105 - The Strategic Need for Customer Education - Vicky Kennedy

Vicky Kennedy, Founder of Echtus, a customer education service, shares her insights on why it is important to strategically design customer education. She takes us through her journey from academia to entrepreneurship, highlighting her experience in higher education and the transition to the tech industry. If you want to know more about incorporating targeted customer education into your Customer Success strategy, then this conversation is a must-listen.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• What is customer education?
• What is the purpose of customer education?
• The value proposition of customer education for business 
• Mistakes to avoid when starting out with customer education 
• Challenges in customer education
• Vicky’s entrepreneurial journey
• Being entrepreneurial in your current role 

Tune in and learn with us - from insights and entrepreneurship to everything you need to know about customer education.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Women in Customer Success is your go-to network for connecting, inspiring and showcasing women in the customer success industry. I'm excited to share that we are launching the PowerUp Tribe, your ultimate career destination. Here. We are on a mission to empower women to thrive in their careers through enablement, networking, mentorship and sharing inspiring experiences. Sign up for our waitlist and be the first one to get access when we launch on the 28th of February. We already launched PowerUp Masterclasses so you can sign up for the upcoming one on the 7th of March. On the team of mentoring and investing in women, on the 28th of February, we are launching our flagship Career Compass Mentoring Program, available all year round to all the women in the industry. So join us for that live webinar and find out how to get involved, how to sign up and all the details about the PowerUp Tribe and our Career Compass Mentoring Program. Don't forget, sign up for the PowerUp Tribe and I'll see you there.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Do you think that your customers love learning about your product or services, but would you agree that customers need to know your product well to help them succeed? Vicky says that customers are not in a mindset to learn, so if that's what we are starting with, how do you design educational programs that help your company achieve business outcomes such as reducing turn or increasing revenue. How do you bridge the gap? In today's episode, I welcome Vicky Kennedy, the founder of Actus, a customer education service startup. Vicky joined the tech industry from a 10 years career in higher education. She soon found her way into Meta, where she merged her love of education and her agility of tech, followed by Amazon, where she led the strategy and execution of the first global customer certification. Recently, she founded Actus, a customer education service startup, and now she's on a mission to revolutionize the way companies use education to achieve meaningful business results. So in today's episode, we talk about incorporating targeted and measurable customer education into the wider customer success strategy.

Speaker 1: 2:25

So let's get into it. Hi everyone, this is Maria Skobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place, so let's tune in. Welcome to the new episode of Women in Customer Success podcast. It is really a pleasure to introduce today's guest. She is Vicky Kennedy, the founder of Actus Customer Education Service startup. Vicky, thanks so much for joining us today. Welcome, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, excited to be here. Vicky, where are you calling from? I am actually in the Hudson Valley area of New York, so a couple hours outside the city, okay.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Vicky, we have an exciting topic today, all about customer education, so we want to provide some information about where to start. When you are firstly thinking about creating it, how do you even know that you are on a position when you have to think about it, right, what are some of the prerequisites, and then how to get you started and things to avoid, things to do, etc. So we would like this to be really very actionable episodes for you, our listeners, and before we jump into that, I would like to get to know you a bit better. Now, vicky, let's start with some quick, rapid-fire questions. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Speaker 2: 4:04

Yeah, I think it's probably that annoying answer that I'm an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert, but I have a little bit of both in me. I mean, in general I'm an introvert for sure, right? You know, I'm the type of person that after like an hour at a party I'm like okay, see y'all, good to see. But also when it comes to especially like my professional life, I love public speaking, I love a crowd, a microphone, like you know. So it's sort of a weird. I know I'm not the only one like that, but I would say that it's kind of a mix of both, depending on which mode I'm in, you know that's very good.

Speaker 1: 4:37

It's very interesting combination between the energy like. What energies is this? So sometimes you just feel it's enough being amongst people, but then almost being a performer, like I'm a performer, you know, being in front of Mike on the stage it's just cool, like, and you're not, you're interacting with people, but it's very different than just mingling with them, right.

Speaker 2: 4:58

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess if I have a microphone, suddenly I'm an extrovert, and if I don't have a microphone, then Introvert time. Maybe that's the quick answer.

