Where Does Customer Education Belong?
Customer Education departments can fit into many branches of a company. Should we be a part of the customer success org? Talent development, and therefore HR?
Where we sit in the organization can influence the performance of a Customer Education team greatly. It impacts who we have access to, what resources we can leverage, and where we fit into the customer delivery process.
Here are a couple of the teams where Customer Education may sit:
Talent Development: It makes sense since a customer education team is developing skills, same as a talent development org. The needs of talent development for internal employees can be quite different from the needs of customers, however.
Enablement: Similar to talent development, a challenge here can be differentiating between internal and external enablement. But ultimately both teams are aiming for workers to be able to perform their jobs successfully.
Customer Success: The focus on external customers makes for a logical pairing between customer success and customer education. Customer education teams do provide continuous education to partners.
Professional Services: It makes sense for customer education to be part of the delivery process and have a seat at the table with sales, solutions engineering, implementation, and onboarding for customers. This is the team where I have seen customer education teams have the most reach.
Where the customer education team sits in a company influences their underlying focus and specialty. It does seem like this varies from company to company, and I can understand why. Where to place customer education is not an easy question to answer.
