Webinar Recap: Staircase FY27 Q2 Release

Your customers are constantly sending signals, through emails, meetings, escalations, and silence. The Q2 Staircase release is built around one idea: make those signals easier to catch, understand, and act on, whether you're working in Staircase AI or Gainsight CS.

From a rebuilt AI engine to tighter CS+ST integrations, here's everything that's new.

A Smarter AI Engine at the Core

The foundation of Staircase AI got a significant upgrade this quarter. A rebuilt language model and prompt architecture powers more accurate signal detection across all communication types — with fewer false positives and more transparency into why a signal fired.

With the upgraded AI engine, teams can:

• Detect lifecycle events with greater precision across emails, meetings, and calls
• Tune sub-signals at the event level to enable or disable individual triggers
• Rename out-of-the-box event types to match your team's language
• Open any timeline event to see which signals fired, an AI explanation, and the exact customer quote that caused it

Teach Staircase Your Organization's Language with Custom Prompts

Generic AI models don't know your business. Custom Prompts let you define exactly how Staircase detects and classifies signals — without any technical expertise required.

With Custom Prompts for Lifecycle Events and AI Analysis, teams can:

• Add plain language instructions to any lifecycle event to control how signals are detected and classified
• Suppress false positives caused by recurring internal phrases or terminology
• Force tags based on your organization's language without losing baseline detection
• Define instructions for AI Analysis (starting with Expansion), with more areas rolling out over time

Get Instant Answers with Ask Staircase Starters

Ask Staircase now comes with pre-built prompt starters so your team can get to insights faster — no query-writing required.

With /Starters, teams can:

• Click /Starters in the Ask Staircase input box to open a menu of pre-built, context-aware prompts
• Run account-level prompts like Catch Me Up, Prep My Meeting, Risk Check, and Draft a Follow-Up
• Run portfolio-wide prompts from the Executive Dashboard like Portfolio Risk Scan, Renewal Risk Watchlist, Expansion Scan, and Accounts Gone Dark

Configure Health Score Event Modifiers

Health scores should reflect how your team actually measures customer health — not fixed system defaults. Now they can.

With Health Score Event Modifiers, admins can:

• Set custom modifier values for renewal, churn risk, and churn notification events
• Apply segment-level configurations for enterprise, mid-market, and other account tiers
• See scores update within one hour of any configuration change

Protect Employee Privacy with Works Council Compliance

For teams operating in the EU, Staircase now supports Works Council compliance — keeping your CS intelligence intact while protecting individual employee data.

When enabled:

• Individual employee activity data is restricted across the platform, replaced with aggregate views
• Customer-level intelligence remains fully accessible, including health scores, lifecycle events, Ask Staircase, and account-level reports

Connect Staircase to Your Tech Stack with Webhooks

Staircase signals are only as powerful as the actions they trigger. Webhook Notifications let you connect those signals to the tools your team already uses — the moment they fire.

With webhooks, teams can:

• Trigger automated workflows across external systems the moment a Staircase AI event fires
• Configure webhooks with secret key verification and a built-in test notification
• Select webhooks as a notification channel and disable anytime without losing your configuration
• Close the gap between signal and action with no-code and low-code automation

For Teams on Gainsight CS + Staircase AI

This quarter brought significant investment in the CS+ST experience — surfacing Staircase insights directly in the tools your CSMs already use.

• Staircase AI Insights in Gainsight CS: Insights now sync to Gainsight CS in near real time — viewable in C360, Gainsight Home, and native reports and dashboards. Drive action from communication-based signals directly into Rules and Programs.
• Staircase Agents in the AI Cheat Sheet: Admins can add up to five Staircase agents (AI Summary, Risk Agent, Expansion Agent, Renewal Agent, Churn Agent) to the C360 AI Cheat Sheet, with full control over which agents appear per layout
• Route Staircase AI Access Through Gainsight CS: Restrict manager and user access to Staircase AI within Gainsight CS only, with notification links from Slack, Teams, and email routing directly to the corresponding C360 account view
• Video Call Links in the Gainsight CS Timeline: Staircase AI now ingests video call links and surfaces them in the CS Timeline so CSMs can access recordings without leaving their workflow

More Signal. More Control. More Action.

The Q2 release is about closing the gaps — between what your customers are saying and what your team knows, between signals and action, and between Staircase AI and the Gainsight CS workflows your team lives in every day.

Want the full picture? Check out the full release notes for a deeper dive into everything that's new.

Have questions about any of these features? Drop them in the comments below.  We'd love to hear what you're most excited about!