Why learners should be treated as clients of L&D programs
In customer success, we see the customer journey as a series of stages designed to create value and deepen engagement over time. This lifecycle starts with onboarding, travelling ongoing engagement and ideally ending with advocacy. A customer who loves products and promotes them to others. The same idea applies to workplace learning. Instead of viewing learners as one-off participants, why not view their experiences as a journey that moves from initial adoption to long-term advocacy? By mapping learning to stages such as onboarding, engagement, continuous growth, and advocacy, L&D teams can produce more meaningful connections and better results. Treating learners like customers means investing in each stage with objectives and strategies, ensuring you see value and stay motivated.
How to treat learners like customers
1. Welcome to your course (aka onboarding)
Just as customer onboarding introduces users to their products and guides them towards early milestones, learners onboarding must be warmly welcoming and set clear expectations. Personalized welcome messages, simple tutorials, and early victory will help you build confidence and demonstrate the value of learning from the start. Learners also need clear direction as to where to go if they need help. Just as you start a new job, learners who understand where they are and their next steps will likely remain involved and come back for more. Don’t settle for the standard “welcome to your course” message. Additionally, the purpose of the training can be connected to the actual specific skills they develop and introduced on platforms such as LinkedIn, for example. This helps learners see immediate value and motivation in their initial interactions.
2. Engagement: Values at all touchpoints
The customer success team monitors usage and actively checks in to attract clients. Similarly, L&D leverages data and regular touchpoints (such as Progress Nudges and Manager Checkinin) to motivate learners and resolve obstacles before they can be resolved. Ideally, LXP or similar platforms allow managers to guide learners and keep them on track. We know that engagement drives productivity. This means more (and better) learning in this context. Just like customer success, it is essential to place learners (“customers”) at the heart of the ecosystem. Training that focuses on their needs and most importantly their goals and aspirations. That’s the key to creating truly engaging learners who continue to return for more.
3. Upselling or…Extended Learning Path
In customer success, we encourage customers to drive growth with sophisticated features and add-ons. For learners, providing tailored next steps or personalized learning paths prevents development from continuing and relevant, and training from feeling like a one-off event. Instead of repeating revenue, what you want learners to learn is repetitive learning. How do you achieve that? Do not stop on a single compliance course. It provides related and complementary topics that invite you to deepen your knowledge and engage more. Just like customers, learners don’t simply buy a single item. They invest in the entire learning experience.
4. Advocacy: Creating a Learning Champion
In customer success, advocates are individuals within the client’s organization, who help them share their stories, influence their peers, and often help them secure updates and additional businesses. It’s not just about income. These advocates are important to drive and shape internal buy-in to form a recognition of whether a product truly brings value. Similarly, learning spreads enthusiasm and strengthens learning culture by identifying employees, sharing testimonials, and inviting them to lead peer sessions. This step bridges the gap between learning as a checkbox and learning as meaningful shared values. Beyond typical gamification, consider establishing learning champions that actively promote proper training, especially if you are unconscious.
Imagine a company struggling with a freed learner treating training as just another checkbox. If they start with onboarding personalization (as we said, by welcoming employees with clear expectations and showing value right away), learners are more likely to become confident and remain engaged. By implementing meaningful engagement strategies, the company can deal with obstacles early, stay motivated, provide customized learning paths, and move beyond one-off courses to continuous growth. Finally, sharing experiences and leading peer sessions as learning champions to identify enthusiastic employees as learning champions can create an organically widespread culture of advocacy. Together, these things translate essential tasks into meaningful, continuous experiences that people want to actually return.