Speaker 1: 5:07

I like that as okay. So now we have two extroverts in front of Mike. Let's do.

Speaker 2: 5:13

That's true. I have my mic right here, so I'm an extrovert about Vicky.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Was it the 16 year old? You be surprised to find you in this current role.

Speaker 2: 5:23

I don't think so I mean Mainly because that my current role is that is, essentially a founder and entrepreneur. This is something I've been wanting to do. I know we'll talk a bit about that in a few minutes, but I always had that spirit in me and my father was an entrepreneur, and so I think that just the entrepreneur part would not be surprising. Maybe the specific area I ended up in but you know, not to date myself, that wasn't even like the thing when I was 16. So like the tech industry was very different back then. So yeah, I mean I think the quick answer is no. I think the entrepreneur part is definitely something that's been in my, in my genes for a long time.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Let's talk about it. Then what does it mean for you of being an entrepreneur? You said you were looking at your dad being an entrepreneur, so you grew up a With that mindset around you. Tell us more about how is it being, you know, in a childhood surrounded by entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Well, yeah, I mean he was a very different, he was a general contractor, so very different field. But I think just the sense of ownership, that sense of like kind of paving your own way and making the decisions and just taking on that Responsibility, that was just something that I, you know, really admired. And I mean, I did spend most of my career not as an entrepreneur, so I've quite a lot of experience working in in larger corporations and working in the typical Hierarchical structure, but ultimately I just someone that has always craved that ownership and this is just the path to do that right like no, no other ownership than actually owning the business and you're absolutely right, it is complete ownership in absolutely everything.

Speaker 1: 6:57

So how did you come to that? Tell me more about you know not not a whole history, but maybe that period between your 16 year old self and you know you're going into your career. You start your career being within different organizations, as you mentioned, and then I'm Interested to also know, as you were in those in Organizations, what was it that made you say that's it. Thank you very much, but I'm going back to my entrepreneurial roots and I'm doing something on my own. So, yeah, tell me more about that journey.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Well. So I mean to be fair, I did try some entrepreneurial things when I was younger and I think that ultimately I'm in the best position now to use the experience that I've gained over the last couple decades, basically of work. So I guess, to answer your question, I mean the first, my first ten years of work was actually in higher education and I started off as a, as a professor, and then moved into Administration, being a department head, assistant department head, and so I got a lot of experience in this very formal, like you know, a structure of academia can hang on and then move for your study.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Like what? What did you? You were a professor of what. What was the discipline? Computer animation.

Speaker 2: 8:07

But yeah, so I thought I taught animation in visual effects for quite a few years and that was my first degree. I have an MFA in animation and I did some work in that area for a while. I worked in TV stations and did some motion graphics and worked at the Disney Channel for internship. So yeah, that was like a whole. I've had a few different careers. I think you know it might be something that that I come up, you know, bring up later, but I I definitely didn't have like a singular path. You know, it wasn't like I graduated and a lot of people choose their major when they're 17 and that's what they do and that's great, but that was not my job, that was not my path at all. So I actually, you know, majored in animation and did some work in that, but then fell in love with the teaching aspect, and so that's when I really like, became more of an educator, and so I did that for the first decade of my career. And then, in 2012, I was laid off Very similar climate to what we're seeing today.

Speaker 2: 9:00

There was a lot of layoffs in my area and I took the opportunity to move. I was in Florida at the time and I took the opportunity to move to New York City to start over, basically, like I have one of those Stories of living on air beds I lived in the you know inflatable furniture for four months. I lived in a basement apartment. I had three pets that I brought with me, two chihuahuas in the cat and I. I just kind of made it work. For four months I didn't have a job and I was just trying to find, oh start in New York City and I was just shifting to a different industry. And I finally did find it, a job which actually was basically similar to today's customer success role, but it was, I think, before that term really became more known. So it was a support role, product support role, and that was my my path back into, you know, a new field and that's when I entered the tech industry.

