Episode 110 – Navigating the Learning Management Systems Marketplace

In this podcast episode, host Dave Derington speaks with John Leh, CEO/Lead Analyst at learning tech research/consulting firm, Talented Learning. Talented Learning provides independent research and analysis on learning management systems (LMS), focusing on extended enterprise or learning systems as a business. John shares his experiences in the evolution and specialization of the learning systems marketplace.

The conversation explores the difference between customer education platforms and employee learning solutions, emphasizing the importance of aligning learning systems with the specific needs and objectives of the learners. John also touches on the necessity for rapid product changes, the role of metrics, reporting, and analytics, and the reasons behind switching LMS.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Intro and background – John Leh
  • Exploring the complexities of customer education platforms and learning management systems
  • The evolution of the learning systems marketplace 
  • Understanding learners’ needs before choosing a system
  • Independent verification of LMS
  • Differentiating between customer education platforms and other learning systems
  • Employee vs. customer education systems
  • The role of metrics, reporting, and analytics in customer education
  • Reasons for switching learning management systems
  • The need for rapid product changes in learning systems
  • Strategies for developing high-end content for superior learning experiences
  • Finding the right product-market fit
  • Multiple learning systems and transitioning between them
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

John Leh LinkedIn

Talented Learning

Dave Derington LinkedIn

Adam Avramescu LinkedIn

Strigo

Docebo

Intellum

Episode 109 – TechSmith and Project-Based Learning

We are big fans of TechSmith and its products – and TechSmith is a fantastic supporter of the Customer Education community! Today we welcome Matt Pierce and Troy Stein from TechSmith to the show to discuss what’s happening at the company and an exciting (experimental) topic: Project Based Learning (PBL). 

You’ll hear Matt and Troy discuss the transformative power of project-based learning and customer education. They delve into TechSmith’s tools like SnagIt and Camtasia that enable individuals to create and share powerful visual messages. The episode explores how technology and creativity intersect to drive project-based learning, the concept of multimodal learning, and the impact of AI and machine learning on customer education. Mat and Troy share insights on TechSmith’s Academy platform that is revolutionizing video production learning and the potential of project-based learning to foster innovation in customer education. Enjoy!

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Intro and backgrounds
  • Tools like Snagit and Camtasia for creating and sharing powerful messages
  • National Camera Day, World Industrial Design Day, and Bomb Pop Day
  • The intersection of creativity and technology in project-based learning discussed
  • Audiate, a tool by TechSmith
  • AI and machine learning’s impact on customer education
  • TechSmith’s Academy platform for video production learning
  • Project-based learning
  • Affordability and ease of use in tools for customer education
  • Multimodal learning combining audio, video, and text
  • Combining video and text on a single page for SEO
  • How project-based learning enhances software understanding and engagement
  • Customer education and experiential learning
  • Embracing innovation in customer education
  • Appreciation of C-Lab listeners and the importance of educating, experimenting, and finding one’s people
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, peers, and network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Troy Stein LinkedIn

Troy Stein TikTok

Matthew Pierce LinkedIn

TechSmith

TechSmith Build a Great Video

TechSmith Camtasia

Adam Avramescu LinkedIn

Skilljar

Docebo

Intellum

Episode 108 – Stephanie Pellegrino – Landing a Job in Customer Education – Part 2

Welcome to Part II of an important discussion between host Adam Avramescu, VP of Customer Education at Personio, and Stephanie Pellegrino, who leads Customer Education at Gong. Adam and Stephanie give an unfiltered view into the industry as hiring managers. 

You’ll hear Steph share her insights on the art of interviewing for customer education roles. She points out that the most important part at any step of the process is doing your homework – whether you’re contacting a LinkedIn connection or preparing for common interview questions. She’ll help you understand the nuances of instructional design interviews and the role of recruiters. Pellegrino also emphasizes the importance of tactfulness when asking questions during an interview and the mutual respect that should be present between hiring managers and candidates throughout the process.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Tips for interviewing in customer education
  • Preparing for common interview questions
  • Selfless listening tours for understanding roles
  • Crafting thoughtful questions for hiring managers
  • Nuances of instructional design interviews
  • Balancing evidence-based learning and quick iteration
  • Interview Techniques and the Recruiter’s role
  • Preparation and tact when asking questions
  • Hierarchy of specificity when asking questions
  • Effective job application processes
  • Mutual respect between hiring managers and candidates
  • Closing comments – succeeding in interviews
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Stephanie Pellegrino LinkedIn

Gong.io

Part I of Stephanie’s Interview

Adam Avramescu LinkedIn

Skilljar

Docebo

Intellum

Episode 107 – Landing a Job in Customer Education – Part 1 – with Stephanie Pellegrino

Welcome to Part I of a candid discussion between host Adam Avramescu, VP of Customer Education at Personio, and Stephanie Pellegrino, who leads Customer Education at Gong.  You’ll hear about the macroeconomic changes in the market and how they affect us in Customer Education, insights on acing customer education job interviews. 

