Customer Education Manager

Role Purpose

A Customer Education Manager in a B2B SaaS environment owns the strategy, execution, and impact of customer education programs that directly drive product adoption, value realization, and customer success. This role combines strategic thinking with hands-on program leadership—you will design the educational roadmap, mentor a small team, and own measurable outcomes. Your work transforms how customers learn our product, reduces support burden, and accelerates time-to-value.

Job Description

Job Title: Manager, Customer Education

About the Role

We are looking for a Customer Education Manager who will lead the vision, strategy, and execution of our customer education function. You will own the end-to-end customer learning experience across all touchpoints—academies, knowledge bases, webinars, onboarding, and certification. You'll report directly to the Director of Services and partner with Product, Customer Success, and Support to ensure every customer can achieve their desired outcomes with our product.

Your core focus will be to:

• Build a scalable, outcomes-driven education strategy aligned with business goals and customer value realization.

• Lead a team of 2–3 people (Instructional Designers and/or Customer Education Specialists) with clear goals, feedback, and development pathways.

• Identify critical customer learning gaps and prioritize education initiatives that move adoption, activation, and feature usage metrics.

• Collaborate with Product and Customer-facing teams to translate product strategy into customer education strategy.

• Measure and own the impact of education programs on customer success metrics.

You will be the connective tissue between Product, Support, Success, and the education team—ensuring customer learning is a strategic lever for growth and retention.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Planning

• Develop and maintain a customer education strategy and roadmap, aligned with company goals and customer segmentation (by persona, industry, use case, lifecycle stage).

• Understand customer outcomes and design the best education pathways to help them achieve those outcomes through our product.

• Identify gaps in customer understanding by partnering with Support and Customer Success, and translate those gaps into education content and program priorities.

• Set quarterly and annual goals for the education team tied to business metrics (e.g., activation rate, feature adoption, support deflection, time-to-first-value).

Program Ownership & Execution

• Own and grow the customer education ecosystem: academy/LMS, help center/knowledge base, webinars, certifications, email nurture sequences, in-app learning, and self-serve onboarding.

• Ensure critical workflows and new product features are well-documented and have top-notch training resources (KBs, courses, video walkthroughs, job aids) that enable seamless adoption.

• Create structured, reusable learning journeys for different customer personas and lifecycle stages (new customer, power user, admin, etc.).

• Manage content updates alongside product releases to keep education resources current and accurate.

• Oversee the design and delivery of onboarding education and ensure customers have clear, guided pathways to value.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with Product Management to understand upcoming features in depth; provide clear, actionable feedback on usability gaps, missing workflows, and aspects that are not intuitive.

• Work closely with Customer Success Managers and Support to identify common customer challenges, surface trends, and co-create "education as a solution to support tickets" playbooks.

• Align education messaging and campaigns with Product Marketing and RevOps to ensure education is woven into lifecycle marketing and customer health initiatives.

• Ensure internal teams (CSMs, Support, Product) have the tools and knowledge to confidently enable customers.

Leadership & Team Development

• Hire, mentor, and develop a team of 2–3 education professionals (Instructional Designers, Specialist roles).

• Guide the team on what kinds of resources deliver the highest value to customers—balancing depth, format, and scalability.

• Provide regular feedback, set clear expectations, and create a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation.

• Model cross-functional collaboration and ownership mindset for the team.

Measurement & Optimization

• Define and instrument education KPIs: course/content completion rates, engagement, adoption lift, support ticket deflection, NPS/CSAT, time-to-first-value influenced by education, and feature adoption by cohort.

• Track and report on the value realization driven by education programs—demonstrating ROI and impact on business metrics.

• Run experiments: A/B test education formats, messaging, and delivery channels to maximize effectiveness.

• Use data and customer feedback to continuously iterate and improve education content and programs.

• Create dashboards and share regular insights with leadership, Product, and Customer Success to inform decisions.

Must Haves

• 2+ years of experience in B2B SaaS with a strong focus on customer education, enablement, onboarding, or customer success.

• Proven experience building and scaling customer education programs (not just delivering training)—designing curricula, managing LMS/academy tools, running webinars, or building multi-channel learning ecosystems.

• Experience managing a small team (2+ people) with ownership of goals, development, and outcomes.

• Strong understanding of adult learning methods (e.g., andragogy, self-directed learning, spaced repetition) and experience designing learning for non-technical or diverse audiences.

• Demonstrated experience tracking education performance (metrics, analytics, surveys) and using data to improve content and programs.

• Cross-functional collaboration experience—evidence of successful partnership with Product, Customer-facing teams, and Support to understand learning gaps and design solutions.

• Strategic mindset with execution excellence—ability to think big about education strategy while also rolling up sleeves to deliver on quarterly priorities and quick wins.

• Clear communication skills—ability to articulate the "why" and impact of education initiatives to stakeholders.

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with Learning Management Systems (LMS), course authoring tools (Rise, Storyline, Clueso), or academy platforms.

• Familiarity with AI and automation for scaling education (e.g., content personalization, adaptive learning, AI-assisted writing).

• Background in customer success, customer marketing, product marketing, or support—with a strong education component.

• Experience designing and running certification or advanced learning journeys.

• Comfort with data visualization and simple analytics tools.

• Experience in multi-language or localized education delivery.

12-Month Plan

Months 1–3: Foundation & Quick Wins

• Get hands-on with the product, customer base, and existing education assets; understand current programs and gaps.

• Partner with Product, Support, and Success to identify 2–3 quick-win initiatives (e.g., a critical onboarding path, a top-ticket-driver education campaign).

• Audit existing education content and assess the current maturity of the education function (tools, processes, team skills).

• Begin instrumentation: define KPIs and set up basic tracking/dashboards to measure education impact.

• Guide the Instructional Designer on high-priority workflows and personas to start with.

Months 4–6: Scaling & Alignment

• Launch core education programs aligned with 2026 goals (e.g., improved onboarding completion, feature adoption campaigns).

• Establish regular cross-functional touchbases with Product, Success, and Support to surface gaps and opportunities.

• Build reusable content templates and processes so the team can scale efficiently.

• Report on early education metrics and show correlation with customer success outcomes (e.g., adoption lift, ticket deflection).

Months 7–9: Optimization & Expansion

• Expand education ecosystem: grow the academy, deepen KB coverage, introduce webinars, certifications, or advanced learning paths.

• Run experiments on content format, delivery, and messaging; use data to optimize.

• Develop the team: ensure each member has clear growth areas and stretch projects.

• Align education roadmap with Product launches and customer feedback loops.

Months 10–12: Ownership & Impact

• Take full ownership of customer education strategy and outcomes for the year.

• Deliver annual education impact report: show how education programs influenced adoption, retention, expansion, and support efficiency.

• Set 2027 education goals based on learnings and business priorities.

• Build a strong, capable team that can scale and innovate with you.

Where This Role Fits

The Customer Education Manager will:

• Lead the education strategy and vision for the company, working closely with Product and Customer Success leadership.

• Build and mentor a high-performing education team that can scale learning as the company grows.

• Own measurable outcomes: adoption metrics, activation, feature usage, support deflection, and customer value realization influenced by education.

• Be the voice of "customer learning" in product decisions and go-to-market planning.

• Transform education from a support function into a strategic growth lever.

This role is critical to scaling customer success and achieving ambitious 2026 goals. The Manager will establish the processes, team, and culture that make education a competitive advantage.