Speaker 2: 9:48

But I quickly brought my education into, like my education experience, into my roles and Basically you know kind of what we're gonna talk about I started using education as a strategy and as part of what I was doing in these support roles. Eventually I we worked at I was working at meta at the time, called Facebook back then, but I was working at meta and I had a technical support role and basically saw that there was nobody doing that kind of education for our Support teams. So I pitched the idea of this new role, told them like, hey, I can build an educational program that's going to do this thing, did that and they basically allowed me to To transition and create a new role based off of my skillset, which is quite a change in my career. So that's where I was basically able to pivot back fully into an education role.

Speaker 2: 10:38

Over the years I've really just been building that experience. I've gotten experience on the product side and I've gotten experience in the, you know, strategic leadership side, and so that brings me to launching my own business, where it just felt like it was time for me to take these things that I had learned and Really like do that more at scale. My passion isn't, isn't helping others to, to do to use this, this kind of work, and to do it successfully, and I can only do that so much within an organization. So if I can do this at scale and help others and really just basically change the world of customer education, that's.

Speaker 1: 11:12

That's kind of where it came from. That's a wonderful mission to live by. I Really love so many aspects of your story. So when you were in meta, you said you just realized you know they didn't have the way of Educating customers at scale, so you created it for the support role. I really love that entrepreneurship in you back there.

Speaker 1: 11:32

But also what is really cool is, like your mindset right, you were not complaining or you were not just saying, oh, we don't have this, we don't have this, when can we have that? You just said this is what we need to have. This is how I see this becoming really good thing for our team and, obviously, our customers. And you created the whole role for yourself. I mean, if this is not being entrepreneur in the organization, then I don't know what it is. But this is just awesome lesson for everybody, like when something is not there and you think you have solutions, just go and do it. I mean this is really awesome how you took ownership of that background, that you had All of your knowledge and then created the whole new role.

Speaker 2: 12:11

You know there is. There used to be an expression I don't know if there's still is, but they used to be an expression on Dressed for the role that you want. And I always say just do the role you want and you eventually start paying you for it. If you look at my career history, I moved up and in essentially every business I worked with, but the most of my promotions I made the role. I actually pitched the idea. So that was not the only one that I did that. So it's interesting. I actually didn't really think of that as an entrepreneurial step, but you're right, it's the same concept. I feel like exactly that if you see that there's a need, that's really what starting a business is. You're starting a business to fill a need. You can do that within your company. You see a need, fill it by doing what you can do.

Speaker 1: 12:51

So for sure, yeah that's really awesome, yeah, I really like it. For me, that's definitely being entrepreneurial within the or within your organization. Yeah, you don't always have to go and start your own company, but I'm so glad that you did, because you are now bringing everything together for helping customers do like solve that problem. So let's talk about that problem you mentioned previously. You realized it in support because obviously it's easy, right? Customers come to support with so many different questions and you realize, oh well, maybe 95% of them are related to the lack of knowledge, the lack of education. Let's do something about it. So what are the typical pains or typical problems that customers are now trying to resolve with your services? Or shall we say like what do they realize they need when they come to you to help them out?

Speaker 2: 13:42

Yeah, so I mean I work with clients at all different stages. Some are just starting net new, they don't have a formal customer education program. And then others do have a program in place but want to either scale it or basically just improve it, bring it up to that next level of kind of just professional customer education. So there's a variety of sort of places people are starting with this, but commonly it's about the scale and it's about repeatability and it's about using education to actually achieve a result. And that's really where I come in to help more than anything else, because I always talk about education is a strategy. It is a strategy in your business and especially within the customer success realm. There's a lot of different strategies, of course. When you think about things like customer retention, insurance problems, or you just even think about improving customer loyalty and customer satisfaction, you can ask any CS leader and there's going to be different strategies to reducing churn or different strategies to improving the customer health, and I've seen a lot of different strategies in place.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Education is one of those and can be used as an effective tool to do that at scale. And so a lot of businesses they have different things in place but you're not necessarily seeing the right results from that. So there may be I've seen like a number of webinars out there or I've seen different type of resources out there and one thing we have to think about with customer education specifically is customers are not in the mindset to learn. It's unlike other education where you go and you sign up for a class, you want to learn. As a customer, you just want to use the product, you just want to get your job done, and so you have to kind of meet them where they are with that education, and that's the other piece too. So it's a unique kind of education where you can't just expect the customer to go in there and learn for themselves. You have to really fire where they are and target it appropriately. So anyway, that's kind of. It's a very wordy answer, I think, but I help people in a variety of ways specifically with that.