Adam and Stephanie give an unfiltered view into the industry as hiring managers. They talk about the importance of ‘selfless listening’, meaningful conversations for successfully pivoting into the customer education field, connecting with industry professionals, and engaging in informational chats before the interview. The episode also highlights the value of hiring candidates with non-traditional backgrounds and finding the right fit for a team, as well as effective interview techniques and research strategies. Stay tuned for Part II of this important conversation coming soon.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Celebrating National Pistachio Day and effortful learning in instructional design
  • Discussing customer education job interviews and hiring manager perspectives
  • Importance of selfless listening and meaningful conversations for job seekers
  • Connecting with industry professionals before interviews for valuable insights
  • Acknowledging the value of hiring non-traditional backgrounds in customer education
  • Finding the right fit for your team based on background and experience
  • Importance of self-awareness and authenticity in interview conversations
  • Connecting the dots between experience and the desired role
  • Demonstrating understanding of the business and its needs
  • Researching the company and asking meaningful questions during interviews
  • Avoiding faking knowledge and focusing on being coachable and agile
  • Comments on effective interview techniques and research strategies
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Stephanie Pellegrino LinkedIn

Gong.io

Adam Avramescu LinkedIn

Docebo

Intellum

Episode 106 – Aaron Morin @ Thinkific – Education from Hustle Culture to Customer Success

In Episode 102, we first spoke with the Thinkific Team about the Power of Education as a Growth Tool for business. Today we’re going deeper into the history and growth of the Thinkific platform itself. 

In this episode, we are speaking with Aaron Morin, Senior Manager of Community at Thinkific. Thinkific is a software platform that enables entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses. Thinkific offers a course builder designed for Creator Educators. It’s simple and gives creators the ability to build their entire course without a big learning curve. Thinkific and Thinkific Plus offer a design and build experience that is approachable for everyone.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

●       Aaron Morin intro and time with Thinkific

●       We’re recording this on National Pizza Party Day, NASCAR day, and more

●       Aaron’s career journey before joining Thinkific

●       Thinkific’s culture

●       Thinkific Plus

●       Customer success focus, revenue generation, and the market

●       Offering paid products filters your audience

●       Estimating and tracking ROI

●       Coaching – how it works at Thinkific

●       Thinkific Community, a private Facebook experience

●       Vancouver Customer Education Conference – first time ever

●       Thinkific’s networking event

●       Video with Castos

●       And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Aaron Morin LinkedIn

Thinkific.com/plus

Link to Episode 102 – Thinkific Pt I

Customer Education

Talented Learning

Dave Derington Twitter

Dave Derington LinkedIn

Episode 105 – Gamification and Gamified Learning with Intellum

Gamification and Gamified Learning are resurfacing as big trends in helping grow engagement in SaaS platforms.  In this episode, we are going to talk about Learning Science and dive deep into Gamification.  How do you get started?  What are the common mistakes?  Join us for a Disney-esque ride through #customereducation with Shannon Howard and Michelle Ellis from Intellum!

Intellum’s team of award-winning learning practitioners, consultants, content experts, engagement professionals, developers, and engineers help the largest and fastest-moving brands in the world successfully educate their customers, partners, and employees.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Exploring customer education with Intelum
  • Combining tech, content, and marketing elements
  • Neuroscience behind gamified learning effectiveness
  • Engaging learners through games and psychology
  • Avoiding trivialization of game-based learning
  • Designing for different learner personas
  • Creating a “gamer DNA” for behavior change
  • Importance of social learning and diversity
  • Goals and rules of game design
  • Gamifying reputation building and learning
  • Using challenges, rewards, and badges
  • Designing engaging and purposeful learning experiences
  • Balancing complexity and time for learner engagement
  • Organizational education and scalability with Intellum
  • Leveraging existing resources for content creation
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Shannon Howard LinkedIn

Michelle Ellis LinkedIn

Intellum

Customer Education

Talented Learning

Dave Derington Twitter

Dave Derington LinkedIn

Episode 104 – Customer Education and Advocacy with Docebo

Like peanut butter and jelly, customer advocacy and education – together – synergize their powers. Join host Dave Derington as he speaks with Adam Ballhausen, Senior Director of Customer Education and Advocacy for Docebo (“Doh-CHAY-boh”) as he shares his, and Docebo’s, mission to align education and advocacy and consolidate education programs to achieve that next level of customer success.

