Customer Learning Should Be Transformational, Not Just Informational: Why Most Miss the Mark on Customer Learning Experience

Introduction

Many companies mistakenly equate customer education with assembling a series of demo videos, how-to guides, and reference documents into structured learning paths or certifications labeled as beginner, intermediate, or advanced. While this approach offers clarity and organization, it often falls short of engaging the deeper levels of adult learning acquisition. The result is customers who are informed but not truly empowered to apply the product in meaningful, transformational ways.

Transformational Learning Theory, developed by Jack Mezirow, offers a compelling framework to bridge this gap. The theory posits that true learning goes beyond passive consumption of information; it requires a shift in perspective through critical reflection and meaningful engagement. For customer education, this means moving from informational content to experiences that challenge assumptions, foster problem-solving, and enable customers to adapt the product to their unique workflows.

While informational assets certainly have their place, they alone do not create a meaningful learning experience. True customer learning becomes transformational when it equips users to integrate the product into their daily operations, solve real problems, and derive long-term value, ultimately making the product an indispensable part of their success.

In this article we explore why traditional approaches to customer education often fall short, highlight the potential for AI integration to enhance foundational content creation, and examine the critical role of human expertise in facilitating transformational learning experiences. The article also provides a proposed step-by-step guide for creating impactful customer learning journeys that drive adoption, retention, and loyalty—whether through realigning existing content, enhancing it, or building a foundation for transformative customer education.

Why Informational Content Alone Falls Short

Informational assets such as demo videos, product documentation, and FAQs play an important role in answering immediate questions and meeting just-in-time (JIT) learning needs. However, they fall short in driving transformational learning because they fail to:

• Teach customers how to integrate the product into their day-to-day workflows.
• Foster long-term behavioral change and true product fluency.
• Enable customers to achieve measurable and repeatable success.
• Encourage critical thinking and problem-solving for unique challenges through hands on experiences.
• Address diverse roles, industries, or expertise levels with targeted content.

While these informational resources provide critical support for immediate problem-solving, they do not make your product 'sticky.' Customers relying solely on informational content may understand features but often struggle to extract meaningful, lasting value from the product contributing to customer churn. True transformation requires a deeper focus on guiding customers to adopt the product into their operations and achieve real outcomes.

Informational customer content is a domain where AI and automation innovations should be focused. By automating the creation of foundational informational content, such as FAQs or basic tutorials, organizations can shift human talent in the learning design and development space toward creating transformational learning experiences. This blend of technology and human expertise ensures that while informational needs are efficiently addressed and scaled, the primary focus remains on building impactful, outcome-driven education that fosters long-term customer success, adoption and retention.

The Human Element Behind Transformational Customer Learning

Transformational learning is more than information delivery, it’s about creating a lasting impact that drives customer loyalty, measurable business outcomes, and deeper engagement with your product. At its core, it teaches customers to solve real-world problems using the product in ways that integrate seamlessly into their workflows. By driving behavioral changes, it ensures that the product becomes an essential part of their daily operations, fostering confidence and proficiency in troubleshooting, optimization, and independent success. This approach leads to measurable outcomes, such as higher product adoption, faster time to value, and reduced customer churn.

Rather than relying on feature-focused demo videos, transformational learning immerses customers in real-world scenarios and connects them to a community of practice. These experiences demonstrate how they can optimize processes, automate tasks, or collaborate effectively—moving beyond passive information consumption to meaningful application.

Creating this level of impact requires a blend of exceptional talent. Great teachers, like Joel West , Joe Cooper , Marc Alumbaugh , Linus Bourque (he/him) , Brian Watrous , and Tim Burkard , from my time at VMware, foster connection and build community through their ability to inspire and engage learners as expert facilitators both in-person and on screen through high quality on demand learning deliveries. Equally vital are digital media experts with profiles and experiences such as Timothy Ewell , Ramesh BS , Niall Condon and Ethan Walker who meticulously craft well produced, compelling content that ensures the learning is accessible, engaging, and impactful. Together, the mix of engaged instructors and talented multimedia producers transform learning into an experience that go beyond written instruction and leaves lasting impact on both the learners and the business.

