Gainsight + Staircaise AI - Our thoughts | Ep. 77

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:11)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man Rob here. Rob, you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:12 - 0:13)

What it do?

[Dillon] (0:15 - 0:19)

I've got JP here. Do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:20 - 0:21)

What's up?

[Dillon] (0:21 - 0:25)

Boy, you're just never going to learn how not to talk over me. Is that it, Rob?

[Rob] (0:25 - 0:25)

Yeah.

[Dillon] (0:26 - 0:34)

This is your, was that the number one con you introduced to your girlfriend now wife in the beginning? Like I talk over people.

[Rob] (0:35 - 0:38)

I blame it on my computer delays.

[Dillon] (0:38 - 0:50)

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Guys, there's some news out there. I'm going to hand it over to JP. He's going to tell us a little bit about what's going on out there.

[JP] (0:51 - 2:13)

Well, it looks like Gainsight has made a little purchase of the staircase AI. Looks like they're moving a little bit more into that arena there. I actually had not heard of staircase AI before, but there is a little something that I think that I should read just to give a little bit of context for this and for people that listen.

So just a little bit about staircase. It says launched in 2021, the staircase AI platform automatically analyzes all customer interactions without human intervention or data entry and turns them into real time insights. In less than a day, staircase AI connects to a company's email, meetings, chat, Slack, and ticketing systems.

It then continuously scans millions of interactions between teams and customers using a mix of in-house and foundation models. Staircase AI extracts key customer signals, such as sentiment, risk, expansion opportunities, and relationship strength to inform decisions that improve customer experience and drive growth. Staircase AI secure and compliant platform is trusted by companies of all sizes, including global enterprises that I have never heard of.

[Dillon] (2:14 - 2:37)

So- Clarity and Service Titan and- Hey, man, did they pay us? Did they pay us? Brother, that's what I'm saying.

You just read two whole paragraphs and they didn't pay us anything. I'm going to bleep a whole lot of this. Maybe even those companies I just named.

Anyway, I think it's interesting. Rob, what's your first take? I haven't heard what JP just said.

I think this is cool.

[Rob] (2:37 - 2:54)

I think this is a bit space age to the point where I don't know if I believe it. I'm looking into it myself. The way they're describing it, they're acting like it's almost like you install a nest in your home and it just knows the temperature and it makes adjustments when it sees the temperature goes up or down.

It's not that simple.

[Dillon] (2:56 - 3:00)

Are you team nest or team anti-nest?

[Rob] (3:00 - 3:01)

I inherited it.

[Dillon] (3:01 - 3:06)

It works. I don't know. Mine's dumber than a rock.

It's never learned anything.

[Rob] (3:07 - 3:09)

That's icing more sponsors. Sorry, nest.

[Dillon] (3:11 - 3:14)

And owned by Google. So even worse.

[JP] (3:14 - 3:16)

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. We can't do that.

[Dillon] (3:17 - 3:33)

No, but I thought the same thing as you, Rob, of like, okay, yeah. It sounds like a pipe dream. Automatically analyzes all customer interactions without doing an intervention or data entry and turns them into real-time insights.

Well, first of all- Isn't that what they all friggin say?

[JP] (3:33 - 4:00)

Yes, that part. So that part was when I initially read it, it almost hypes you up when you're reading it, because a lot of what I think we know with AI is the thing with the context, right? Are you going to be able to contextualize this information?

And so you would think that if you're able to connect to all these sources, that somehow you will be able to find the data points to somehow extract things.

[Dillon] (4:00 - 4:34)

And so like- What's up, guys? It's Dillon here, and you know why I'm here. Hat in hand.

I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on. And if you want to know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow, give us a subscribe.

And maybe best of all, if you want to give us some feedback, drop a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, or how we can get better. We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys.

I'll let you get back to the show.

[JP] (4:35 - 4:40)

Personally, I would need to see it. I need to see this in action.

[Dillon] (4:40 - 5:29)

Yeah. That's exactly what I'm thinking. I guarantee it's a black box.

They're not going to tell you. And it would be really hard for you to understand the formula that's going into this and all the waiting and blah, blah, blah. But it's so funny.

This episode will come out before our conversation with Mr. Derek Smith that we just had, where we talked about how relying too much on AI can get you burned. And they're saying analyzes all customer interactions without human intervention or data entry. And so it sounds like it's like putting all this stuff in a black box where you don't get to see what's going on.

You don't see necessarily what's being considered. And then it spits out like, oh, this customer, their churn risk is 43%. What the hell does that mean?

How do I know that? How do I fix it?