Docebo is one of the industry’s fastest-growing and most innovative learning technology companies, and employs over 800 global innovators who serve over 3000 customers around the world. Docebo is currently used by some of the best brands in the world, including L’Oreal, Zoom, Kiehl’s, ZipRecruiter, Walmart, and more. Docebo believes that learning is for everyone, and always put the customer first. In October of 2019, Docebo successfully launched their first IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: DCBO), followed by the launch of NASDAQ (NASDAQ: DCBO) in December of 2020.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • National Chocolate Mousse Day + more
  • Adam’s background and path to Docebo
  • Empowering users to best utilize products and services
  • Academy vs. University
  • Educational ‘interventions’ and how they work together
  • Building a community of advocates
  • Customer-led growth is top of mind
  • Retention and expansion of customer base
  • Consolidated or hybrid work for disparate audiences
  • Docebo employees taking the same training as customers
  • Collaborating with customers and how they train their audiences
  • Governance, and a ‘hub and spoke’ model
  • Docebo University, Docebo Advocacy, and Docebo Community
  • Creating awards and why your customers should apply for them
  • And – please – if you’ve found value in this podcast, share with your friends, your peers, and your network to help us “Find the Others”!

Resources:

Adam Ballhaussen LinkedIn

Docebo

Customer Education

Talented Learning

Dave Derington Twitter

Dave Derington LinkedIn

Episode 103 – Videate – Automated Video Production with AI

Machine Learning and AI are really impacting our world, but how can Customer Education teams take advantage of this trend?  Enter Videate! If I can have a tool “magically” do my video for me?  Add audio?  And then translate it into different languages?  How much would that be worth?  

Join us as we talk with Mark Hellinger about this amazing product. Mark is the Co-Founder and COO of Videate – Videate enables SaaS companies to scale video production by making more how-to videos with fewer resources. Videate keeps your videos up-to-date with every software release and uses machine translation to globalize your content across all the languages you support.

About the Show

CELab is the Customer Education Lab for Innovative Customer Success, Enablement, and Marketing Teams. Our mission is to explore how to build Customer Education programs, experiment with new approaches, and exterminate the myths and bad advice that stop growth dead in its tracks.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • Video content is hard, but AI is here to help
  • Screen recording and its software limits
  • Frequent software changes, a shortage of expert video resources, and the move from long-form to short-form video
  • Getting more content without adding more staff
  • Globalizing, updating, and maintaining your content for customers
  • Videate.io – how it works
  • Screen recording, voiceovers, avatars, and machine translation 
  • Share with your peers, help us find “the others”

Resources:

Mark Hellinger LinkedIn

Videate

Camtasia

Customer Education

Talented Learning

Dave Derington Twitter

Dave Derington LinkedIn

Episode 102 – Thinkific – The Power of Education as a Growth Tool for Business

Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses are often plagued by the same challenge: Churn! Thanks to the emergence of Customer Success, we’ve learned a lot about this word and what can be done to combat the dreaded churn.

Behind all the playbooks, call-to-actions, harried calls to “save a customer” is one persistent activity that works: Customer Education! In this episode we’re joined by Laura Evans and Parker Thompson of Thinkific, and learn how to harness the power of education as a growth tool for business. We also hear about some incredible Customer Success Stories leveraging the new Thinkific Plus platform.

Listen in as we discuss:

  • The evolution of the company from a course to a platform
  • What is customer education about?
  • The background and evolution of Thinkific
  • Single sign-on and how it reduces friction
  • Ways to implement customer education
  • What is the secret sauce of the Thinkific Plus platform?
  • What is the problem with customer success?
  • Start with the customer success plan
  • The power of white-labeling your content

Episode 101 – Hard-Learned Lessons in Customer Education Leadership – Part 2

In CELab’s 100th episode, we’ve kicked off the celebration of 100 episodes by discussing the hardest-won lessons for Customer Education Leaders. Dave and Adam have both held several roles on their journeys as customer education leaders, and they are continuing to look back at their journey to dissect mistakes they made and what they learned from them.

In Part 2, we pick up the thread by being vulnerable and really diving into the challenges that we’ve felt over the years. And as with Part 1, we feature a number of you listeners including Phil Byrne, Mike Di Gregorio, Lisa Rothrauff, and Melissa VanPelt. What advice do we have to our past selves? Some topics include …

  • Going down the rabbit hole of training
  • Advice to other leaders
  • How to deal with stress and overwhelm
  • Outreach and the importance of sharing your story
  • Putting yourself on the shelf and sticking to fundamentals
  • The importance of consistency
  • Learn some management techniques
  • Our favorite episodes of the podcast

Remember, “Finding the Others” is our goal. If you want to connect with us to share your experiences in this growing Community of Practice for Customer Education, please use our contact us form. We love to hear from you! Thanks to all of you for continuing to support CELab.

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