Pulse 2026 - Day 1: Retention Is Still the Job. AI Just Changed the How.

Everyone's telling customer success its best days are behind it. Chuck Ganapathi opened Pulse 2026 by calling that what it is: noise. His frame is simple. Every tech revolution splits people into two camps. Critics and explorers. The Luddites smashed the looms. James Watt built the steam engine. Same fork is here again with AI, and CS leaders get to pick a side. Then he killed the question everyone's stuck on. Build or buy? Wrong question. It's build and buy. Buy the foundation for security, governance, scale. Build the agentic workflows that are actually yours on top. The product team showed the receipts. MCP support live, 175,000+ queries already run. A Salesforce AgentForce connector. CLI for CS. Agent Studio powered by Claude, building workflows right inside Gainsight. Plus six pre-built agents shipping day one. IBM's Kim Humphrey explained why they built on Gainsight instead of from scratch with WatsonX. Zendesk's Colin Murphy talked about the iceberg under any customer-facing AI. Then Okta's Ed Daly got specific about the long tail and shared about one frustrated IT director named John who just wanted to buy more licenses and couldn't get a straight answer.That long tail is the whole point. Chuck's big reveal: Atlas is no longer just software. You can now hire Gainsight to run your long-tail renewals end to end. Their platform, their agents, their playbooks, their people. They call it Retention as a Service. The outcome is the product. If you work in CS and the pressure feels impossible right now, this one's a map. What you'll learn Why "build vs. buy" is a false choice, and how to do both What MCP, CLI, and Agent Studio actually unlock for a CS team How IBM decided what to build on WatsonX vs. what to buy Why Zendesk trusts a platform with the "iceberg" of compliance and governance What the long tail really costs you, with real Okta numbers How Retention as a Service works, and when to hire it instead of staffing it The AI Native Services (AINS) model and the three things that make it work Why keeping humans in the loop is wisdom, not resistance Timestamps 0:00 - The lost long-tail treasure 3:52 - Chuck Ganapathi: critics vs. explorers 6:30 - Lessons from the Industrial Revolution 7:38 - The Internet Revolution repeats history 9:20 - The Intelligence Revolution and the blank map 12:40 - Build vs. buy is a false choice 15:00 - Ori Entis & Erica Kuhl take the stage 17:21 - IBM's Kim Humphrey: build, buy, and WatsonX 23:00 - DeployIt and connected intelligence at IBM 26:00 - Barrier to innovation is lowered 28:15 - Salesforce AgentForce MCP connector announced 28:48 - MCP Support and CLI for customer success announced 30:55 - Agent Studio powered by Claude 33:43 - Developer Studio: vibe code your community 34:38 - Six pre-built agents [live today] 37:27 - Zendesk's Colin Murphy: building on Gainsight 43:58 - Forethought AI agents and the connected customer experience 48:55 - Chuck returns: Retention as a Service 52:32 - Atlas goes from agentic software to AI native service 56:15 - Okta's CCO Ed Daly: Leading retention actively, the long tail and "Oliver" 1:01:45 - The John P. story: context is the magic word 1:06:48 - AI Native Services, inscriptions, and the human in the loop Connect with the Speakers: 🎤 Chuck Ganapathi (Gainsight):   / chuckganapathi   🎤 Ori Entis (Gainsight):   / ori-entis-98075a161   🎤 Erica Kuhl (Gainsight):   / ericakuhl   🎤 Kim Humphrey (IBM):   / kim-humphrey-65598a1   🎤 Colin Murphy (Zendesk):   / colinmurphy-techoperatingexecutive   🎤 Ed Daly (Okta):   / edmunddaly   Resources mentioned Gainsight Pulse: https://www.gainsightpulse.com Gainsight platform, Atlas, Staircase AI, SkillJar, Customer Communities, PX, Journey Orchestrator all at https://www.gainsight.com Agent Studio powered by Claude: https://www.anthropic.com Salesforce AgentForce: https://www.salesforce.com/agentforce IBM watsonx: https://www.ibm.com/watsonx Okta: https://www.okta.com Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com Forethought (by Zendesk): https://www.forethought.ai Jake Saper / Emergence Capital's AI-Native Services (AINS) framework: https://www.emcap.com/ai-native-services & https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/why-ai...