[JP] (5:29 - 6:35)

There's a question that you talking just brings up for me, which is what happens if this is a tool that's being suggested? If something tells you to take a left and you're on a street and you're able to take a left, that's a pretty common sensical thing if your destination is somewhat oriented in that direction. But what if it tells you to take a left, but that day there is a construction going on?

That street is blocked off. So the suggestion to take a left, it doesn't actually make sense. Although it might've made sense at one point.

And I think there's a certain proximity there where you can look at it. But what if it tells you to turn right? What if it gives you something that's radically different in the name of this is how you'll save your churn.

But as you said, Dillon, if there's a black box, now are we going to rely on these decisions? And then when they don't work out, what is the recourse, right?

[Rob] (6:35 - 7:32)

Well, and that's the key thing that comes to mind for me. So one analogy that's coming to mind is I remember in 2015, I was talking with my friends who are super smart folks. They studied AI at Stanford and they were talking a lot about autonomous vehicles, talking about self-driving cars.

At the time, they were forecasting that within the next five years, 3 million trucking jobs out of the 6 million total trucking jobs in the US were going to evaporate into thin air. Half? Half of the jobs in trucking because self-driving trucking just seemed like it would be the thing that makes sense.

But the challenge is that we don't, we as like a human species, we don't adopt technology that we see make mistakes. There's a very short leash on technology that's supposed to save the world. And when we see it mess up once, we're like it inhibits our adoption.

And that's why there's still, I barely ever see a self-driving car.

[Dillon] (7:33 - 8:30)

I have a couple of times, but I can count on one hand. If I'm reading between the lines, I think there's really two things that inhibit it. I think it's safety, right?

Like your life being at stake. In this case, and back to your analogy, JP, of like turning left or right. And maybe it's this radical suggestion about how to save a customer.

Am I taking that if I think my job's on the line? If I'm on a pip? No, I'm probably actually going to do the opposite because now I'm scared.

I'm in like fight or flight mode. And so that is not to poo-poo it. I think AI is absolutely the future.

We all know it. We're going to start to incorporate it in absolutely everything. I just, anytime they're like, well, you'll never have to touch it.

It'll do all this for you. Sit back and relax, buddy. Not only do I not trust it, but that's a super slippery slope before they say, oh yeah, we just don't need as many of you.

[Rob] (8:31 - 8:47)

You'd be less likely to use it if you were on a pip. I think most people, at least most research I've read is that people are more likely to take risks when they're in high pressure situations where they're, you know, like maybe likely.

[JP] (8:47 - 9:04)

I can see what Dillon is saying though. Like I literally could put myself in that scenario. So what are you going to do if it doesn't work out?

You're going to be like, well, the technology that you had just said this, or somebody going to be like, that's why you're on a pip in the first place because you don't have good common sense and you didn't write like it's the human.

[Dillon] (9:05 - 9:05)

Yeah.

[JP] (9:05 - 9:07)

We can't divorce from that.

[Dillon] (9:07 - 9:29)

Who do you trust more? The black box or yourself? You've been doing this for X amount of years, whatever.

I'm a cynic, so I'm not going to trust the machine to tell me what to do. If I think it's life or death, similar to the self-driving stuff. I don't know.

I do think it's the future. I just think we're selling it a little bit.

[JP] (9:30 - 10:15)

Lastly, I just want to quickly say, sorry, Rob, like I'm wondering about the strategic value of it like business-wise, because they talked about it. The articles got into more of the actual implementation and like the excitement around it, but it didn't necessarily talk about, sometimes people talk about how much a company is. We've seen that in the news, like Google tried to buy someone recently, I think it was Wiz or something, and that didn't go.

Sometimes we hear about the deal and we hear about the money and we're like, oh, the strategy, but I do wonder about the strategic value of this for Gainsight. Why would they acquire this? What was like the net?

[Rob] (10:15 - 10:36)

I think probably a large part of it is market positioning. I think it's like probably a builder buy situation for them and they were like, we can buy this company and position ourselves as AI thought leaders, or we can build it and it might take years to get something in place because that's not, Gainsight was not built as an AI first company.

[Dillon] (10:37 - 10:40)

There's probably also a piece of it that is talent acquisition too.

[Rob] (10:41 - 10:42)

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

[Dillon] (10:42 - 11:09)

If you were founder, there's probably a play there to lock up some SME type stuff by buying it too, be my guess. Boys, that's our time. Awesome topic.

I think no matter what way you slice it, it's fantastic for customer success and post sales. Really exciting time, so it's really cool to see, but we're going to have to cut it short for now and move on to the next one.

[Voiceover] (11:13 - 11:44)

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