We asked top experts about the future of education—and this is what they shared.
Last month, we hosted a panel with Lindsay Thibeault and Chris LoDolce of SaaS Academy Advisors and John Leh, analyst at Talented Learning. All three long-time veterans in the space, and in unique positions of collaborating with a number of customer education teams.
These thought leaders looked into their crystal ball to share what they think is ahead for customer education this year. 🔮
5 Customer Education Predictions for 2025
1. AI will require companies to invest in education to drive customer outcomes.
The AI trend you didn’t hear about in 2024: AI is changing business models. For a long time, companies priced products based on user counts. That pricing model has changed to focus more on usage. And with the introduction of AI to platforms? Chris shared that more companies are looking at outcome-based pricing—charging based on customers achieving certain outcomes with their product.
And we all know that products alone don’t drive business outcomes. Proper education and training enables customers to be successful users of our products, driving those business outcomes. This is great news for customer education professionals.
2. AI will fundamentally shift our work to more strategic activities.
It should come as no surprise that AI is changing how we work. Taking our jobs? Not yet—maybe not ever. But it is forcing us to reevaluate our workflows, and identify where we can leverage AI (in its current state) to become more efficient.
2024 was the year AI actually became good at a lot of things—and accessible to everyone (not just the AI/ML specialists). As AI takes things like learning objective creation, content development, and voiceovers off collective plates, learning professionals are freed up to focus on more high-value activities, like strategic planning and cross-functional collaboration.
3. Community and education will go hand in hand.
Last year, we saw more education teams moving into community teams and vice versa. Our panelists believe that trend is here to say.
And it makes sense: Social learning plays a key role in knowledge retention and transfer. You can think of community and education like a virtuous cycle: Education drives people to community for further learning, conversations in community spark new material and insights for education, and on it goes.
(You can actually hear me and John Leh talk about the benefits of community and common pitfalls on the Customer Ed Nuggets podcast.)
4. Seamless learning experience will gain in popularity.
Your customers need learning at every stage of their journey—not just during onboarding. But that learning doesn’t always have to be in the format of a course.
Our panelists talked about the need to meet customers in their moment of need. “We don’t want to remove them from what they’re trying to do to learn,” Lindsay said during the webinar. Thus the need for a just-in-time learning experience—a way customers can find what they’re looking for without searching through your learning management system (LMS), community, or knowledge base.
Serving up learning content in-app—pulled from a variety of possible locations—will help your customers get unstuck, so they can realize more value from your product.
5. In-app education will gain more steam.
Related but not quite the same, in-app training is content and guidance layered directly on top of your product’s user interface.
Think: tutorials, walkthroughs, and modals.
A 2024 Forrester study, commissioned by Intellum, found that in-app education is the top content format education teams were prioritizing. Our panel of experts agreed they expect this trend to continue into 2025—further educating customers in-product, providing contextualized insights when and where they need it.
2025: Customer Education’s Year
We’re optimistic that the future is bright for customer education. 😎
And we hope you’ll join us throughout the year for events that celebrate and further this profession.
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