4 min reading time
Rethinking Customer Education: The Maturity Scale for Long-Term Growth
As a growing business, it’s easy to think of customer education as a future state; something you’d like to do eventually, but not quite yet.
However, the truth is, you’re already doing customer education every day. Every email, every onboarding call, and every knowledge base article is a form of education for your customers. There’s just one catch: it’s not yet formalized or structured in a way that maximizes its potential.
When done right, customer education has the ability to transform your customer experience. Still, many customer experience teams struggle with how to take their efforts to the next level, whether that means formalizing their approach or ensuring they’re providing value at every stage of the customer journey.
We’ve created this scale to help you understand where you stand and how to shape everything from your processes to the impact of your customer education efforts. By identifying where you are, you can make meaningful improvements that grow both your customers and your business.
The Four Stages of Customer Education Maturity: Where Are You?
Coping Stage: When You’re Just Trying to Get By
In the Coping stage, customer education is a reactionary game. You’re using whatever tools are available, repurposing content that might not quite fit, and scrambling to address customer issues as they arise. It’s not ideal, but you’re doing the best you can. It’s okay to start here, but staying in this reactive space isn’t sustainable.
The problem? In this stage, you’re just surviving, not thriving. Without a clear strategy and the right resources, customer education becomes a series of band-aid solutions that aren’t likely to drive long-term value for either your customers or your business.
Ad Hoc Stage: Where Chaos Reigns and People Step in to Fill the Gaps
Next up, we have the Ad Hoc stage. Here, the focus is less on consistency and more on crisis management. There’s no real process in place, no tools, and no content plan; everything is just thrown together on the fly by whoever happens to be available.
While some may look at this as a way to “get it done,” it’s honestly just a recipe for burnout and missed opportunities. When customer education is left to chance, your customers feel it. The lack of intentionality results in disengagement, confusion, and ultimately, higher churn rates.
Here’s the thing: You can’t afford to treat customer education like this anymore. As businesses grow, they need to be smarter, more scalable, and more strategic in how they engage their customers.
Emerging Stage: The First Signs of Structure, But Still Room to Grow
By the time you hit the Emerging stage, there’s a noticeable shift. At this point, there’s some recognition that customer education matters, and your organization is starting to build more formal processes and invest in entry-level tools. Your content may still be basic—focused mostly on the essentials—but you’re no longer creating materials on the fly.
This is where things start to get exciting because it’s your first taste of intentionality. However, Emerging isn’t where you want to stay forever. The goal should always be to move toward a more strategic, customer-centric approach that can scale.
Mature Stage: The Holy Grail of Customer Education
Finally, we have the mature stage. This is where customer education goes from an afterthought to a core pillar of your business strategy. By the time you hit this level, you’ve got clear processes, top-tier tools, and comprehensive content that meets customers wherever they are in their journey. Most importantly, customer education isn’t just something you do—it’s something you prioritize.
In the mature stage, customer education is strategic, not reactive. It’s integrated into everything from onboarding to retention to advocacy. It’s fully aligned with your business objectives. And, most importantly, your customers feel it. They’re engaged, empowered, and here for the long term.
The reality, however, is that achieving a mature stage doesn’t happen by chance. It requires deliberate planning, ongoing refinement, and consistent investment. And here’s the tough truth: if you’re not actively investing in a robust customer education strategy, your competitors likely are.
Why Customer Education Maturity Matters
If you’re still wondering why customer education maturity should be a priority, here’s some final thoughts:
- Scalability: When you’ve invested in the right tools and content, your customer education program can grow with your business.
- Intentionality: A strategic approach to customer education ensures your efforts are aligned with your broader business goals, whether that’s retention, acquisition, or revenue growth.
- Customer Lifetime Value: A mature customer education program isn’t just about teaching customers how to use your product. It’s about creating an experience that keeps them coming back.
Customer education isn’t a “one-and-done” initiative. It’s a lifelong process, with each stage of your customer’s journey offering an opportunity to engage, educate, and retain. From onboarding and attracting new customers to supporting and retaining them, customer education plays a pivotal role. And when done well, it fuels long-term business growth.
Rethinking Customer Education: More Than Just a Training Program
If you’re still viewing customer education as something you do only when it’s needed, it’s time to rethink that approach. When done with intention, customer education has the power to deeply impact how you attract, engage, retain, and grow your customers. It can become the heart of building loyal brand advocates and driving sustainable growth.
Think of customer education as a long-term strategy, not just a task. By not investing in advancing your strategy, you’re missing out on so many opportunities to truly connect with your customers.