Speaker 1: 15:43

And I'm sure we'll come to all of those strategies, but what you said is hitting so, so, so perfectly. Customers are not in a mindset to learn, and I think this is just so awesome. I think that's you know. We need to let it sink in because very often I believe we are forgetting that. Right, oh, why are customers? Why did they not complete that certificate or why did they not show up to our calls or why did they not whatever?

Speaker 1: 16:08

But their job is just to use your product for their own job, right, for the work that actually pays them. No one is ever paid to use your product and to learn about it. Right, a part of some rare people who might be administrators, etc. But this is really important. So, basically you will. We are starting devising a strategy about something that will help customers. It will help the organization because customers will become more stickier if they know the product better. It will help reduce share, obviously, but the whole proposition is like they actually don't want it or they don't think they want it, right. So how do you do it in a way that you are really enabling them to learn without them almost knowing they're learning it?

Speaker 2: 16:55

Yeah, I mean I, so I won't get too in the weeds with education theory, because I know that's not, but I will say that that is where education theory comes into play here. When you have to think about what motivates adults to learn, it is really about the intrinsic motivation of what matters to them. So it's not about like forcing someone through an education or expecting them to go and proactively take a course or a webinar. It's about really talking to the pain points that they have as a customer, like you know, and making sure that you are addressing so that, if they are engaging education, it's really clear what they're going to get out of that as relates to their own goals, right, so we can think, as a business offering the education, we may know that like, hey, if you take this course, you're going to understand our product better and you're going to, you know, be happy, you're using it. But they don't know that, and so you really have to meet them where they are and find them on their journey and find the thing that is motivating to that customer, you know, as it relates to again, why they're using your product in the first place, you know and really addressing those pain points.

Speaker 2: 17:51

So it's a unique. It's not, I mean honestly, like that's really adult education anywhere, but it's unique in that you kind of have to trick the customer into like it's not about just taking courses. Now, there are some exceptions to that. If you have, if you, if you work, you know, on a product that is an industry standard, then you do start to see, like customers have a demand for the education because that's industry standard. But a lot of times, especially smaller SaaS companies are fighting for that market and you don't really have that luxury of that.

Speaker 1: 18:19

So yeah, I would like to ask you what are the strategies almost of of making that at scale, of almost tricking customers? Because when you said, it's all about intrinsic motivations and thinking of every customer, it's always the person, the different persona, and they all may have very different intrinsic motivations. So what are some of those principles for motivation that you're applying to make like to help them learn without almost knowing?

Speaker 2: 18:50

Yeah well, so it's true that there are different intrinsic motivation factors, but you do see trends, and so that's the idea of really understanding your personas. So the first thing that I really tell any of my clients is we have to understand your customers and any other stakeholder or segment, but we really have to just understand what's driving them. It's not that you have to understand the unique one of every single thousands of your customers, but you start to see trends where some are going to be motivated by things like certification, for example, and that is typically a common one, especially in tech. For some personas who really like collecting that, it helps boost their resume and social profile, so that's often a motivation. But others may just feel like I have to get this job done. Whatever their job is, and in order to do their job, they need to use your product.

Speaker 2: 19:40

So how do you start speaking to them to say like, hey, get up to speed faster. You start using the right language to basically appeal to them. So there's not really a one size fits all, but the first step is really understanding those personas, because you may have people that are. I have a client I'm working with now where one of the core segments is. It's not people in tech, right, so they're not going to be super tech savvy and they just want it to be really easy and seamless. And so you want to speak to that persona and make sure it's really clear like engaging this is going to get you out in the field faster. So it's really just again about understanding that motivation and start trending it and then you can you can sort of speak to those different factors.

Speaker 1: 20:22

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Speaker 1: 21:39

Speaking of persona and apologies, maybe that is more question for our strategy that we'll come to. But what do you see working really well, designing programs that would speak to different personas only based on the type of work or the type of knowledge that they should have. So obviously typical differences between admin or end user of some product. They may need to know different level of knowledge of your product. Or would it be more of a goal based? So either goal based or feature based, or persona based, or how do you even call it?

