In this episode of CELab, we broaden our conversation about inspiring a “culture of learning” that inspires innovation. We dive deep with Leila Ishtayeh Colburn, the Learning Platform Enablement Leader at Trimble, and Owen Chamberlain, the Senior Education Alliance Manager at Trimble. The discussion delves into Trimble’s innovative approach to digital credentialing, exploring how they are leveraging this strategy to drive customer engagement, build brand equity, and foster a culture of continuous learning.
The guests share insights into the challenges and best practices of implementing a standardized digital credentialing framework across Trimble’s diverse business units. They also discuss Trimble’s broader efforts to transform their customer education programs, including the introduction of their successful “Learnfest” initiative and the exploration of gamification and hands-on learning experiences. Throughout the conversation, the speakers emphasize the importance of leadership support, the need to prioritize the learner’s perspective, and the value of embracing failure as a pathway to innovation.
Key Discussion Points:
Trimble’s digital credentialing framework and the journey to standardize it across the organization
The conceptual and technical aspects of implementing a verifiable, secure digital badging system
Trimble’s diverse industry portfolio and the role of customer education in driving value
The “Learnfest” initiative and Trimble’s efforts to cultivate a learning culture
Challenges in overcoming traditional learning methods and driving cultural transformation
The importance of gamification, hands-on experiences, and failure-based learning
Strategies for engaging internal and external stakeholders in the learning process
The role of leadership support and the need for a unified learning experience
In this episode we had the pleasure of speaking with Neel Balar, the co-founder of Clueso. Clueso is a platform that aims to revolutionize the way Customer Education content is created, offering a fast and easy solution for producing high-quality videos and documentation. Key discussion points include:
Clueso’s origin story and the pivotal moment that led to its creation
The impact of Clueso on the workflows of small and large customer education teams
A deep-dive into AI-powered features automate the video creation process, saving time and resources
How localization and translation features further make Clueso help reaching a global customer base a snap
In this episode, we invite Samantha Murray discuss her journey of boomeranging back to Customer Education where we explore the importance of consolidating customer education programs, the challenges in the industry, and the need for career inspiration.
Samantha shares her experiences in customer education at Shopify and Docebo, highlighting the value of cross-functional collaboration and the impact of customer education on the overall customer experience. What’s the overlap between customer education and product marketing? There are so many similarities and synergies to explore, so don’t miss this lively discussion!
Key Takeaways:
Consolidating customer education programs can lead to a more cohesive and effective customer experience.
There are challenges in the B2B SaaS industry, including layoffs and the cutting of customer education programs, but exploring other opportunities can lead to personal and professional growth.
Customer education professionals should focus on cross-functional collaboration and aligning with marketing, product, and customer success teams to create a seamless learning experience.
Customer education plays a crucial role in understanding customer needs and challenges, and it should be driven by customer research and feedback.
Leaders in customer education should advocate for the consolidation of learning efforts within an organization to improve efficiency and productivity. Customer education and product marketing share many similarities and synergies.
Creating value-based messaging and understanding customer challenges are key aspects of both roles.
Driving product adoption and delivering value-based education are crucial for customer success.
Integrating customer education into other learning programs can lead to efficiency gains and stronger content.
Knowledge management is essential for scaling organizations and ensuring continued growth.
The future of customer education lies in tapping into new generations of job seekers and providing targeted education programs.
Collaboration between product marketing and customer education teams can enhance storytelling and create stronger narratives.
Customer advocacy and feedback play a vital role in shaping educational content and building credibility.
The fluidity of knowledge transfer and the integration of different functions are crucial for success in the customer education field.
In this episode, Dave Derington and Adam Avramescu explore the role of strategy and active listening in the field of customer education. They challenge the notion that rigid frameworks and pre-defined strategies are the key to success, arguing that the ability to adapt and deeply listen to customers and stakeholders is often more important.
The value of slowing down and creating space for deeper conversations
The discussion covers several key topics, including:
The limitations of relying on generic frameworks and maturity models
The importance of understanding the specific business problems and opportunities
Techniques for effective active listening, such as empathy, patience, and asking probing questions
The need to balance formal and informal communication channels
Resources
Books:
“Crucial Conversations” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Adam Avramescu and Dan Ennis discuss the evolving field of digital customer success, emphasizing its focus on leveraging digital-led programs to improve customer outcomes, retention, and growth. Dan highlights the importance of proactive and reactive digital programs, such as email and in-app series, to engage customers at scale. He stresses the need for clear definitions and metrics, including leading indicators like adoption and performance metrics like open and click-through rates. Collaboration between digital customer success and customer education teams is crucial, with regular feedback loops ensuring alignment on customer outcomes.
Adam Avramescu and Dan Ennis discuss the role of digital customer success in improving customer outcomes, emphasizing the use of proactive and reactive digital-led programs like email and in-app messaging to engage customers at scale.
Ennis highlights the importance of measuring success through leading indicators such as adoption rates and performance metrics like open and click-through rates, stressing the need for continuous iteration.
The conversation also explores the collaboration between digital customer success and customer education teams, with regular feedback loops ensuring alignment on goals and customer outcomes.
Ennis invites listeners to connect on LinkedIn, encouraging collaboration in the digital customer success space.
