The adventure continues! Pulse Europe, Gainsight’s flagship European conference, took to the stage this week to explore what’s next for Customer Success and retention.
Over two action-packed days, 600+ retention-obsessed professionals came together at The Brewery in London, England, to challenge old assumptions, discover what’s possible with agentic AI, and reimagine how businesses deliver lasting customer value. From a bold new platform vision to AI-powered innovations and inspiring customer stories, we covered plenty of new ground.
Of course, no Pulse adventure would be complete without a little childlike joy. After charting new territory at Pulse US earlier this year, our Gainsight explorers returned to the big screen for another AI-generated adventure, bringing their treasure hunt to London.
Here are the biggest moments and takeaways from Pulse Europe 2026.
Retention Is Still the Job. How We Deliver It Is Changing.
For the past two decades, Customer Success has operated within the subscription economy, where software was sold by the seat, revenue was tied to licenses, and growth often meant adding more users. But as Gainsight CEO Chuck Ganapathi explored in his opening keynote, the rise of the agentic economy is rewriting those rules.
Customers now expect results, not just access to software. Technology is changing faster than customers can keep up, which creates a gap between new features and real value. At the same time, boards are asking companies to rethink how they work, not just make small improvements.
For retention leaders, these shifts demand more than new tools. They call for a fundamental reinvention of how teams engage customers, demonstrate value, and drive retention. But one thing hasn’t changed. Retention is still the job. We need to reinvent how we deliver it.
That brought us to the question at the heart of Pulse Europe 2026: How can we use agentic AI to drive higher retention?
Choose Your Own Retention Adventure
How do organizations actually put agentic AI to work for retention? As Chuck explored onstage, the answer isn’t a choice between building or buying, humans or agents, or high-touch and scaled engagement. The future of retention requires all of the above.
We introduced a vision built around three complementary paths: Buy, Build, and Hire. Organizations can buy proven AI-powered capabilities, build workflows tailored to their business, or hire Gainsight to deliver retention outcomes on their behalf. You don’t have to choose just one.
The Gainsight Customer Retention Platform connects these paths, bringing together apps, agents, and AI-native services around a shared foundation of customer context. Whether teams are managing renewals, driving adoption, or uncovering expansion opportunities, they’re working from the same understanding of their customers.
The result is a more flexible approach to retention, with multiple ways to turn customer intelligence into action.
Three Paths, One Goal: Higher Retention
Choosing your adventure is only the beginning. Our EVP & GM of Community & Education Products, Erica Kuhl, and EVP & GM of Atlas, Grant Clarke, donned their best adventurer gear and took to the stage to show how we’re bringing the buy, build, and hire vision to life with innovations designed to make retention smarter, scalable, and more accessible.
Buy: Prebuilt AI Agents Turn Insights Into Action
Gainsight’s growing team of AI agents are designed to tackle specific challenges across the customer journey, powered by the same shared customer context.
- Staircase Expansion Analyst uncovers growth opportunities hiding in your customer base.
- Staircase Risk Analyst spots churn risks early, surfaces insights, and recommends next-best actions.
- Moderation Agent flags harmful content and users based on your community’s code of conduct.
- Adoption Agent identifies drops in product usage and builds outreach plans to get customers back on track.
- Skilljar AI Tutor provides real-time coaching and learning support in your academy.
- Staircase Handoff Analyst equips post-sales teams with a complete account playbook to kick off customer relationships.
We’re not only changing what you can buy, but also how you buy Gainsight.
At Pulse Europe, we unveiled a new value-based pricing model for Gainsight CS that moves away from traditional seat licenses. Pricing will be based on the ARR and number of customers managed through our platform. We’re also bringing Staircase natively into Gainsight CS, giving teams across Sales, Product, Marketing, and beyond access to shared customer intelligence without the constraints of per-user licenses.
Learn more about our new value-based pricing and platform capabilities in our blog post and press release.
Build: Gainsight Headless and Agent Studio Brings Intelligence To You
Your customer intelligence shouldn’t be confined to a single platform. Through Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations across our products, you can bring Gainsight intelligence directly into tools like ChatGPT and Claude. And with Gainsight Headless for Slack and Agentforce, our Risk, Handoff, and Expansion agents can work wherever you do.
We’re also making it easier to build agentic workflows in Gainsight. Agent Studio for Gainsight CS is now in beta, so teams can create and share reusable AI-powered workflows using natural language, based on their current customer context and permissions.
For our community builders, Developer Studio and its new CLI offer more ways to customize community experiences, while Agent Studio for Community, entering open beta in November, will make AI-powered widget creation accessible without coding.
