If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it
A recent State of Customer Education report published by Lighthouse Research & Advisory and Absorb found that half of customer education programs describe themselves as mature. However, when tested against operational criteria such as sponsorship, budget, and measurement, only 20% met the criteria.
It’s not a small gap. This means that we believe that most areas are further advanced than infrastructure support. Programs that have built real infrastructure share five specific, repeatable habits. Each of these goals is achievable without increasing headcount, and each could realistically start this quarter.
Here’s what top performers do differently and how you can replicate it.
The difference between successful customer education programs
1. Treat content as an ongoing task
60% of high-yield programs continually update their content, compared to 31% of low-yield programs. This is the widest single gap in the entire dataset. The driving force here is team structure, not size. Top performers assign content maintenance to their own owners, separate from the person who originally built the course.
The most common formats, short videos and instructor-led live training, are the most expensive to keep up-to-date, so the library becomes obsolete while everyone is focused on creating the next thing. This fix distributes authorship across teams that already have access to the content. A program that brings subject matter experts from CS, Product, and Support into the authoring process allows you to keep your library up to date without expanding your core team. Start by choosing your three most commonly used pieces of content and assigning each one an owner whose sole responsibility is to keep the content accurate.
2. Give learners a place to go next
A certification gives learners a finish line, and once they cross it, in most programs there is no reason to go back. 51% of high-yielding programs offer multiple or tiered certifications. Programs with low benefits are more likely to offer none at all, and 44% have no certifications.
The same pattern applies outside of customer education. The Training as a Product cohort reports returns as high as 35% for programs offering multiple credentials, compared to 7% for programs offering a single credential. The lesson here is that credentials are most effective as hooks that pull learners toward their next goal. If the path to certification ends with a single badge, you now have a reason for someone to attend just once.
3. Let Customer Success make recommendations
All programs are trying to solve the same problem: bringing back people who have already completed their training. The data points to a specific answer. CS recommendations drive repeat participation in 33% of high-yield programs compared to 19% of low-yield programs.
Both onboarding requirements and reactive problem resolution are one-time triggers. CS recommendations work because they exist within an ongoing relationship that customers already trust. If your education program and CS team aren’t already formally aligned, the most effective solution currently available is to start building your customer training strategy around CS competencies.
4. Plan your engagement around your customer’s calendar
38% of high-yield programs say their engagement approach is very proactive and fully integrated into the customer lifecycle, compared to 17% of low-yield programs.
Most programs still build content reactively, creating training only after a spike in support tickets or a decline in usage. The most powerful programs plan around times that are already on your calendar, such as update dates or product releases, and reach out to your customers before they ask.
5. They have a plan for the moment someone goes quiet.
16% of programs have no strategy for what happens when learners become inactive. Of all the programs that exist, personal assistance from Customer Success far exceeds automated reminders.
The most effective tactics are also the most difficult to scale. This is likely why most programs use automatic reminders by default.
Case study: What happens in practice?
Dura-Line needed to reach network engineers, contractors, and new employees in nearly 90 countries. These groups were too broad for a single onboarding sequence and too dispersed to create a static content library. The company has built a training academy with short, stackable mini-courses with digital badges that can be unlocked toward certifications. In the words of the program manager, it’s intentionally designed to be “binge-worthy.” 4 years later: We’ve grown from 77 users to over 7,200 learners and completed over 38,000 mini-courses.
Juv’ae Academy, a medical aesthetic training platform, built its program on clear business imperatives from day one. Within eight months of launch, the network grew by over 25%. The training team tripled in size to meet demand, and the academy achieved 100% compliance across its network. Their nursing director said the results validated their own program.
Both programs are modest in size and budget. What they all have in common is that they intentionally build these five habits.
Shortest distance to 19%
The data shows that when a program performs three or more of these habits at the same time, it significantly improves performance. Pick the weakest thing in your current organization, perhaps content freshness or CS takeover, and fix that first, then fix that issue.
Half of the fields believe they have reached maturity, and about a fifth have built the infrastructure to support this. The five habits listed above separate the two groups, and each one is something your program can start building this quarter. But habits need a foundation. A measurement model that budgets, sponsors, and leaders will respect. If you don’t already have that foundation in place, here’s how to build your business case for customer education and get approval.
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