“Hey, do we have any education content on ____?” 🤦
The question comes in more regularly than you’d like. After all, isn’t part of the beauty of on-demand education that fact that it’s self-service?
But, education professionals can (and should) guide internal partners—like Customer Success (CS)—to help them understand what’s available and where they can find the resources they’re looking for. Marketing content is a key part of the job!
Here are some ways to do that:
Build a Content Library For Easy Reference
Create a content library where you list all education content and its URL. Be sure to tag content by product line, use case, etc. to make it easy to search and find. You can use a tool like Airtable or a simple spreadsheet.
Provide a Regular Update by Email or Slack
Nick Hershey (Customer Education Specialist at Energage) and Ashley Rickard (Senior Product Education Manager at Panorama) both advocate for regular updates.
“At Panorama, we send a weekly email to the whole CSM team with a list of our new/updated resources. The predictable cadence is helpful for the CSMs to build time for review into their workflow,” shared Rickard.
“About every two weeks I share some new/updated content in our org's general Slack channel,” Hershey stated.
Pick a cadence that works for you—weekly, biweekly, or monthly—and send customer-facing teammates (including sales) recent content.
Attend Customer Success and Sales Meetings to Share In-Person
Often, your customer-facing teammates are “people people.” And they might prefer to spend some facetime with you learning about new education content! Rather than see your content updates get buried in an inbox or lost in a Slack channel, see if you can be a recurring guest on your CS or sales team’s meetings to share what’s new and good in the world of education.
Find a CS Champion to Promote Your Content
Is there a savvy customer success manager already sharing your education content? Lean on those individuals to remind the CS team of what’s available. Evan Hall, former Director of Customer Education at Karbon, gave the advice: “Ask them to tell the story to their team—in their own words and lingo—of how your content helped them.”
Share Customer Success Stories
Everyone wants to be part of a winning team—and they want to share the things that are popular. As customers share what they love about your education content, share those stories loudly and proudly. This will keep your education programs top of mind—and encourage internal team members to continue looking for and sharing that content with their customers.
Add Education Content to Customer Success Playbooks
“Another step we took to increase CS awareness of educational content was creating playbooks for CSM calls where related content was linked. This way, the CSM could get accustomed to what content was appropriate during different areas of their customer sessions,” shared Hershey.
Create Templates for Customer Success to Share
Monica Sindwani Walsh (Customer Enablement Manager at AgentSync) found that being prescriptive is helpful. Her team creates email templates that point to relevant resources. Next up for Monica: Creating copy/paste templates that address the top questions CSMs get asked.
In the ever-evolving landscape of customer education, ensuring your internal partners have seamless access to educational resources is necessary. By implementing a structured approach, such as building a comprehensive content library and adopting proactive communication methods like regular updates via email or Slack, we bridge the gap between education and execution. The wisdom shared here by our peers highlights the value of consistency and engagement in these efforts.