Customer education is often the unsung hero of a thriving business. C-level executives look at metrics like product adoption, expansion opportunities, and customer retention to gauge success. Yet many miss out on a simple yet powerful truth: Education is the engine that powers these business-critical metrics.
When your clients understand your product or service like you do, they can appreciate it like you do, too. That “happy path” your UX team designed becomes their everyday workflow. They discover the value that was promised in your marketing materials. The more educated they become, the greater their confidence in using—and paying for—your offering.
But that confidence doesn’t always come easily. Earning repeat business starts with creating customer education content that goes above and beyond what you’ve seen before. Thankfully, there are many successful customer education program examples to learn from.
Building out your customer education program and want some inspiration? In this article, we’ll explore 11 customer education program examples and share what makes them so impressive.
What is Customer Education?
Customer education refers to the process of teaching customers how to achieve a specific outcome. Customers often derive these outcomes from better leveraging your products and services to get more value. A comprehensive customer education strategy typically involves understanding learner personas, including their business goals and pain points. Those personas are then used to serve up tailored educational content to support them.
The training content you design will vary based on your existing customers and their needs. Generally, you’ll want to produce a wide range of media, including online courses, product walkthroughs, webinars, workshops, blog articles, support docs, and other education. For this reason, many companies track their education efforts using a learning management system (LMS).
The Benefits of Customer Education
Educating your customers isn’t just a best practice—it’s also good business. In our 2022 Examining the State of Organizational Education report, we surveyed 500+ managers, directors, and executives with the keys to their company’s educational programs. Among these leaders, 56% saw improved customer retention after implementing an education program.
That’s the biggest benefit, but it’s far from the only one. According to respondents, 43% saw increased revenue, and 27% experienced reduced support costs. It’s not hard to see why. When customers learn how to navigate your products and leverage your services, it means fewer questions for customer service, shorter queue times, and smoother customer onboarding all around.
Investment in customer education is investment in the customer experience. And when you provide a great experience, it generates customer engagement, satisfaction, and goodwill. Those are benefits no organization can afford to pass up.
11 Customer Education Programs to Look to for Inspiration
Giving customers a world-class learning experience is no easy feat, but these companies sure do make it look easy.
Below, we’ve listed 11 stellar customer education program examples. Read along to learn why we love them and how to use them as inspiration.
1. HubSpot Academy
HubSpot is the quintessential education hub. Aside from revolutionizing the way companies prospect—and coining the term “inbound marketing”—HubSpot offers an exceptional breadth of content on everything from economics to real estate. Its blog routinely ranks atop Google, and its Inbound conference has featured everyone from Reese Witherspoon to Barack Obama.
And that’s before we even get to customer education. HubSpot Academy consistently produces timely courses and certifications to help customers level up their marketing, sales, and service motions.
HubSpot delivers both quality and quantity of content across a variety of topics. If you want to read up on artificial intelligence, you can. If you’re interested in SEO or GDPR, there are courses, too.
2. Gusto Academy
Gusto is an online payroll and HR management platform. In addition to helping companies automate compensation, Gusto’s tools support everything from hiring and onboarding to employee productivity and benefits.
When servicing an all-encompassing HR suite, it’s easy for employees—and, by extension, customers—to get overwhelmed. But Gusto has its support down to a science. The company created Gusto Academy, an online learning hub powered by Intellum, in just six months, producing 85 videos and 12 hours of eLearning content.
The short turnaround is impressive, but even more impressive is the content itself. Gusto Academy offers not just product education, but industry education that benefits all HR functions. The company even won the 2022 ACE award for its customer education.
3. Webflow University
Webflow is a website creation platform that caters to those with little engineering experience. By handling the more technical aspects on the backend, Webflow enables its customers to spend less time coding and more time designing their dream site. Of course, designing is a field of its own. From interface layouts to copywriting, there’s plenty of work clients must do to succeed.
That’s where Webflow University comes into play. Webflow’s customer education program offers all forms of training, from product certifications and courses to support documentation. The company even provides interactive learning with games designed to help you learn about styling, layout, positioning, and more.