Speaker 1: 22:15

Because when I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking probably, if we speak about persona, there are different level of knowledge they need to know. Okay, great, when it comes to goal, it's more of how do I do X, y, z in a product, regardless of who is doing it? So it's more of how do I quickly come to my goal? And then the third one would probably be the features. How do I understand to use some features in a way that they are intended to be used? That's just my little understanding of the type of maybe programs you're designing. But how do you go around it? What is the actual strategy that you would apply to put it all together?

Speaker 2: 22:53

Yeah, I use a framework. It's basically working backwards kind of framework but the first and foremost thing you want to do is really understand the problem you're solving with the education. Or you start looking at your personas and what you're actually teaching them and that goes back to in customer success. You often have a retention issue or you a very common one is you want to accelerate time to value. So we can start with that one. Let's say that we see we're trying to get our customers to convert, start product adoption within 90 days. We want to target that problem. Once we understand that that's what we're targeting with our first educational goal, then we start looking at our personas and our segments. So you actually just mentioned the difference between, like, an admin and an end user. That's actually segments. That's not really personas, that's really just understanding the different segments and what they need to learn. The persona bit is more about understanding motivation and more like thinking, more in terms of how you're going to reach that person. So I could get more into the weeds with that, but I think just to keep it high level. So we want to first understand the problem. Then we all want to understand the people and they are impacting that problem, so the segments that we're talking about. And then we want to understand what we need to teach them to achieve the goal. So if we want to make sure that they're adopting the product within 90 days or accelerating time to value, we need to understand again so much.

Speaker 2: 24:06

This is about research and really learning about our customer. What does a typical happy, healthy customer look like? That is you know that adopts the product within 90 days, that has a fast time to value. What is it that they need to learn, both conceptually and about your features? So that's the other question Like are you teaching them features? Are you teaching them and often, especially new customers? It's about industry knowledge, foundational knowledge. What are the things I need to know to be successful with your product? I use the example of, like, if you have a project management tool, you don't want to just teach point and click how to use that tool. You probably want to teach some basics of project management and maybe collaboration and other types of almost soft skills to really help your customers do more with your product. So I think it's a working backwards where you start with first why you're even doing the education. What are you targeting? Do you start understanding and unraveling, like the specific things that somebody needs to know to achieve that goal Got it and talking about the why.

Speaker 1: 25:01

Why do we do the education so interesting points that you mentioned. We're talking about the problems. Let's say, time to value or adoption or, you know, retention, but all of those why's are, you know, companies or software is why? Right, we want our customers to adopt our product within 90, first 90 days we want them to. We think they will be obviously happy and healthy if they know the product better. Right, and I understand, and especially if you're working with the customers, that's where we all are starting from right. Are there any other commonalities when it comes to really customers? Because for them they may not always care about those metrics for us, like our attention or our adoption within 90 days. Obviously they want time to value at the beginning, but they are not going to talk as time to value. So what are those first common problems that we can address with customers? Like when CSMs are speaking with customers and they want to understand those immediate problems, how do we call them, how do we recognize them in their language?

Speaker 2: 26:03

That's a great question, because that's going back to the persona and going back to understanding what's motivating them and you're really kind of marrying.

Speaker 2: 26:10

That's where you need actually the marketing side, and I talk a bit about your marketing strategy specific to education, because you need to use the value props of your products, your service, whatever it is, and connect that into the customer journey.

Speaker 2: 26:22

So, for example, with regards to the time to value, you're right, like if I say, hey, you're going to accelerate your time to value, like that's not the right language to say to a customer for sure, but if it's a product that's going to improve their, let me just try and think of something off the fly. But let's say it's a data product that's going to help I don't know organize their data better. Whatever the value prop of the product is. Basically you're saying you will get live quicker, you'll get this up and running quicker, and then you kind of connect the language of the value prop of the product and that's what you're using to appeal to the client. And that's if that's the right persona connection. So it is 100% about first finding out building the program from the perspective of why you're building it for a business reason, but 100% where you don't use that as your language to the customer. You're using the motivation, the intrinsic motivation piece.

