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.
As technology evolves at lightning speed, how can we keep up with educating our customers? We pose this question to the legendary Geoffrey A. Moore, author of the iconic book “Crossing the Chasm“. Geoff argues that while technology outpaces traditional education methods, the core customer problems remain the same.
In this episode we’ll discuss Geoff’s perspective for understanding different customer segments and adapting education approaches. We’ll also get his take on balancing product knowledge with true customer empathy.
“Education starts with the student, not with the teacher. You’re trying to change the behavior of the student, not trying to execute your own agenda.”
Geoffrey Moore – 8:45
And what about AI? Will it be our savior or our downfall in education? Stick around for the whole discussion – you don’t want to miss his sage advice on connecting educators with executives to maximize impact.
How do you get from 6th grade science to a role leading Customer Education at Notion? It’s a great story that’s behind the evolution of customer education at Notion, where our guest – Zoe Ludwig – focused on bridging the gap between product adoption and user success. From emphasizing the importance of understanding the audience’s needs – to codifying knowledge to create a single source of truth for users check out this episode with so many topics including:
Transitioning from teaching to customer education leader at Notion.
Customer education strategies for a consumer-grade product.
Product education and user adoption strategies for a digital note-taking tool.
Using education content to drive marketing goals
Infusing education with storytelling and brand elements to make Notion content engaging
Creating high-quality content for Notion, including visuals, guidelines, and community partnership for new feature launches
Leveraging user-generated content in Notion’s education programs
Using education to drive product usage and measuring ROI through experimentation
Product education and experimentation with different content formats
Using AI for content development, including generating bullet points, expanding on ideas, and rewriting in a specific tone.
In this episode we’re joined by Special Guest – Shannon Howard – as we dive into the Intellum-sponsored study from Forrester: “Driving Business Success Through Customer Education”. This is a refresh of the 2019 report, which is crucial for those in our field to review and absorb. What’s changed? Are there new trends?
Highlights? Here are just a few we cover:
Around 86% of respondents said they had a positive ROI from customer education, with another 10% saying they at least broke even. This suggests that 96% are seeing a positive business impact from customer education.
Customer education helps drive business outcomes like increased customer retention, spending, and decreased support costs. High success orgs saw a 372% ROI over 3 years, with a 7 month payback period.
There has been a shift away from traditional workshops and certifications towards more asynchronous, mobile, and just-in-time learning approaches.
Vendors are being used more strategically as partners, especially by high success orgs, to help raise maturity levels.
Lack of tools, technical skills, and personnel were cited as top challenges. Budget constraints were also a factor in needing to do more with less resources.
AI is being explored more for use cases like accelerating content creation, personalizing learning, data analysis, and assessment creation. But widespread adoption is still on the horizon.
Key factors for success included data access, mobile accessibility, vendor partnerships, and having scalable platforms.
Grab your copy of the report and a beverage and listen in to this deep-dive that you won’t want to miss.
“If you just focus on educating your customers, you’re missing a HUGE opportunity!” says Mark Kilens, Co-Founder of HubSpot Academy and Drift, and now CEO and Co-founder of TACK ⛵️ & ClubPF. Check out Mark’s projects at tacknetwork.com and tackinsider.com.
In previous episodes, we’ve shared how leaders in the industry see education as the core of our programming. Here, Mark shares a human-first perspective on how education should be a fundamental pillar of your GTM Strategy. Why? The importance of integrating education into marketing strategies is crucial for businesses to build trust and loyalty with their customers.
Tune in to as we discuss:
Customer education and its broader definition beyond just training current customers.
Founding and expanding HubSpot Academy, a driver of category creation.
Tying customer education to business outcomes through partnerships and authentic storytelling.
Shifting go-to-market strategies to prioritize people over software, channels, and algorithms.
Creating helpful content for customers through storytelling and relationship-building.
Using education to fuel business growth, with a focus on customer experience.
Creating people-led growth through content and education.
Marketing and sales strategies, focusing on the “people first” approach.
In this episode we welcome Katie Felton – Director of Academies, Global Education Services at Anthology Inc. to continue our exploration into Pricing and Packaging for Customer Education.
This episode dives deep into the world of customer education programs for software companies, featuring an EdTech expert. Here are some key highlights:
Launching a Unified Academy: Learn how a company with 40+ products overcame language and product alignment challenges to create a single training platform.
Pricing & Packaging Strategies: Discover how to price software training subscriptions based on contract value and explore tiered pricing models with real-world examples.
Balancing Revenue & Customer Success: We discuss the importance of creating valuable training content that supports customer success, even when it impacts revenue generation in the short term.
Merging Product Training & Professional Learning: Explore the benefits and challenges of combining product training with broader professional development programs.
Sales & Marketing Alignment: Get insights on how to handle customer discount requests and ensure marketing and sales teams are aligned.
If you’re involved in the EdTech industry or building customer education programs for software products, this episode is packed with valuable insights!
How do we price our Customer Education programs? It’s a hugely challenging task, even for the experienced – and one that CELab listeners have asked for!
We welcome Mindy Barenblat to the show – an Austin-based an education & enablement strategist and consultant, formerly GM/VP of Education Service at Blackbaud and Eloqua. Tune as we discuss:
Subscription-based learning model with ala carte options
