What does Staircase AI do?

Staircase AI is a customer intelligence platform that automatically reads customer communications — emails, meetings, support tickets, and Slack channels — and uses AI to surface insights about customer health, sentiment, churn risk, and expansion signals. No manual logging is required.

What languages does Staircase AI support?

Staircase AI can analyse and classify communications in all Latin languages and many others. Summaries and insights are always presented in English, regardless of the language used in the original communication.

Does Staircase AI have a mobile app?

Staircase AI is mobile-responsive, allowing you to access reports and key features from a mobile browser. There is no dedicated native mobile app at this time.

Is there a sandbox environment available?

There is currently no sandbox functionality in Staircase AI.

Does Staircase AI support multiple currencies?

Staircase AI currently displays revenue values in USD. If your contracts are denominated in another currency, the values will be displayed with a $ symbol in the UI.

How far back does Staircase AI pull historical data?

By default, Staircase fetches up to 12 months of historical communications and retains data for 18 months. Numerical data, events, and statistics are retained indefinitely. These values are configurable — contact your account team if you need a different retention window.

How often is data synced from my CRM?

CRM data (accounts, contacts) is synced to Staircase approximately every 2 hour.

Why isn't a meeting summary being generated?

The most common reasons a meeting summary is not generated:

• The meeting was not recorded, or transcription was not enabled on the meeting platform.
• The meeting organiser is not an internal team member — Staircase requires the organiser to be an internal employee.
• The account is set as a Relationship rather than a Company. AI Follow-Up only works for Company accounts.
• There is an email domain mismatch between the meeting platform and Staircase.
• For Microsoft Teams: the application access policy may not be assigned to the organiser.
• The meeting was rescheduled without updating the original calendar event.
• Connection Authrised user doesn’t permissions to read transcripts.

If the meeting appears in Staircase under Reports > Meetings with a green checkmark in the 'Has Transcript' column, but no summary exists, please contact support.

Can I re-fetch past meeting summaries?

Yes. By disconnecting and reconnecting your meeting platform integration, Staircase can re-fetch meetings from up to the last 3 months. Note that no email notifications are sent for historically re-fetched meetings — they are synced silently in the background.

Can I export the meeting preparation summary?

No. The meeting preparation summary is emailed to the meeting organiser before the meeting and cannot be exported. 

Who receives the meeting summary email after a meeting?

Meeting summary reports are sent by default to the organiser and any other attendees who have enabled notifications. They are not automatically sent to the account owner — notifications must be manually enabled.

What types of summaries are available?

• Account Summary — Updated twice daily at 8 AM and 8 PM UTC. Can be exported.
• Meeting Summary — Generated within a few hours after the meeting ends. Can be exported.
• Meeting Preparation Summary — Emailed to the organiser before the meeting. Cannot be exported.

Can Staircase retrieve transcripts if a Zoom bot recorded a Teams meeting?

No. Staircase retrieves transcripts using the video conferencing link in the calendar event. If the calendar event contains a Teams link, Staircase checks Teams only. It cannot retrieve transcripts recorded separately by a third-party bot (such as a Zoom bot).

What emails does Staircase AI capture?

Staircase reads emails from connected mailboxes that involve at least one external stakeholder (a contact from a customer domain). Internal-only emails are not ingested. Emails are generally brought into the system within an hour of being sent, with full processing (analysis and insight generation) taking a few hours.

Why are some emails missing from Staircase?

• The user's mailbox is not connected — check that the domain install is complete.
• The stakeholder is marked as 'Excluded' — excluded contacts are not tracked at all.
• The stakeholder is marked as 'Automated' — their emails are tracked but shown as hidden.
• The stakeholder is linked to a different account in your CRM — check the contact's account assignment.

What are 'hidden' communications?

Some interactions are logged but not shown in the default view. This includes emails from stakeholders classified as 'Automated' (e.g., billing@, no-reply@, notifications@) and identical copy-pasted emails sent by a teammate to multiple stakeholders across different accounts. You can adjust automated email detection settings under Settings > General.

Does Staircase read internal team emails?

No. Staircase only processes communications that involve at least one external customer contact. Internal-only emails are never ingested.

How is the Engagement Score calculated?

The Engagement Score counts only customer-initiated interactions: emails sent by the account, chat messages, meeting attendance, and support tickets submitted by the customer. Messages or outreach sent by your own team (CSMs, AMs) to the customer are not counted.

How is the Sentiment Score calculated?

Sentiment is based on the content of communications, not the tone. Every communication is classified as Positive, Neutral, or Negative by AI. More recent communications carry more weight (using an exponential decay function). Support ticket content often scores as negative even when the tone is neutral, because it describes issues or problems. Including support tickets in sentiment scoring is opt-in — contact your admin to enable or disable this.

What is 'Ask Staircase' (AMA) and what data does it use?

Ask Staircase (AMA) lets you query your customer data in natural language. It searches the last 90 days of communications only, and reviews call summaries and email threads. It does not include CRM data such as ARR, renewal dates, or revenue figures.

How does the Churn Analysis report work?

• The Churn Analysis report is only generated if at least 8 accounts have AI Churn Analysis enabled.
• Once churn risk is detected for an account, it remains flagged for 90 days.
• An account exits the 'No Renewal Discussion' group only when a Renewal or Commercial discussion is detected — a Renewal insight alone is not sufficient.

How does the Expansion Summary work?

Staircase scans for expansion signals weekly. An existing expansion summary remains valid for up to 90 days. The summary is only updated when new expansion signals are detected.

Can I remove a stakeholder from Staircase?

