Today was one fine day in the Emerald Isle.
Pulse Europe 2025 is underway in Dublin and the Day One energy was nothing short of magical. Guests and Gainsters from around the globe gathered at the keynote stage to hear from Gainsight leaders and customers from world-class companies including Intercom, LinkedIn, Silverfort, and Docusign.
Together, we unpacked how human-led, digital-led, and agent-led programs work in harmony to deliver experiences customers love and retention that lasts. It’s time to trust our instincts, close our eyes, and leap into a recap of Pulse Europe 2025’s Day One highlights.
Not in SaaS Anymore: The Journey to Retention-as-a-Service
This year’s keynote explored the evolution from workflows to outcomes, from digital programs to agentic systems, and from SaaS to RaaS (Retention-as-a-Service).
While our CEO, Chuck Ganapathi, didn’t arrive in a bubble, he certainly made an entrance in a 100% AI-generated video:
Chuck set the tone for a new era where software doesn’t just record work; it does the work itself. As Sam Altman said, we’re “entering the ‘fast fashion’ era of SaaS”, and as software becomes a commodity, retention becomes existential.
The AI tornado has carried us from the grayscale world of SaaS into the technicolor era of RaaS. In this new landscape, headcount alone isn’t enough to keep up. The old 80/20 model, pouring most of our energy into the top 20% of customers, no longer scales. Real growth now depends on a new operating model built around outcomes, not activity.
Intercom is one of the companies that’s already finding its footing on the other side of the AI tornado. Karen Church, VP of Research and Data Science, shared how Intercom launched Fin, their generative-AI support agent, scaling it from resolving 25% of support questions to more than 66%. They call it their “meteor moment”—a shift that demanded not just new technology, but new behavior.
As Karen explained, “The best teams treat deployment as transformation, not configuration.” AI alone can’t create magic. It takes clarity, trust, and the courage to redesign how teams work together. That’s exactly how we think about RaaS at Gainsight. It’s about empowering CS teams with digital programs and AI agents that extend their capacity, amplify their impact, and help every company deliver outcomes that last.
The Future of Customer Success, Unified
Like a powerful spell from the Grimmerie, we’ve always believed that great technology should make great teams unstoppable. This year’s keynote showed how that vision takes shape through three connected programs working in harmony:
- Human-led programs that build relationships and deliver strategic value.
- Digital-led programs that scale learning, community, and in-product engagement.
- Agent-led programs that augment human capacity and take on work autonomously.
Together, these programs redefine what’s possible in Customer Success—helping every team treat every customer like their best customer and turning retention into growth.
Staircase AI: Augmenting Human Capacity
Staircase AI is our agentic assistant built to help CS teams see what matters most and take action with confidence. In our keynote demo, we stepped into the role of a CS leader managing growth and retention across a large portfolio. With Ask Staircase in Slack, we could instantly surface key metrics like sentiment, ARR, and renewal health, providing a full picture of:
- Account insights and sentiment trends
- Relationship maps showing stakeholder strength
- Expansion recommendations powered by real-time intent signals
Leaders can also zoom out with the new Topics Report and Team Efficiency Report to uncover emerging trends and rebalance workload across accounts. With Staircase, insights become direction. Teams can turn data into growth by understanding where to focus, what to prioritize, and how to act.
Atlas AI Agents: From Insight to Autonomy
If Staircase helps teams see what matters, our Atlas AI Agents help them do something about it. These autonomous agents scale CS motions, like onboarding, adoption, and renewal, with precision and control. We did a live demo of the Renewal Agent, which guided a customer from outreach to renewal on its own: drafting a personalized email, following up with a live call, even switching languages mid-conversation—all while logging every step for full transparency. That’s the essence of Gainsight’s approach to autonomy: agents trained on your playbooks, guided by your guardrails, and measured by real outcomes like retention and NRR.
As Gainsight’s Prem Parameswaran and Docusign’s Karen Schuppe shared, this isn’t future talk—it’s already in production, helping global teams engage more customers, close renewals faster, and give humans back the space for strategy and empathy. Together, Staircase and Atlas Agents supercharge CustomerOS by helping every human and digital motion deliver outcomes faster and at greater scale. This is how we turn insight into action and retention into growth.
When Retention Gets Real
Just like the curtain lifting in Oz, our customers took to the keynote stage to reveal what RaaS looks like in the real world.
Jill Glynn, Senior Manager of Scaled Engagement Programs at LinkedIn, shared how her team’s “community-first” approach helps tens of thousands of customers learn, connect, and succeed each quarter. By using Skilljar and Gainsight, they can integrate community discussions, live sessions, and self-paced learning into one ecosystem. The result? Customers have a space where learning feels personal, even at scale.
Shani Brenmiller, Director of CS at Silverfort, described how their CS team uses Gainsight’s Staircase AI to act on risk and growth opportunities faster than ever. Staircase AI analyzes relationship signals, sentiment, and engagement patterns, helping CSMs become proactive advisors instead of reactive problem-solvers.
Karen Schuppe,Group VP CS and Customer Account Management at Docusign, shared how her team is using Gainsight’s Renewal Agent to scale the customer journey. By automating outreach and next steps in the renewal cycle, Docusign’s AI agents help customers get personalized attention while freeing CSMs to focus on strategy.
These stories made one thing clear: the shift to RaaS is already taking flight.
On Day Two of Pulse Europe, we can’t wait to keep the conversations going—more big ideas, more shared inspiration, and more moments that remind us why this community is pure magic.
Watch the full keynote here
Ready to make a little magic with your data? Learn more about how AI agents and unified platforms are transforming revenue growth in this post.
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