By Vicky Kennedy, Chief Strategy Officer, Intellum

When launching a new customer education program it's common for the first thought to be, "who should I hire to build the content?" But really, that shouldn't be the first consideration. After all, if you're building a house, would you hire a window installer before hiring an architect and a general contractor? Of course you wouldn't! You would think first about the big picture, the long-term vision, and then you'd begin identifying the right resources to help you achieve that vision.

Similarly, a customer education program requires the right resources to focus on the right things. So, when launching a new customer education program, your first priority should really be on building a customer education team, and it's important to build a team of specific roles that can address everything from high-level strategy and preliminary planning to ground-level implementation and data analysis. Prioritizing your hires in this way will ensure the program truly addresses business needs and is able to scale with growth.

The Anatomy of a Great Customer Education Team
Many companies will first hire a generalist, trainer, or instructional designer when creating a new customer education program. But much more is required for a customer education program to be successful, as educational initiatives require specialty skills such as education strategy and learning experience design. They also require more general business roles such as project management, marketing, and technical/engineering support.

Successful programs have dedicated team members to support these functions while also being directly responsible for the business objectives that the education initiative is serving. An ideal team behind a customer education program includes a strategic lead, at least one curriculum developer, a platform strategist, instructional designers or learning experience designers, graphic designers, an educational marketing specialist, a facilitator (or more!), and data analysts.

The Strategic Lead

Every education program needs to have a clear strategic lead and program owner, and this role should be your first hire. This team member serves as the executive sponsor for the company and signs off on significant project milestones during the education program.

They oversee and manage the overall program to ensure alignment to goals, and they are responsible for end-to-end strategy and results. The strategic lead also identifies and secures additional resources.

With crossover on all touchpoints, the strategic lead has a massive impact on the education program, and their input has a direct impact on business outcomes.

The Curriculum Developer

The curriculum developer also has a major impact on an educational program. Their role is to define all competencies that the learning initiatives should cover.

Specifically, this entails determining appropriate learner goals and outcomes through a needs analysis and then outlining the educational objectives that will serve intended business goals and learner goals.

The curriculum developer also serves as SME on the content and learning strategy and provides overall content strategy. In this capacity, they are highly influential in ensuring that the course content achieves the intended outcomes and that all content developers are working off of the same plan.

The Instructional Designers

With the learning strategy and educational objectives in place, the responsibilities then shift to instructional/learning designers to develop the content that meets these intended objectives. They also conduct internal needs assessments at a micro-level. In designing and executing the learning strategy, instructional designers bring the curriculum developer's vision to life.

Instructional designers have a deep understanding of how design relates to the overall learning strategy, engagement, and goals. Instructional design is a specialty skill that some teams initially outsource.

The Graphic Designers

Another specialty skill that some teams outsource is the role of the graphic designer, also known as the media specialist. This team member develops visual assets and other types of media that support the learning strategy and teach objectives, so they must understand how the media ties to the overall learning strategy, engagement, and goals. After all, the right graphic can make all the difference.

The Education Marketing Specialist

Even if you're armed with effective, substantive, and visually appealing content, it won't do anything if learners don't know how it will help them achieve their goals. The education marketing specialist helps make that happen by connecting the right learner to the right content at the right time.

In practice, the education marketing specialist introduces learners to the education platform and develops the go-to-market strategy to facilitate adoption, engagement, and reengagement. This team member also owns the in-platform communication plan (notifications, emails, etc), and the off-platform communication plan (marketing automation, in-product messaging, connections to other internal resources).

The Data Analysts

A successful education initiative has clean data that is aligned with business goals. The data analysts on a team thus analyze the business impacts of the platform. This data may exist in a company outside of the education initiative, and data analysts are the professionals who pull reports from the platform, as well as track and measure performance.

Data analysts play a major role in telling the story of the learning program's impact. They connect learning metrics with business metrics and identify which metrics to track. Data analysts also own data mapping across platforms, and they provide a visualization that portrays success and highlights opportunities.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Technical skill is essential, but it's imperative to also look for soft skills like adaptability, curiosity, and a collaboration mindset as you build out your team. These skills will allow team members to roll with the punches, think outside of the box, and complement each other to form a true team.

No customer education program can be world-class without a strong team behind it. With the right people on board though, your customer education program can both empower learners and accomplish all business objectives such as increased revenue and customer retention.

##

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vicky Kennedy

Throughout her 20-year career in the education and training industry, Vicky Kennedy has developed certifications for Amazon advertising and technical training for publisher teams at Facebook, rewritten curricula for bachelor programs at the Art Institutes, and taught courses on campus and online. She's currently the chief strategy officer for Intellum, where she leads the company's strategic teams, such as education and enablement, people and culture, and learning science.