While Customer Education has been around for many years, we at CELab attribute it’s re-emergence to the Customer Success movement. And with that, we invite special guest Nick Mehta – CEO of Gainsight – to the stage!
In this episode we take a macro perspective on Customer Success today – where it’s at and where it’s headed – and question the role that Customer Education plays. Companies today grow much faster, and this conversation takes a direct look at how Customer Education is at the core of Customer Success. In short, if you’re not putting Customer Education and Enablement programs in place early – then your “Crossing the Chasm” experience will be much more challenging.
Join us as we talk about:
The growth curve of Hypergrowth B2B SaaS
How Community, Documentation, Education, and Enablement factor in to support that growth
What are the 4 key areas for Education in SaaS to address going forward
And who knows, we may even talk about TikTok!
Thanks to Nick and the Gainsight team. This is a foundational episode you surely don’t want to miss!
For this episode, we welcome Melissa VanPelt who leads Seismic’s Global Education and Advocacy program at Seismic. We’ve hoped to have Melissa on the show for some time, and this is an episode you’ll truly enjoy.
And because of the depth and complexity of this episode, here’s a special introduction read by Adam:
Adam Avramescu 00:00
Hey everyone, Adam here, just doing a quick introduction before this episode, and we don’t usually do this, but I wanted to focus in on a specific part of the conversation. That’s coming a little bit later. Now, as you’ll hear, we had the opportunity to sit down with Melissa Van Pelt, who is an amazing customer education and enablement leader over at seismic. And we had a great conversation with her.
But towards the end, she makes a certain comment about faking it until you make it. And we talk about it in the context of the episode. But I think this is a really important point, for anyone listening, who’s thinking about growing their career in customer education, or perhaps in some cases rising through the ranks of a company.
In the conversation, she’s talking about the idea that she didn’t necessarily come from a customer education background, and how she had to learn customer success, and then learn customer education, learn community.
I think, in the middle of that, and the way that she was able to take on this increasing scope is not because she was a specialist in learning or customer marketing, or product marketing or any of this, but because, as her company, kept building strategic programs, they trusted her as a leader who could commit to learning everything she needed to learn about that field to make it work.
So the phrase she uses is, “fake it till you make it.” And I think that’s a phrase that cuts both ways. Because often, when we think about something like that, we think, oh, you know, just just pretend you know what you’re doing. And, you know, then eventually, you’ll, you’ll know what you’re doing. And I don’t think that’s actually how it works.
In a lot of cases, the way that she uses the phrase, fake it till you make it is really throw yourself in, start learning, commit, apply those skills, and then figure out how to fill in gaps until you’re doing the thing, you know, quote, unquote, the right way. So, because Melissa works really hard to understand her customers need, how her business works. That I think is how she’s gotten the opportunities to continue to expand her scope. And frankly, it’s what I see a lot of other leaders do, who have continued to expand their scope within and even outside of customer education. It’s not about pretending you know, everything is not about puffing up or posturing.
And frankly, I think as our field grows, you’ll continue to see people who who choose to take that approach where they’ll kind of like pretend they know what they’re talking about, but they don’t actually know. That’s not the right kind of fake until you make it think the right kind of fake it till you make it is exactly what we talked about in this episode where you really roll up your sleeves.
You actively listen,
You learn and you take a fundamentally humble approach to learning about how to make this thing work at your business.
And that’s how you’ll continue to get great opportunities as time goes on.
It’s Valentine’s Day and our gift to the CELab Community was intended to be a “Mini”. Turned out, both Adam and Dave got on a roll and at about the 31 minute mark, Adam can be heard to say, “Let’s wrap up Marketing, okay? In a fairly effective amount of time, and then our next episode, can be on Product.”
This always happens!
Well, we made the entire talk about the intersection of Customer Education and Marketing! In particular we talked much about how Customer Education can help Marketing and Product Marketing teams to educate a market, how we create opportunities to develop educational programs about a B2B SaaS or other business’s industry and skills.
We get into Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Events, and all the messy stuff that always comes up. But when it comes down to it – your Customer Education team is your Trusted Advisor for educating your market. Let’s work together more … it’s fun, and it’s a powerful combination.
Are you wondering how to move from K-12 to Customer Education? Or academia to corporate learning? In this episode, we’re diving into how Customer Education professionals get into the business. Many professionals make a move into Customer Education from teaching, K12 or academia. Others move from Customer Success to Customer Education. Today’s guest has actually worked in each of those worlds! So tune in for a discussion with Monica Sindwani from AgentSync.
