The energy at Pulse 2025 was incredible, but for me, the most lasting insights often come from reflecting on the event afterward. I recently had the opportunity to do just that with Jonathan Ditzel, Manager of Systems Architecture at MCG Health, who shared his thoughtful takeaways on topics ranging from customer engagement at scale to the true definition of adoption. With the full Pulse 2025 Library now available, we wanted to highlight a few of the presentations that got us thinking and share some key takeaways to provide a starting point for discovering your own insights. 

Scaling on the Fly: TrustRadius’ Rapid Digital Program Scaling Strategy

This session, led by Kate Seale and Jen Browning Peters, tackled a challenge many companies face: how do you effectively transition from a high-touch model to a scalable digital CS program? Key Takeaways & Thoughts:

• Keeping it Human: How do we scale communication without losing the human touch? As we automate, it's critical to ensure our outreach still feels personal and valuable.
• Negative Engagement: A powerful point from the session was the idea that simple disengagement isn't neutral—it's a form of “negative engagement”. When customers tune out because they feel they're just receiving generic, non-contextual messages, their sentiment shifts from neutral to negative, putting them at risk for churn.
• Re-engagement Tactics: We discussed how Gainsight PX could be a powerful tool to pull these users back in. Imagine using an in-app engagement to invite a user to a relevant webinar or even schedule a meeting with their Account Manager directly.

Turning Adoption Insights into Action: Driving GRR with Gainsight

Everyone understands that user adoption is critical to a healthy customer, but this session from Zendesk dove into the complexities of measurement. Key Takeaways & Thoughts:

• Beyond the Buzzword: What does "adoption" truly mean? As Jonathan put it, the "nitty-gritty is where it all falls down." Are we measuring a five-minute look-around, or are we tracking meaningful, value-based actions? Defining what matters is the crucial first step.
• Is Adoption Symptomatic or Causative?: This was a fascinating question raised in the session. Does high adoption simply indicate that a customer was *already* planning to renew (symptomatic)? Or can we actively drive adoption through gamification and engagements to cause them to renew? It’s a chicken-or-egg question that has big implications for CS strategy.

In-App Engagement Strategy: Real Stories. Real Results

We also discussed the session I co-hosted with my customer Florence Matthews. It sparked a great conversation around one of the foundational challenges of targeted engagement which is understanding your audience. Key Takeaways & Thoughts:

• The Persona Problem: To truly "know your audience," you need to understand their personas. But how do you identify them? It's a significant challenge when you don't have self-reported data or even job titles passed into your application. Without this, it's difficult to craft truly relevant and personalized in-app communication.
• The Wandering Champion: Jonathan brought up another complex, real-world problem: how do you maintain a relationship with a product champion who moves to a new company? This is common, especially in industries like healthcare. That person is a huge proponent of your product, but they are now a new contact at a new company. How do you track that valuable relationship across their career journey?

These sessions left us with some big questions to answer, but that's the point of a great conference—to challenge our thinking and spark new ideas.

What about you? Which Pulse sessions stood out to you and what were your biggest takeaways? We encourage you to dive into the Pulse 2025 Library to watch these presentations and discover others that resonate with you.