6 Places Education Shows up in a Technology Company
The word ‘education’ carries a heavy context, as it’s commonly used in reference to formal schooling. Yet the practice of education can be highly valuable outside of the academic classroom. By definition, ‘education’ simply means “the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction.” You may think of this as ‘training’ in a corporate setting, but ‘education’ is a broader term. Education is unique, and when leveraged as a unique discipline, it can contribute to a business’ success in quite a variety of ways. Let’s dive in to a few such examples:
Education-based marketing
Education-based marketing refers to marketing-first content that’s educational or informative. It’s a content marketing strategy that primarily serves to promote the credibility and trust of the company as a leader in their space. Secondarily, it serves to increase the pool of qualified leads by educating them into understanding the value behind the company’s offering. The educational nature of this content is foundational, succinct, and promotes changes to awareness and value more than behavior.
The measure of success for this content is in the call-to-action, not in the content efficacy. You wouldn’t include a quiz at the end of an article that explained “13 ways to save money on a tight budget” to see what the reader really learned, but you would look at how that article contributed to conversions.
Industry education
We use the term “industry education” to refer to content that teaches theory and practice in the company’s industry that isn’t specific to their product. For example, a business that offers a wellness platform may provide courses and workshops on health and wellness topics. A fintech platform may provide budgeting and investing learning material. A CRM business may provide a certification in customer success.
The goals of this education are similar to education-based marketing, but with more emphasis on teaching foundational knowledge and skill. Unlike education-based marketing, industry education should leverage educational theory and instructional design principles. We want learners to have reached the objectives that will foster a change in behavior. That change will ideally allow them to better leverage the products the company offers.
Industry education is generally accessible by both the public and the company’s stakeholders ( employees, partners, customers ), and may be delivered via a learning management system ( LMS ) or company website. A solid educational strategy unites industry education with product-specific training as a prospect becomes a customer.
Onboarding programs
Customer onboarding programs are yet another education initiative that drives business results. While onboarding may include more than education ( customer success initiatives often overlap ), there is usually a training component that familiarizes the customer with industry basics, the product’s workflow, steps to get started, best practices for success, and where to go for further help. Onboarding programs are typically taught through on demand courses, live training, or a hybrid of both.
An effective onboarding program can speed up time to value, reduce hours spent by support and customer service staff, and improve customer satisfaction. To achieve these results, an education strategy should be in place to target the right competencies necessary in the early stage of the customer journey. These programs should integrate with other educational programs, like certifications and help centers, so the customer is clear as to where and how they learn to use the product as they become more familiar with it.
In-app tutorials
For digital platforms, in-app tutorials are yet another place where education appears. These may be delivered via a digital adoption platform like WalkMe or Pendo. This unique type of training provides in-the-moment, hands-on instruction for how to interact with and best use the digital product. The goal is to increase product adoption (hence the name, DAP), and speed up time to value by enabling customers to become self-sufficient in the product. While tutorials aren’t built in the same way as e-learning or instructor-led (ILT) courses, their development should leverage instructional design to provide an effective and memorable learning experience.
At times, in-app tutorials may be part of an onboarding program, yet they shouldn’t be the only type of learning material offered (in most cases). They are not a substitute for the conceptual knowledge that’s needed to use a product under a variety of conditions. For example, you might use a DAP to teach a customer where to click to enable a certain feature, but you’d use another format ( e-learning, ILT ) to teach the customer concepts to help them think critically about when and why they’d enable that feature.
Knowledge-base articles & Help Center
Most technology companies have a support or help center that includes knowledge-base articles, tutorials, and guides. Similar to in-app tutorials, these resources are intended to provide targeted “how to” instruction to product users in their moment of need. They are usually developed by technical or instructional writers and may be delivered in an LMS, CMS, or wiki.
It’s important to understand the different needs for help center content as opposed to courses that may be delivered via an LMS. To illustrate, say a person wants to learn to drive a car for the first time. How should they proceed? Would they read a car manual cover to cover? Of course they wouldn’t. They’re much more likely to take a driver’s education course or sign up for driving lessons. Now on the other hand, say another person just purchased a new car and doesn’t know how to set its parking brake. Would they take a drivers ed course to find out? Obviously not. In this case they’d reference the car manual to find the specific answer to their specific question.
As you can see, different educational content serves different purposes, whether it be proactive, conceptual education or in-the-moment help. Be sure that your educational initiatives are targeting the right persona with the right need, and laddering up to the right business metric.
Product certification
Many technology companies certify users on their product. You may be familiar with Salesforce Certifications, Google Cloud, or AWS, for instance. For high stakes certifications, this involves a proctored, timed exam where the individual must meet a minimum score to receive the certification badge. It’s not uncommon to see SaaS companies offer lower stakes certifications on their products, where the individual must complete some training and pass an assessment to receive a certified badge.
By definition, “certification” refers to the assessment process only, yet many assume that exam prep learning material is included. We refer to the learning material and the exam as a “certification program,” but it’s important to note that the learning material can stand alone from the exam. For example, a business may offer courses that are part of their industry education and customer onboarding programs. Separately, they may offer a product certification. Individuals wanting to prepare for that certification would learn and practice using the learning material already available, rather than engage in new, distinct training.
Regardless of whether a certification is highly rigorous or more easily attained, the program can lead to demonstrable business results. If developed as a marketing tool, it serves to drive awareness of the product, increase qualified leads, and provide organic marketing via badge sharing on social media. If intended to certify partners, it ensures a consistent and high-quality approach to messaging and service, ultimately improving customer health, longevity, and advocacy.
The case for ‘Chief of Education’
These are just a few common initiatives that target extended enterprise learning goals. There are, of course, other areas that specifically address employee learning. Ultimately, education is a discipline with much theory, practice, and skill. A business would do well to hire a strong education leader to oversee these initiatives and ensure a holistic, effective strategy that considers the learning experience from the learner’s point of view. This means delivering a seamless and comprehensive experience for prospects who become customers, customers that are also partners, employees learning about the company’s industry, etc. It also means ensuring each initiative is directly connected to the goals of the business, with measurable success metrics at each stage. When education initiatives are not centralized under a key leader, there is a real risk of redundancy, broken experiences from the learner POV, unclear business metrics, and inconsistencies in messaging and instruction.
Looking for help?
Echtus experts have over 20 years of experience building education teams, launching and expanding global initiatives, and driving alignment across multiple departments to maximize efficiency and achieve results. We’d love to help you do the same!