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Table of Contents
If you're a business leader evaluating where to focus resources this quarter, customer education might not be the loudest line item on your roadmap, but it should be. Strategic Education programs do more than onboard users - they accelerate product adoption, reduce churn, enable scale, and drive revenue.
The catch? Only when they’re built with intentional design and aligned to business goals.
For executives, the key question is simple: Will this move the needle?
Your customer education team should be answering that question with confidence - and a clear plan.
As an executive, you can guide this process by requiring impact-driven planning. Don’t greenlight a library of content. Instead, ask: What business problem are we solving, and how will we measure progress?
A high-performing Academy isn’t a support cost center - it’s a scalable enablement engine. When done right, it drives faster time to value, increases expansion, and reduces support overhead. If your product has complexity or requires behavior change, education is often the missing link between signing a customer and seeing them succeed.
If you're a CEO or CRO, ask your team:
What percentage of users reach first value in their first 10, 20, 30 days?
If the number isn’t where you want it, the right education strategy can change that.
If you're a CPO or Head of Success, ask:
Are we embedding learning in the product experience, or forcing users to chase down documentation?
In both cases, education can be a lever - not a lagging afterthought.
We coach teams to present executive stakeholders with a one-page case for investment. This should include:
- The specific problem education will solve
- Metrics tied to revenue, retention, or cost savings
- A short timeline to a testable result.
A good starting point might be: “Our goal is to reduce onboarding time by 30% in 90 days for users in our core segment.” That’s the kind of statement that turns heads.
SAA Tip from Chris:
"We offer this service for free. Have you or one of your team members work with us to put one together."Executives also need visibility. Set expectations with your team that every quarter, you’ll want to see a short report: what was built, how it performed, what’s next. The best education teams operate like product teams - shipping, testing, iterating. And the best leaders support them by treating education as part of the product.
Share customer stories that show transformation, not just test scores. While it's useful to know how many users have completed your courses, it's far more compelling to show how a user applied their knowledge and achieved a measurable result - like launching faster, reducing errors, or unlocking new value. These are the stories that resonate with executives and boards alike, and they help shift the conversation from content delivery to business impact.
At SaaS Academy Advisors, we’ve helped dozens of SaaS companies reframe education from a service function to a strategic one. The shift starts at the top. When executives get behind education as a growth engine, it shows up in customer behavior, team performance, and boardroom metrics.
You don’t need more content. You need content that changes outcomes.
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