In the evolving world of business, customer education plays a crucial role in driving success. Yet, creating impactful, scalable programs can be challenging. Traditional methods often fall short, requiring innovative approaches to enablement and education.
We’re joined by Melissa Kruminas, a global enablement leader, now at Docebo, where she focuses on customer education that connects business outcomes with learning. Join us as we explore Melissa’s approach to value-led, product-supported education, and how she’s driving initiatives in community learning and customer success.
Summary:
Melissa emphasizes that customer education goes beyond teaching product features; it’s about helping customers realize the full value of their investment. She discusses her focus on scalable learning through experiential events, certifications, and knowledge management.
Melissa highlights the importance of balancing creativity with efficiency in customer education, drawing parallels to delivering a five-star meal versus providing quick, actionable resources. She shares insights on building communities, capturing institutional knowledge, and scaling learning solutions.
Ultimately, Melissa’s work centers around helping customers achieve long-term success by aligning education with their business goals, while fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning.
In business, the need for engaging learning experiences is staggeringly important. Yet the “how” is elusive. Conventional educational approaches don’t work well. You can be tempted to fall back on trusted methodologies only to find them to be too slow, unwieldy, or frustrating.
We’re joined by Michele Wiedemer, Customer Education consultant and expert who’s hard at work to learn more and to expand her already impactful approach to learning in B2B SaaS. Join us as we dive into the Learner-Centered Design approach that she and many of us leverage to build amazing content!
Summary for Part 2
Michele Wiedemer discusses Michael Allen’s framework for designing effective online learning experiences, which involves providing context, challenges, and activities to help learners solve problems and receive feedback.
Wiedemer and Derington explore the idea of creating engaging, subscription-based learning content, similar to how people learn from video game tutorials and explanations.
Wiedemer recommends several books and resources for customer education professionals, including “Non-Designers Design Book” by Robin Williams and Michael Allen’s work on effective learning components.
Derington praises Wiedemer’s research program and encourages the audience to follow her on LinkedIn, emphasizing the importance of putting oneself in the learner’s shoes.
Overall, the discussion focuses on strategies for creating learner-centered, engaging, and effective customer education programs in rapidly changing business environments.
In business, the need for engaging learning experiences is staggeringly important. Yet the “how” is elusive. Conventional educational approaches don’t work well. You can be tempted to fall back on trusted methodologies only to find them to be too slow, unwieldy, or frustrating.
We’re joined by Michele Wiedemer, Customer Education consultant and expert who’s hard at work to learn more and to expand her already impactful approach to learning in B2B SaaS. Join us as we dive into the Learner-Centered Design approach that she and many of us leverage to build amazing content!
Summary for Part 1
Dave Derington and Michele Wiedemer discuss their backgrounds in computers, education, and learning technologies.
The importance of focusing on learning rather than just teaching, citing Malcolm Knowles quote about the need for lifelong learning.
Michele’s experience and research interests around adult learning in a rapidly changing world, including the diffusion of innovations theory.
Challenges of creating effective customer education programs in fast-paced business environments,
The importance of a learner-centered mindset, viewing learning experiences as valuable products, and gathering input from various stakeholders to inform the design.
Strategies for creating structured content and onboarding programs, including topic-based authoring and repurposing existing materials.
Tips on improving writing quality through editing, peer feedback, and testing with learners, as well as setting realistic expectations for program development.
They discuss the use of visual design principles, templates, and AI tools to enhance the creation of engaging e-learning content.
Certification – it’s a challenging and sometimes contentious topic for Customer Education professionals. At CELab, we hear this question come up quite a lot. Chances are good that you may be asked to create a certification, or decide that you want to offer one.
So how do you get started? Should you even be trying to build such a program? In this “mini” episode, Adam Avramescu answers that question down including:
Setting up certification programs, legal basis, and terminology
Certification programs for complex software jobs
Validity and fairness in certification exams
Creating certification programs without high stakes
Certification program legal risks and best practices
We’ve covered this topic a number of times here at CELab, so make sure you check out the following episodes:
In addition, we recommend bookmarking and reading Debbie Smith’s article (found on LinkedIn) called “The 13 Principals for Certification“. Essential reading for anyone working towards developing their own certification!
Disclaimer: We are not giving legal advice in this episode. Make sure you consult with your company’s legal team to understand their risk posture – especially if you’re going to develop a legally defensible high-stakes cert.
Customer Education is evolving rapidly. We’ve come a long way from the days of “smile sheets” and attendance metrics being our guide to success. Gainsight, is one such innovative business that’s showing how education data and usage data connect so we can measure its impact on business outcomes.
Lila Meyer shares her journey at Gainsight, from early roles when the organization was new to her current position leading the Education Services team. We cover a lot of ground including the importance of developing transferable skills and collaboration within the customer education community.
Key points:
Traditionally, customer education programs focused on vanity metrics like course completion rates.
Gainsight is now connecting education data (LMS) with user data (telemetry) and customer data (CRM) to demonstrate the ROI of education programs.
This allows them to see how training impacts product usage, retention, and customer health.
This data is valuable for internal teams like sales and customer success, who can use it to demonstrate the value of education services to clients.
This approach represents a significant shift in the way customer education is measured and valued within organizations.
