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?
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.
For CELab’s 100th episode, we’ve decided to celebrate 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 now they are looking back at their journey to dissect mistakes they made and what they learned from them. We also asked Customer Education leaders who have appeared in our previous episodes to call in with their valuable advice to their past selves, which you’ll hear throughout the show.
Customer Education teams must remain adaptable in times of change. After all, we support ever-changing products for diverse audiences, and we drive ever-changing business strategies. In this episode, Lisa Rothrauff, Director of Customer Education at Amplitude, walks us through how she builds and develops teams to balance different skill sets and remain resilient and adaptable through changes in business strategy, skill requirements, and economic landscapes. She talks about the balance between “constant skills” and “fluid skills” in hiring and developing team members’ careers and gives advice on building high-performing teams who thrive in ambiguity.
In this episode we discuss …
Importance of product telemetry
What is it that you need from your team?
How to design for how people learn
Hire for attributes or potential over experience
Hiring a generalist or a specialist
Differences between theory and practice instructional designers
The value of contextual awareness and curiosity in content design
Creating a specific type of experience that supports instructional goals
With this episode, we’re joined by Tiffany Taylor to talk about the overlap between Customer Success and Customer Education. Tiffany leads both the Customer Success and Customer Education practices at Handshake, and what better way to discuss:
The role of education in implementation
Leading and lagging lagging indicators
Investing in customer education and customer success
Making customer education a part of the solution
How customer education is the scale engine of customer success
The importance of customer education and compliance
Product training for professionals and users
Is customer education expected to be free?
Strategic thinking is really important
How to promote your training programs
Measuring the different levels of customer education
Why certification and credentialing is important?
How to formalize customer education
What’s different about customer education today?
At the end of this journey, we feel more connected to our successors and have a better understanding that what we do as Customer Education Leaders and Practitioners. Let’s work together to make this field a crucial part of any organization.
A rendering by DALL-E 2 of Customer Education in the 90s
The clock is winding back, once again! On a previous episode, we covered Claudia Gaillard Meer’s book on Customer Education from 1984. And now, we’re jumping forward in time 13 years to the year 1997. And we rejoined the state of customer education with the book “Strategies for Effective Customer Education” by Peter Honebein
Some highlights from this episode:
Customer Education is one form of Customer Education, but it’s not the only form.
Customer education has never truly gone away, it’s just been renamed.
What does customer education mean in this time period?
Why sales and marketing has less of a role in customer education today than in the past.
Customer education as a means to stimulate sales.
Customer education is only helpful when it’s about lacking knowledge or motivation.
The importance of customer education and how to measure it.
What if it’s not about your desire to use the product? Is it extrinsic or intrinsic?
Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 (yes this is a long one) for even more insights!
This episode is a continuation of our discussion of Claudia Gaillard Meer’s 1984 work on Customer Education. Customer Education has been around for at least 40 years by now, so we continue our conversation – what’s new? What’s not new? Enjoy Part 2 of two deep-dive discussions where we consider the past, present, and future of Customer Education.
The future of Customer Education? DALL-E seems to think so …
It’s 2023! Dave and Adam share predictions for the coming year – what are the big trends to watch, and what are the ones that might not pan out? We’ll share our predictions and trends. But first … we’re counting down the top episodes of 2022 and sharing our learnings, including how we’ll use them to inform our future programming.