Monica made the move from teaching to Customer Success and Customer Education. In this episode, she shares tips for teachers and academics making the move into instructional design or corporate learning. We discuss the paradox of transferable skills and how intellectual humility plays a big part in reskilling. And we talk about how programs like Salesforce Trailhead and other credential programs can be a huge asset for anyone looking to move into the technology field.
Join us for Part 2 of our crossover with another great podcast: He Said, Dee Said with Dee Kapila from Miro and Ryan Roch from Cisco. We continue our Pop Culture thread on how Video Games, Music, and Video does or doesn’t apply to Customer Education. We range far and wide with this final episode of 2021!
Happy New Year from CELab and all of us in the Customer Education community!
And as always, check below for a full transcript of the show!
In previous years, our year-end episode is where we like to kick back and have some fun! We’ve done episodes on what Radiohead and David Bowie can teach us about Customer Education.
But this year we thought we’d mix it up and do a crossover with another great podcast: He Said, Dee Said. Where the Dee in question is our friend Dee Kapila, who leads Customer Education at Miro! And the He in question, is her husband Ryan Roch who a Customer Success Executive at Cisco.
Join us for Part 1 where we share a Pop Culture topic – something we’ve enjoyed in the last year (or in the pandemic) and debate how it does/doesn’t apply to Customer Education!
We range wide over a ton of subjects and there are true gems! Make sure you catch He Said, Dee Said too. How are Roguelikes like Enterprise SaaS software? Well … you’ll just have to listen to find out!
It’s one thing to say that you “Lead with Data” (emphasize air quotes). It’s another thing entirely to build the kind of dashboards and reports that will allow you to do it.
In this episode Christy Hollingshead, Senior Director of Customer Education at Heap, guides us into safely into that territory. While many of us lean on metrics like Completion Rates or attempt to use the Kirkpatrick Model to assess the performance (and value) of their content which doesn’t take into account how one’s educational material impacts the business.
In B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses we gauge performance through a different kind of vocabulary, using terms such as Adoption, Churn, Retention, which are often new and perhaps alien concepts to those new to the discipline of Customer Education. Focus on these kinds of metrics can and do earn Customer Education and Enablement leaders a seat at the executive table.
We think that anybody can easily work with data they have about their program to build helpful Reports and Dashboards or simply gain insights into how customers’ are using educational material to help their businesses
We’ve covered Instructional Design 101 topics on CELab before, but what about more advanced techniques? Once you’ve covered the basic frameworks, what are other evidence-based concepts that you can incorporate into your learning programs?
In this episode, Mike Di Gregorio, PhD, Director of Client Onboarding at Top Hat, walks us through how he incorporates advanced instructional design techniques to educate an audience of higher education professionals. We discuss the differences and similarities between traditional Instructional Design and the more modern face of Learning Experience Design, and how each of them play into the Customer Education world. We also discuss one of the key skills for any instructional designer: managing cognitive load for your learners, and making sure that they are not overwhelmed with too much information to process. We cover techniques that enhance learning transfer – in other words, getting learners to actually do what you taught them to do – and how you can incorporate them into your learning design. And finally, we talk about everyone’s favorite topic: Assessments! Specifically, how to go beyond “smile sheets” and how assessments can inform the way you iterate on content and drive your KPIs.
One of the most common questions that those new to the field of Customer Education ask about when beginning to develop a program is, “What kind of equipment and/or software do I need?” What’s a good microphone? What do I use to edit and record audio? Should I buy a high-end video camera?
In this episode we have a candid discussion on what kinds of products we have used in various environments, chat about pros and cons, and give you a place to start in confidence. Remember – in Customer Education, getting started is the most important thing! Listen in as we rap about the products that make a difference and get you started off on the right foot!
In Episode 66 of the CELab Podcast we discussed Best Practices for keeping your Customer Education content up-to-date despite the rapid-pace of change that we experience in Software-as-a-Service businesses.
But what happens when you also have a highly-configurable product?
Charlie writes:
I have been tasked with creating a customer education program at our software company. I am devouring your book and podcast episodes. I am trying to create a strategy for implementation based on your guidelines, but the sticking point I keep getting stuck on is that our software is configured for each customer. We have many functions that are fairly standard, but every implementation looks and acts a bit different. I know that I can create education material for more advanced topics that our customers would consume without any customization, but our basic user training is the main thing we are trying to standardize, and I am struggling to determine the best way forward. Thanks for your brains!
The hypothesis we’ll challenge today is: We are able to create content at scale that meets the needs of most customers without any customization.
Thank you Charlie for your submission and if you have a question, use this form to send one in for us to consider and answer on the show!