Speaker 1: 27:16

I'm glad that you mentioned it because I think for CSMs, it's so incredibly important to always know that the value proposition, as you said, is just something that we always have to think about in every single interaction and conversation. It's not about our language, it's not about customers' language, but always having their end goal in mind and then showcasing how and why would your product or your education help them. So always starting with that value and what's in it for them, for it. When we talk about strategy, what are the first, most important things to tackle? You mentioned why and the problems that we want to resolve. What is then next? If somebody is about to start or start thinking about getting education programs, what is the good way or good steps to follow, even to start launching the first? Yeah, where do they even start? So, obviously it is that why that you explained a bit. If you start with customers' problem, let's start with that. Why, then what?

Speaker 1: 28:16

is your framework. What do you do next for it? How do we take them on that journey?

Speaker 2: 28:20

To build the education, you would have to understand essentially the competencies that a customer needs to be successful, and that just goes back again to really understanding their customers. So understanding the different parts of the product that they need to be successful, but understanding also any foundational information, and often a business has this information around, so it's not like you have to start net new and you have a blank slate. It's usually about finding the ways that you're especially with the CSMs, there's often already things in motion where people are answering questions and helping customers achieve the next step. It's about pulling that together and really understanding which ones are most relevant to move the customer to the next stage and then you can start building something that's more formal, but really all of it is. It has to start with understanding your customer and really learning about your customers.

Speaker 2: 29:09

So that's the first thing I do with all my clients is just a general like needs analysis around your customer segment. What does their profile look like, what are those different segments? But that's the first step before you can start really connecting something that is targeted and meaningful. What you want to avoid is just content overload, and some businesses will do that where it's just like let's throw content at them Like let's show them demos of the product and let's you know tutorials and let's put it all out there, and that's not necessarily going to work because that just becomes too much and it's not targeted and you don't know what it's actually driving, either for the customer or for the business.

Speaker 1: 29:43

Just few minutes ago you mentioned already some of the tactics or different types of programs that seems to be successful. So you mentioned certifications, because it's pretty good for motivation. Very often it seems to be the common one and obviously, in this world of content overload and just so many different tools and modes of learnings, what do you find so far that seems to be like best channels or best modes? And what I'm thinking is, you know, sometimes very, either very short videos, or is it? Is it a text? Is it, you know, exam for certification? Maybe it's a combination of all, but what really works at the moment?

Speaker 2: 30:22

Yeah. So I mean it is gonna be dependent on what you're actually teaching. You know, video can be a great starting point for some foundational concepts and to get your customers engaged, but it's not the end all be all, because you're not actually able to use, you know, the interactive and structural design through just a passive video, and so you have to think about if you're just trying to lay the land and you're, you know you're putting some foundational concepts out there. Video can work well for that, but then typically you want to start getting into more hands-on application of how to do things, and that connects back to helping the customer see how they can best use your product to solve their own goals, and that's where you can put in the interactive e-learning simulations. There's a lot more opening up now with with, with AI, generative AI. So I mean, it's an annoying answer but it's gonna be. It depends. It depends on where you are and what you're trying to actually achieve.

Speaker 2: 31:17

So I will say that I see a bit of an over index on video and I actually I post about this quite a lot on LinkedIn. But video is a passive medium and it is great for engagement, but if you're really trying to help a customer change their behavior, which means that you're trying to get them to use your tools correctly or differently. You're trying to get them to be more critical in thinking and be able to make the right decisions and how to use your product, then you really need to move past video into something that helps them actually, you know, apply that and do that in a different way, and so I think video is something that a lot of businesses default to because it's more understood and it's, you know, in some ways easier to produce. But I would really encourage that. Going back to when you start matching the motivation of the customer, the actual goal you're trying to achieve and what they need to learn, you'll see that video is not the end. I'll be all there and typically you have to think more about some interactive learning experiences.