Hire: Atlas AI-Native Services for Long-Tail Renewals
Imagine if, instead of buying software to manage renewals, you could hire us to handle them for you.
That’s the idea behind Atlas AI-Native Services, which we introduced earlier this year and explored in greater depth at Pulse Europe. Atlas combines AI agents with our own renewal experts to manage long-tail renewals on your behalf, bringing personalized engagement to accounts that have traditionally received little human attention.
Agents do the work at scale, while our team steps in with judgment and oversight when needed. Together, we aim to improve long-tail retention without losing the personal touch. And we’re putting our own model to the test. As Grant shared onstage, Gainsight hired Gainsight. We’re using Atlas to manage our own long-tail renewal motion, learning alongside our customers and continuously refining how our people and agents work together.
It’s a glimpse of what becomes possible when technology doesn’t just help teams manage the work, but takes responsibility for delivering the outcome.
We pre-wired everything we know about CS. Now, we’re handing you the keys.
Sign up for our waitlist today and be first in line for early access to what’s coming next, plus updates and details delivered straight to you as they roll out.
From Vision to Action: Putting AI to Work for Retention
While Day 1 explored new ideas, Day 2 focused on putting them into action.
Dan Green, Gainsight’s RVP of Revenue (EMEA), gave retention leaders a reality check. With more pressure on GRR and NRR, fewer resources, and higher expectations to show customer value, the stakes are higher than ever. Now more than ever, retention is a key factor in company growth and value, and AI is what is going to help us get there.
We went beyond just talking about what organizations could do with AI, and shared how we’re putting these ideas to work ourselves. At Gainsight, we’re trying all three paths to better retention, from using prebuilt agents to building custom workflows and using Atlas for our own long-tail renewals.
Leading Companies Are Rewriting the Retention Playbook
There’s no single roadmap for navigating the agentic economy. As we heard from speakers and attendees throughout Pulse Europe, the most promising approaches start with understanding what your business and customers actually need.
At SAP, it’s about bringing the best of build AND buy together.
Alex Roza, SVP of Global Customer Success, joined Chuck to discuss how SAP combines its own enterprise intelligence with Gainsight’s purpose-built capabilities. For Alex, the bigger challenge wasn’t simply connecting technology. She shared how SAP navigated the change management that comes with new workflows, evolving customer expectations, and AI-powered teams. The goal is to spend less time searching for information and more time focusing on matters that call for human expertise.
At Cognite, it’s about making customer expertise accessible at scale.
Anita Hæhre, Head of Community, joined Erica to share how Cognite grew their community from 50 members to around 20,000. Bringing Community and Academy together, Cognite simplified how customers and partners find the knowledge they need while freeing up customer-facing teams to focus on more strategic work. Next, they’re exploring how Gainsight’s MCP capabilities can bring Community and Academy knowledge directly into Cognite’s products, so customers can access the resources they need without leaving their workflows.
As SAP and Cognite demonstrated, the future of retention isn’t about following a single playbook. It’s about finding the right combination of technology and human expertise.
The Pulse Community Comes Together
The magic of Pulse extends beyond the sessions onstage. Some of the most valuable moments come from conversations between events, ideas shared over coffee, and the connections that make this community special.
Over two days, attendees shared experiences, questioned assumptions, and learned from each other. With hands-on sessions, open conversations, and the excitement of [Un]Churned Live, there were plenty of chances to connect with others facing similar challenges. We also honored innovators at our annual GameChanger Awards, recognizing customers who are pushing boundaries and finding new ways to deliver value.
The community is continuing to grow beyond Pulse as well. During [Un]Churned Live, Gainsight’s SVP of Marketing Josh Schachter announced the launch of The CCO Club, a new peer forum for Chief Customer Officers (CCOs) and senior post-sales leaders to have candid, judgment-free conversations about the challenges they’re facing.
If you’re interested in joining The CCO Club, apply for a founding seat here.
The Next Chapter Is Ours to Write
If there’s one thing we’re taking away from Pulse Europe 2026, it’s that we’re building the future of retention together.
As Dan reminded us in his closing keynote, the playbooks we’ve developed, the relationships we’ve built, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way aren’t relics of the past. They’re the foundation for what comes next. AI may be changing how we work, but human expertise remains our greatest advantage.
The road ahead isn’t fully mapped, and there’s still a lot to discover. That’s what makes this next chapter so exciting. Thank you to everyone who joined us in London for your curiosity, ideas, and willingness to push boundaries.
The adventure is just getting started.
