.
- Navigate to the Staircase AI module located under the Insights section.
User Management
Gainsight has streamlined User Management by incorporating advanced role-based access controls for Staircase AI features, ensuring secure and efficient collaboration across teams.
Role Assignment and Access Setup
Once the Gainsight team enables the Staircase integration, the system automatically identifies super admins and assigns them the Staircase Admin role. These super admins are added to the Staircase instance as users, granting them full administrative access to the app.
To access the Staircase app, the Username and Email fields must match exactly, and a valid email address is required. This applies to all roles, including Staircase Users, Managers, and Admins.
Note: Gainsight has a validation rule in place to prevent the system from creating Staircase users when the CS username does not match the CS email. In such cases, the GS Role may temporarily be set to one of the following: Staircase Admin, Staircase Manager, or Staircase User. However, this role is automatically reverted and reset to null after a short period. This behavior is also reflected in the activity logs.
Additionally, the Staircase instance can be accessed using Switcher, allowing users to switch seamlessly between Gainsight and Staircase.
Role-Based User Permissions
| GS Role | Access Level | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Staircase User | View owned accounts and communications | Individual CSMs |
| Staircase Manager | View all communications and team stats | Team leaders and Executives |
| Staircase Admin | Full access including settings | System administrators |
Managing User Access
Admins can manage user staircase access within CS Adding Users: Assign a GS Role (Staircase User, Manager, or Admin) for staircase access
- Updating Roles: Changing a GS Role automatically updates their Staircase access.
- Inactivating Users: Removing a GS Role will revoke Staircase access or inactivating the CS User will also revoke the staircase access.
Permission Bundle
As part of the Staircase integration setup, the system automatically creates two out-of-the-box permission bundles: Default Staircase Full Permissions for full licensed users and Default Staircase Viewer Plus Permissions for viewer plus licensed users.
Within these permission bundles, the following Staircase-specific items are automatically selected:
-
Under Navigation Permissions
- Insights > Staircase Communication
- Insights > Staircase AI Reports
-
Within Settings
-
Staircase AI Setting
-
The system automatically assigns the two default permission bundles to users. A dynamic rule assigns these bundles to users with a GS Role of Staircase Admin, or Staircase Manager, or a Staircase User. As a result, any user with a Staircase-specific role automatically receives the default permission bundles.
Note:
- Super admins cannot customize the default permission bundles but can modify their current permission bundles by adding or updating Staircase navigation items as needed.
- The system automatically assigns default Staircase permission bundles based on the user's assigned Staircase role. This is done using a dynamic rule, and if the rule is updated, the system applies the changes accordingly.
Executive Dashboard
The Executive Dashboard provides both a high-level overview of business performance, risks, and opportunities, as well as a tactical punch list for the team to ensure they remain proactive about the same.
The following existing dashboard features are not supported on the Staircase Executive Dashboard:
- Global Filters
- Download as PDF
Components of Executive Dashboard
Engaged Accounts
This metric represents the number of total active customers that were engaged with you (client-to-vendor direction only) in that time period. It will also reflect filter options (not including time frame). Engaged days of silence per the Settings > Configurations > Insights settings (Account Dark).
Overall Revenue
The total revenue for all active accounts, or all accounts in the filtered view if filter options are applied.
Engaged Owners
The same applies to the 'engaged accounts' explanation but this represents the primary account owners' (mapped in Settings > Configurations) engagement with their customers.
Net Revenue Retention and Gross Revenue Retention
Standard industry calculations for both (see below) and responsive to the period filter set.
- NRR = (Starting MRR + Expansion MRR - Downgrade MRR - Churned MRR) / Starting MRR
- GRR = (Starting MRR - Churn MRR - Downgrade MRR) / Starting MRR
Required dependencies for accurate GRR/NRR output:
- Accurate and up-to-date renewal and revenue numbers
- Ensure the correct ARR/MRR revenue setting is checked in Staircase Settings > Configurations > General
Options best practice for accurate GRR/NRR output = maintaining churned accounts in Staircase for up to 6-12 months.
Note:
- If an account exists at the beginning of the assessment period but is no longer present in Staircase by the end, it will be excluded from the calculation.
- Staircase automatically identifies down-sell and expansion by comparing the pre-renewal and post-renewal ARR values.
Demo Response Time
Represents your team's average response time based on filter options selected (time period and group of users assessed).
Widgets in Executive Dashboard
Activity
Toggle between activity (total activity bi-directional), team effort (hrs), health score, and sentiment score to see trend and volume over time (based on time filters) by tier.
Revenue by Health Score
Choose between revenue and number of accounts to see the current distribution of Staircase AI health scores across active customer accounts.
Revenue at risk
Choose between revenue and number of accounts to see the current distribution between accounts/revenue with identified risk versus non-current detected (red (risk) v green (no risk id'ed).
OOTB Risk/Opportunity Cards or buckets in the Dashboard
Definitions for each card are below. Ability to acknowledge an account(s) in relevant cards by clicking the 3 dots in the upper right-hand corner of each card. Acknowledging an account will remove them from the card and revenue count.
Accounts Dark
Represents dark accounts (no engagement) from client to vendor direction. Days of silence thresholds can be configured by any admin user in the Settings > Configurations > Insights section.
No Renewal Discussion
Represents accounts currently in a renewal window (set in insights configurations) that have not yet had a renewal conversation started (on the channels Staircase can see).