Speaker 1: 32:18

It's really interesting you mentioned videos because for me it almost seems as when organizations decide to do educational programs, then they go so full on into videos because you know it's so common, everybody are doing it and after a year you have a library of, you know, thousands of videos that customers maybe get lost to and, as you said, it's pretty passive. Plus, you need to have time to open and watch video. You know you can't do anything else. But is it just the trend that companies do it because you know it's so easier than some other things, it's so available, or would that be almost like the first stage of their educational programs, when they put so much effort into those videos, thinking that's it, that's the end of it, without even thinking OK, what is next and what are the other better ways of engaging the customers?

Speaker 2: 33:09

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a bit of both, to be honest, and I think it's definitely a trend and it's easier to hire someone that to create video than it is to really understand instructional design, e-learning, development. Those tools are often just they're not accessible, they're not part of somebody's tech stack or arsenal already, and so it's definitely, I think, just something where business is more used to creating video. So I think what's interesting is that video is actually typically more expensive, harder to redo. It surprises me that it's one of the ones it's more go to, because in the formats that I use a lot, which are the more e-learning formats, it's so much easier to make updates, to change out some information when the product updates or when the industry updates. Those formats are often just more fluid and flexible.

Speaker 2: 33:58

When you do a video again, I know that some things are changing with advancements in technology and AI For the most part you do a video and you've created like a four plus minute long video that you can't just update easily if the UI changes in your product or in some terminology changes, and so it's actually just becomes heavier and it's more encompassing. So I prefer the e-learning formats for this, and learning science will show you both can be valid. So it's not that one is necessarily more than the other, but again, kind of going back to what you're actually trying to achieve with it. I just posted this at LinkedIn. But if you only are measuring engagement, if you only care about customers coming in and watching a video, then video works, that's all you care about. But if you care about what you're actually driving through that, if you care about helping the customer actually be able to do things differently and actually be able to get more value out of your product, then you start thinking more about the instructional design piece and less about just creating like a engaging video.

Speaker 1: 34:59

I love this segue into metrics because I'm really interested to know when do you measure and what do you measure? And probably, on how do you measure everything related to those educational programs? Because, as you said, yeah, it's really easy to measure how many times somebody watched the video, but then what is beyond? How do you measure? How much outcomes are they even achieving because they have watched the videos? Like, what are the metrics for it?

Speaker 2: 35:23

It's my favorite topic and it's really like the essence of what I've built it at this. Yeah, so engagement there's basically three levels. To keep it simple, there's the engagement. Engagement is important, obviously. If people don't come and they don't engage with your learning, then you can't really go any work harder than that. So engagement is certainly important. That's typically looking at if it is video, views or completions. If it's courses, you're typically looking at their enrollment and completion of a course. So all of that is certainly important.

Speaker 2: 35:50

But then that next stage is going to be what we refer to as content efficacy, which is what did they actually learn from participating in that learning experience? If it is a video, there should be a clear outcome at the end of that video Did they learn, can they achieve that objective? And so that's the second layer, and typically you do that through some kind of assessment. It doesn't have to be a formal assessment. Sometimes people worry that like, oh, we're going to test them and they don't want that. You can do that through very subtle like pulse checks within a course. You can do it in a variety of ways, but there certainly should be some type of assessment that actually indicates that they did indeed learn something from that learning experience. So that's the second thing.

Speaker 2: 36:32

And the third piece is showing that because they learned something, they changed behavior, they did something different. That's that piece that is most elusive to most businesses because it is not as straightforward of a metric. So you have to connect what you're teaching them to what you want them to do differently. So, in the example of, I used like a general project management software as my example. If we're teaching them how to set up their first project, for example and that's going to be like the metric that we use that indicates that you know they've gotten their aha moment or their time to value. So we have a metric in place that shows that they set up their first project using our tool.