There is currently no UI option to remove a stakeholder. We recommend disabling them instead. Disabling a stakeholder removes their existing communications from Staircase and stops future communications from being ingested.

If I re-enable a disabled stakeholder, will past communications come back?

Yes. Re-enabling a stakeholder will trigger a re-fetch of up to the last 12 months(for paid ST instance) of communications linked to that stakeholder. This may take some time to load.

When is a stakeholder marked as 'Human Inactive'?

A stakeholder is marked as Human Inactive after 90 days of no activity, or after 2 weeks if a farewell or departure event is detected. Stakeholders with an assigned role are not moved to Inactive. Also note that if Staitcase finds any email for a Human(inactive) Stakeholder, we automatically mark the Stakeholder. Human(Active). It just indicates there are no communications for this Stakeholder. It doesn’t block reading the communications.

How are stakeholders automatically classified as 'Automated'?

Staircase identifies automated senders based on behaviour patterns such as:

• Sending repetitive or identical messages to multiple recipients.
• Using email prefixes commonly associated with automated systems: billing@, notifications@, marketing@, no-reply@, accounts@.

What happens when an account is merged in my CRM?

Staircase does not support native account merges. When a CRM account is deleted (the 'losing' account in a merge), Staircase moves it to an internal trash state within 24 hours. For 7 days, communications from the deleted account remain attached to that trashed record and will not automatically reassign to the winning account. After the 7-day window, triggering a manual re-sync of the winning account will correctly pull in those communications.

Why are some support tickets not syncing to Staircase?

• Staircase only records tickets created directly by a stakeholder or client — tickets submitted internally by a support agent on the client's behalf are not synced.
• The requester must be a contact associated with the account the ticket is linked to. If there is a mismatch (e.g., the contact is in a parent account but the ticket is on a child account), it will not sync.

How does Staircase resolve account domains from Salesforce?

• The primary domain is set to the one used by the majority of contacts on the account.
• Secondary domains are added if at least 2 contacts share that domain.
• If a domain appears in only one contact's email, it is not added as an account domain — but the contact is still imported as a stakeholder.
• If the same domain appears across multiple accounts, domain syncing is disabled for that domain and contact syncing is used instead.

What are the character limits for summaries pushed to Gainsight?

Summaries pushed to Gainsight via CRM sync are capped at 1,000 characters.

What field types are supported for CRM filters?

CRM filters in Staircase support picklist and boolean fields only. Other field types (text, number, date, etc.) are not supported.

A user can't log in — how do I troubleshoot?

Work through these steps in order:

• Check Settings > Staircase AI Users to confirm the user exists with the correct email address. This is the source of truth — do not rely on the Team tab, which may lag after email changes.
• Confirm the user's email domain is listed in Settings > Organisation Domains. If it is missing or was recently changed, add it, then remove and re-add the user's role and wait ~5 minutes.
• If your organisation uses Okta SSO, confirm the user is logging in via the Okta login path — not the Google or Microsoft buttons on the login screen.

How do I deactivate or remove a user?

For organizations using Gainsight CS for user management: remove the Staircase role from the user in Gainsight CS Administration > User Management. On the next sync, the user will be deprovisioned from Staircase. Alternatively, deactivate the user in Gainsight CS entirely. Historical communications are retained for the standard 12-month period.

Can I merge two user accounts?

Yes. Ensure both user accounts have exactly the same First Name and Last Name, and Staircase will automatically merge them.

I see the error 'Staircase AI App can only connect to external channels' in Slack — what does this mean?

This error occurs when you use the Connect command for an internal Slack channel. For internal channels, go to Channel Settings > Integrations > Add App and add the Staircase app directly. You do not need to use the /connect command for internal channels.

Does Staircase AI support API integration?

Staircase AI does not currently support a public API integration. Data can be accessed via the export feature or through CRM writeback. API integration is on the product roadmap.

Does Staircase integrate with Jira?

Yes. Staircase integrates with Jira for customer support portal data. Only one Jira project can be connected at a time. Only Jira Cloud is supported — Jira Data Center is not.

Does Staircase integrate with ServiceNow?

Staircase supports the ServiceNow Case object. The Incident object is not currently supported.

How do I re-fetch historical meetings?

Disconnect and reconnect the relevant meeting platform integration. During reconnection, you can select how many months of meetings to re-fetch (maximum 3 months). Note: no email notifications are sent for historically synced meetings.

What happens to my data when I switch from Salesforce to Gainsight as my CRM?

Switching is seamless if both systems were synced and share the same accounts and contacts. Gainsight uses the Salesforce account ID as a key to remap existing data — no refetching or delay is required. Switching from HubSpot or Pipedrive to any other CRM requires engineering assistance.

AI Follow-Up / Meeting Summaries

Companies only — not Relationships

Ask Staircase (AMA)

90-day lookback; no CRM data (ARR, renewal dates, revenue)

Google Calendar + MS Teams

Not supported (Microsoft API limitation)

Meeting preparation summary

Cannot be exported

Stakeholder removal

No UI option — disable instead

Jira integration

One project only; Cloud only (no Data Center)

ServiceNow integration

Case object only (not Incident)

API integration

Not currently available; on roadmap

Expansion Analyst sync

Does not sync to Salesforce opportunities

Custom lifecycle events

Do not reference meeting transcripts

PII anonymisation

Applies to data ingested after activation only

Churn Analysis report

Requires ≥8 accounts with AI Churn Analysis enabled

CRM filter fields

Picklist and boolean fields only

Historical meeting re-fetch

Maximum 3 months via disconnect/reconnect