No Reach-Out to Account
Another side of Accounts Dark. This represents the direction of your team to the client. So customers who haven't heard from your team in a while (days of silence configured in insights settings).
Account Negative Sentiment/Issues Detected
Accounts whose current sentiment score is red (negative).
Churn Detected
Represents accounts who have sent in an explicit notice of termination.
Churn Risk Detected
Represents accounts who have sent in a communication that hints at the potential risk of churn (looking at your competitors, not seeing enough value, consolidating our tech stack, cutting budget, etc.).
Account in not Multi-Threaded
Accounts that don't have at least two team members talking to at least two customer stakeholders. A relationship in Staircase is defined as two people having at least three exchanges within the past 90 days.
Account with a Positive Health Score
Accounts with a currently positive (green) Staircase AI health score.
Recent Renewals
Accounts that have recently renewed (Staircase sets a renewal event anytime the renewal is updated in the CRM).
Insights
Reports and Dashboards include AI-driven analytics from Staircase AI, offering actionable insights into customer sentiment, engagement trends, and churn risks in a visually intuitive format.
Staircase AI Reports
Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis Identify gaps in key stakeholder identification across all active accounts or prospects. Where gaps exist, the team should populate the stakeholder’s role either in Staircase directly or via your CRM/CSP (depending on settings). It ensures key stakeholders are engaged (using the appropriate touch frequency cadence from your settings). This can be used as a daily or weekly punch list for account owners to assess which client stakeholders they need to engage with to maintain their nurture cadence.
Topics
Here you can analyze topics you've defined (user topics), topics Staircase has suggested (AI topics), or both. For each topic, you will see how many clients are discussing it, the volume of communications where the topic was detected, and the average customer sentiment for said topic.
This data can be shared internally to help with product improvement/roadmap and other engagement and process improvements/opportunities/learnings/optimizations.
Insights
This report is a collection of all the current insights Staircase has surfaced. You can filter down by tier or insight type. The action here is based on insight. For example, if the insight is 'customer dark' the action is re-engaging that client. If the insight is 'farewell' detected, you'll want to ensure that a new key stakeholder is identified and engaged.
Team Stats
This report is currently visible for manager and admin users only and can be used to see stats on team performance, communication volume, effort in hours, and workload. Quickly see, for a given period, how many emails were sent/received and how many meetings each CSM conducted. This report can be used to help ensure workload is balanced across the team as well as who may have the bandwidth to take on incoming customer accounts.
Team Efficiency
Get an efficiency rate metric for each account to identify customers that the team may be over or under-serving. The efficiency rate metric is calculated using team effort (hrs) X estimated team cost compared to customer revenue for the selected period. Settings > Configurations > Team Effort to adjust the estimates for team salary and time spent on emails, tickets, and chats.
Customer (Account) Overview
This report is simply the Staircase account overview table with the ability to download to Excel or CSV. It contains all active accounts and details about their engagement, sentiment, and activity.
Missing Contacts
This report looks at your contacts in Staircase and compiles a list of contacts found in Staircase but not in Salesforce. A monthly or quarterly check is recommended to ensure pertinent contacts are added to SFDC. From this report, users can bulk-create contacts in SFDC with the click of a button.
Renewal Status
Gives you a view of all current renewals in a given quarter and their status of either: renewed, churned, or needs renewal. Status is picked up from the CRM/CSP connection. The report will also show you pre and post-renewal revenue to quickly understand any up/down sell activity.
Churn Analysis
This report compiles and analyzes all of Staircase AI’s summaries on churn-related events to provide an output of the top reasons your customers are churning (or threatening to churn). Using the number of accounts and revenue impact, your leaders can quickly prioritize strategic optimizations to products, services, processes, or customer engagement models to mitigate further churn downstream.
Stakeholders
A list of all customer stakeholders Staircase AI has detected across client communications. Name and email. And sometimes the title (where available via their email signature). This report also provides a stakeholder sentiment score which teams use to identify potential references, case studies, expansion/upsell apps, marketing collabs, and more.
Relationships
This report is used to fuel the ‘account not multi-threaded’ insight. Check this report to see how many of your team members (users) have active relationships with customer stakeholders. You want to avoid any 0s or 1s in either column so use this report to identify where the team should focus to build additional relationships with key stakeholders.
Lifecycle Events
See all lifecycle events detected by Staircase over the past year. It can be filtered by time frame, segment, event type, etc.
Data Sync
This report will show you what channels are connected and which accounts are showing data across those various channels.
Open Items
A compiled list of all open items detected by Staircase across the support ticketing system and email.
Search Communication
The communication search feature in Staircase AI allows users to quickly locate and analyze client conversations based on specific topics or keywords.
To use this feature:
- From Insights, navigate to the Communication Search page.
- Click the Topics dropdown menu to choose between User-Defined Topics or AI Topics.
Staircase AI automatically compiles all client communications mentioning the selected keywords within the specified time frame, which enables targeted analysis and improved decision-making.
C360 and P360
Staircase AI integration with C360 and P360 gives customer success teams real-time insights into communication and enriched customer health signals. With historical data included, teams get a unified view of customer interactions, helping them make better decisions.
Note: Staircase AI is not supported in Mini 360 views and as a widget.
The below image shows the Staircase AI section in C360
The below image shows the Staircase AI section in P360