Speaker 2: 37:14

So we're teaching them how to do that. Then we actually measure that they've done that and we connect those dots and so it sounds simple. I mean, I think it sounds simple. The challenge is making sure that you're building that in a way that leads to that measurement. But it's just those three levels, you know. So it's did they engage in it, did they learn from it and did their behavior change because of it? And that's it. Yeah, so I think it's easy. But it definitely requires that strategy of making sure you're not just throwing you know content spaghetti on the wall, but that you're actually being purposeful in what you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 1: 37:46

Yeah, as you said, very intentional to measure what should be measured, because you can't improve if you can't measure. And you can't, you can't see it. There's results if you're not measuring. Along the way, and just going back from the beginning of our conversation, when we speak about educational programs, we, as you know, vendors, as companies, organizations, we would like to obviously see the correlation between educational programs and, you know, churn or retention. I mean the main, the main goals for every single company. So what have been your experience of seeing those correlations Like, do you have any stats to share, or at least any trends and even even qualitative feedback, like I? I'm open for all of it because obviously there is correlations, but how do you make it in a way to present those business cases?

Speaker 2: 38:37

Well, I don't have that because I didn't prepare the numbers. I have some of them in my LinkedIn page that I could probably pull up, but there are definitely some reports published of what you can expect, things like 12% increase in revenue when you're using education correctly. There's certainly some stats there and anyone that's interested can find that on my Ektis LinkedIn page. Ultimately, I think, to answer your question, we're still very nascent with customer education. What I see is that there's a lot of emphasis on that loose correlation where it's just because they engaged in some kind of training, then hey, there was some increase in retention and it's a very loose correlation. But the problem with that is it's only taken the team so far to really understand. Was there a correlation or was it a coincidence? Of course, with business in general, there's very rarely a one-to-one where, even with the sales, it's not just the sales team that's selling. It's a number of moving parts in the business and education is one of those moving parts. To understand its impact, you have to understand it's. You're not going to get a number that's like they attended this training and so there was a 30% increase. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 2: 39:52

But that's going back to what I was sharing earlier, that if you can first show that the education changed what they know and then it changed what they did, you start to see more of the story of how that contributed to your top line metric.

Speaker 2: 40:05

That's the story you want to tell. I think we need to get really realistic around that. That it's not a loose correlation. We're not just saying that they happen to engage in some kind of learning and so there was a change over here, because that's just way too loose and it doesn't give you any learnings and it won't help any leadership make decisions around investments to just see those loose correlations. I'm trying to move the needle to really get more clear on these metrics. I think, to answer your question, there isn't a lot out there because this has been such a sort of nascent field that all we're really seeing are those looser correlations and we need to move the needle and move it into the next stage. That's why I'm here to help change the world with my little startup of one, but that's part of my vision.

Speaker 1: 40:49

Well, that is an amazing mission. I have certainly seen more than once how companies create something similar to health score and then education or interaction with educational material will be part of it. As you said, it is just measuring one little element out of so many others that influence whether that customer stays or leaves, or whether they grow with the company, et cetera. I'm really glad that you are pointing out how let's not keep ourselves happy with any loose correlations Let us explore much more of the proper metrics, what we can measure on particular time, to really see something more tangible that we can measure.

Speaker 2: 41:33

Yeah, I have been in executive roles myself and I know that from being in a leadership role that if my team came to me and they show me a loose correlation, I'm going to immediately question that. You know that that was. For example, we say that people that engage in training were more likely to renew. I would say, well, maybe people that wanted to renew were more likely to engage in training. We have a lot of different things there. It just becomes very challenging to make data-driven decisions if it's not clear, if that path isn't clear. That's essentially my remit.

Speaker 1: 42:09

It is a wonderful invitation to become more clear. I am absolutely sure that whoever wants to find out more they can just get in touch with you. What is the best place to get in touch with you? Is it LinkedIn? Is it ECTUS webpage?

Speaker 2: 42:24

Yeah yeah, linkedin is definitely. I'm on there a thousand times a day, so LinkedIn is certainly a good one. My website is ECTUS. I know it's an interesting word. It comes from the word ECT, which means authentic and genuine ECHT. I added the US. It's an interesting word, I know, but ECTUScom is my business site and then I'm definitely on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 42:48

Well, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. I really love that name, especially because it is not the name that has any customer success word in it. Very good choice of word for your company. I wish you all the best and so many more successes in your startup of one and as you will be scaling. I thank you so much for being here today and sharing all of your wisdom about the customer programs.

Speaker 2: 43:17

Thank you so much for having me again. It's a lot of fun and, yeah, really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 43:24

Thank you for listening. Next week new episode, Subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.