4. Personio Voyager Academy
Personio is an HR software platform that helps companies hire, onboard, engage, and retain talent. With clear differentiators, such as an anonymous “whistleblower” tool for employees, Personio offers functionality that may be unfamiliar to prospects and customers.
Personio Voyager Academy ensures no customer feels left behind. With hours of course and webinar content ranging from offboarding to org structure, Voyager Academy provides intuitive learning paths for every pain point. The company also offers on-ramps to other support functions, including a help center and community forum. Bonus points for the clean layout and calming colors.
5. Copado Training
Copado is a DevOps enablement platform that specializes in Salesforce implementation. With such a fine-tuned focus, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Copado lives and breathes the technical knowledge needed to become an expert in the field.
Copado Training helps customers achieve that expertise. The company’s self-paced learning platform teaches users how to build, test, and deploy with confidence. Academy members can connect with other DevOps experts to network or share best practices. Perhaps best of all, Copado partners with Salesforce, meaning customers learn right from the source. Oh, and the llama mascot doesn't hurt, either.
6. Reddit Ads Formula
Reddit needs no introduction. The social news titan has provided curated discussion boards for nearly 20 years and brings in billions of visitors a month. With that traffic comes plenty of eyeballs—and a critical market for advertising.
Reddit Ads Formula, powered by Intellum, gives business owners the education they need to place successful ads. With several certification paths, engaging course names like “Hack Your Creative,” and a simple yet striking homepage, Ads Formula looks to engage solopreneurs, enterprise firms, and all customers in between.
7. Partnerships Experience Academy
PXA is the education arm of Impact.com, a partner management platform. The academy aims to help clients improve their partner and affiliate relationships so they can scale their businesses effectively.
PXA provides more than 10 unique certification paths, ranging from Impact fundamentals to industry expertise. Everyone, from marketing agencies to influencers, has their own path to success—a testament to PXA’s ability to create valuable, personalized education for multiple audiences.
Did you know? Sixty-one percent of companies that use an education platform designed for multiple audiences report improved customer retention.
8. Miro Academy
Miro is a leading visual workspace tool that enables teams to innovate with ease. With its shared boards, versatile templates, and user-friendly interface, Miro has become a lifesaver for anyone looking to jot down a good idea (or several hundred).
The platform is constantly adding new features and functionality, from diagramming to AI automation. Thankfully, Miro Academy is there to teach customers how to use these bells and whistles effectively. Earn badges, explore use cases, attend office hours, and more—all through an interface that’s as slick as the product itself.
9. Notion Academy
Notion is a workplace and workflow platform that helps clients record notes, share information, and manage projects—all collaboratively. Its learning engine, Notion Academy, offers enablement materials in the form of lessons, videos, and how-to guides.
The entire experience is noteworthy. Every lesson has a corresponding video to set the stage. Detailed titles and video lengths give you an exact preview of what you’re about to learn. How-to guides are organized by use case and leverage GIFs, callout boxes, and other visual assets. This is learning made easy.
10. MongoDB Academy
MongoDB is a document database and developer data platform. Described as being “built by developers, for developers,” MongoDB aims to make engineering workflows simpler and more sustainable.
MongoDB Academy offers 15 certifications, along with self-serve courses, instructor-led units, smaller “learning bytes,” and more. Education spans various coding languages, including Java, C#, PHP, and Python. And though the content is tailored for MongoDB customers, the content comes at a great value to anyone: 100% free.
11. Xero Central
Xero is an all-in-one accounting software platform designed to help businesses pay bills, claim expenses, accept payments, and more.
When managing money, even the most seasoned accountants have to bring their A-game. Xero Central helps educate these customers to build trust in the platform and enable success. With how-to courses, recurring webinars, earnable badges, and a Xero advisor certification, Xero Central establishes its credibility at all ends of the experience.
Intellum is the Learning Management System That Powers Leading Customer Education Programs
For businesses to grow, they need a customer education program that can grow and mature alongside them.
Intellum is the most scalable customer education platform on the market. From award-winning brands like Gusto to powerhouses like Reddit, Meta, and Amazon, the world’s leading customer education programs are powered by Intellum.
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