How Customer Education Drives Growth: A Panel Discussion

Customer education is a growth engine. If you can’t tie education to retention, revenue, and product adoption, you’re leaving real impact on the table.

In this episode, I sit down with our Customer Educational Panel, Kristine Kukich, Dan Braithwaite, Melissa Kruminas, and Clea Mahoney, for a deep dive into what’s actually happening in customer education today. From reducing support tickets by up to 50% to driving expansion through certification programs, we explore how leading teams are proving the business value of education and where it fits inside modern organizations.

We explore how customer education teams are tying learning to real business outcomes, using cohort analysis to better understand its impact on retention, revenue, and adoption, before turning to a practical conversation about AI, in-app education, and personalization and which of those trends are actually delivering value.

If you’re building or scaling a customer education program, this conversation will push you to think beyond content creation and start driving measurable business outcomes.

Some curious takeaways:

• Customer education should support real customer outcomes, not just training activity
• Strong metrics come from comparing educated and non-educated customer cohorts
• AI can improve learning experiences, but strategy still matters more than tools

Episode highlights:

(00:00) Welcome to Harald’s Curious Corner

(01:30) Meet the panelists

(04:10) Where does customer education live in organizations?

(09:10) Measuring customer education success

(11:13) Proving ROI with the Kirkpatrick model

(13:21) Cohort analysis and the three buckets of value

(18:47) Monetizing customer education programs

(22:03) Tech trends and experiments for 2026

(23:05) Frictionless learning and AI learning assistants

(31:58) Tips for someone starting in customer education

(42:29) Stop selling sugar pills

Connect with the guest:

Kristine Kukich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinekukich/
Dan Braithwaite on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danjamesbraithwaite/
Melissa Kruminas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-kruminas/
Clea Mahoney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cleamahoney/

Explore CEdMA: https://www.cedma.org/

Explore Mediaocean: https://www.mediaocean.com/
Explore Docebo: https://www.docebo.com/
Explore Rewst: https://rewst.io/

Follow me on the following sites:

Harald Overaa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haraldovera/

Subscribe to Harald’s Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901795950403186688/