The Customer Education Playbook

16Looking Ahead: The Future of Customer Education

When we think about where customer education is going, we need to acknowledge that as a discipline, we are experiencing rapid growth. Data from our Customer Education Report 2021 indicates that 60 percent of customer education programs are planning to increase their investments by more than 30 percent, with 90 percent indicating expansion overall. As the discipline grows, especially at such a rapid pace, we're going to see a lot of change and a lot of trial and error as we work out best practices and where to focus our efforts and investments.

What's Fueling This Growth?

In 2020, the world experienced a pandemic, the impact of which continues today as we write this book. It would be impossible to deny that the pandemic has produced an urgency around delivering customer education in a way that is both scalable and virtual. For decades beforehand, the status quo for training customers had been regional trainers who go out to a customer site and train in person, but now that paradigm has shifted. And there is no going back.

While the previous method of training relied on regional teams who met regional needs through instructor-led training, an online training strategy requires companies to create a centralized function based on customer education. Classroom experiences are being replaced by virtual classrooms and self-study online materials. The entire education system is undergoing a tremendous change. In response, many companies ...