Customer education can’t just focus on clicks. It has to focus on the jobs to be done.
That is the big question at the heart of this episode. What is customer education really for, and how do you prove it matters? To explore that, I spoke with
Debbie Smith, a long-time customer education leader and current President of TSIA’s
Customer Education Management Association (CEdMA). Debbie has spent years helping organisations connect education to adoption, retention, certification, and measurable commercial impact.
We discuss why customer education should be built around what users are trying to achieve, not just where they should click. Debbie also breaks down the difference between badging and real certification, why forcing learning rarely works, and how strong integrations and clean data make it easier to prove value across the business.
Some curious takeaways:
- Build customer education around user goals and jobs to be done, not content completions
- Start with badging, prove impact, then scale into certification
- Tie learning data to CRM and business metrics or risk losing strategic influence
Episode highlights:
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00:00) Welcome to Harald’s Curious Corner
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01:16) How Debbie found proof that learning drives revenue
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03:53) Where customer education sits and why that matters
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06:11) Why customer education should focus on jobs to be done
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07:07) Why forced learning rarely works for customers
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08:28) How to design learning for different customer audiences
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13:40) What real certification means and why it matters
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18:28) Why credentials are becoming more valuable over time
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19:31) What a strong certification tech stack needs
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24:16) The integrations customer education teams cannot ignore
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25:14) How to build a certification programme that holds up
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29:30) How AI can support smarter exam creation
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31:03) Why new teams should start with badges first
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35:12) Why partners need certification that actually means something
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40:48) How to manage up by speaking the language of metrics
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What is Harald’s Curious Corner?
Harald’s Curious Corner is where curiosity meets connection.
Harald chases that question with a guest, gathers perspectives from voices across the industry, and then steps back to reflect on what it all means. The show unfolds like a story arc, part exploration, part roundtable, part reflection, blending imagination with analysis.
The result: trusted insights, meaningful conversations, and forward-looking takeaways that shine a light on where learning is headed next.