Transformational Customer Learning: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let’s assume that all beginner, intermediate and advanced product content is either covered through AI-assisted creation or repurposed from collateral developed by adjacent teams, such as product marketing or engineering. To move into the transformational domain of learning, we need a structured and repeatable approach to how we create and deliver content. Below is my proposal on how to begin this process:

1. Collect Real-World Use Cases

Transformational learning starts by aggregating real-world scenarios based on customer challenges and workflows. Work with customer success, support, and product teams to gather actionable insights and create a centralized backlog of learning needs that cites sources of where the request originated.

A better options would be the use of AI-powered tools that can analyze this data to identify trends, prioritize impactful challenges, and ensure your backlog reflects real customer experiences. Tools like Qualtrics XM are a good example of how AI can automate this process. Use this data driven foundation to design learning scenarios that:

• Address genuine customer workflows.
• Solve specific problems with practical solutions.
• Identify recurring themes and prioritize learning needs for development.

For example: Instead of broadly explaining a feature, create a scenario where customers learn to automate weekly reviews that measure industry or role relevant KPIs, ensuring the learning is targeted and actionable.

2. Define Clear Learning Outcomes Per Learning Asset

With a backlog of real-world scenarios in hand, the next step is to translate these insights into clear learning outcomes for each asset to be developed. Effective learning outcomes ensure that every learning solution directly addresses the challenges identified in Step 1 while aligning with sound instructional design principles and pedagogy.

Start by asking key questions to guide this process:

• What specific problems are customers trying to solve?
• How does the product fit into their workflows or goals?
• What measurable changes will indicate success for the customer?

Craft succinct learning outcomes per asset by using the following guidelines:

• Be Specific: Clearly articulate what the learner will achieve or do after completing the asset.
• Focus on Practicality: Align outcomes with tasks customers will perform in real-world workflows.
• Use Clear, Actionable Language: Start with verbs like "create," "apply," or "optimize" to convey precise expectations.
• Keep it Concise: Limit each outcome to a single, focused statement to maintain clarity and purpose.

These outcomes should focus on solving real challenges, driving behavioral change, and ensuring practical application. By anchoring each learning outcome in both customer insights and instructional design, organizations ensure that the resulting learning experiences are relevant, purposeful, and transformational.

3. Understand How Customers Consume Content

Building effective learning content requires a deep understanding of how customers interact with it. This insight allows organizations to design learning experiences that align with customer behaviors and preferences rather than forcing them into a one-size-fits-all model. Consider:

• Are customers accessing content primarily on mobile devices, laptops, or other platforms?
• What time of day are they most active, and how much time do they spend on the platform?
• Which content types and formats are they engaging with the most?
• What assessments or quizzes are they having to repeat?
• Are they completing entire courses, or skipping to specific sections and if so, is this consistent with all learners?
• What screen resolutions or devices are they using to view the content?

By analyzing these behaviors, organizations can optimize the placement, format, and delivery of learning materials to meet customers where they are. This ensures a seamless and intuitive experience that encourages engagement and improves learning outcomes.

4. Design, Develop and Deploy Data-Driven, Pedagogically Sound, and Digitally Impactful Content

Combining insights from steps 1, 2, and 3 allows organizations to create content that is not only meaningful but also strategically aligned with customer needs and behaviors. This step involves:

• Data-Driven Design: The use of analytics from customer interactions to identify high-impact topics, preferred content formats, and optimal delivery methods.
• Pedagogical Structure: Developed learning assets that follow instructional design principles, ensuring clear progression, engagement, and reinforcement of concepts.
• Digital Excellence: Leverage high-quality digital media to make content visually appealing, accessible, and impactful across platforms and devices.

For example: Based on data showing that customers frequently access mobile content in short bursts, design a series of concise, scenario-based microlearning modules. Incorporate interactive elements such as quizzes and simulations to enhance engagement and retention. By tailoring content to fit consumption patterns, organizations can ensure it meets customers where they are, while still driving transformational learning outcomes.

This step ensures that learning content not only addresses real-world needs but also resonates with customers in the most effective and engaging manner possible.

5. Leverage Multiple Learning Modalities for Inclusivity and Impact

Not all learners consume content the same way, making it essential to offer a variety of learning modalities to meet diverse needs. Transformational learning thrives when it includes a portfolio of solutions tailored to different preferences and contexts. Key considerations include:

• Blended Approaches: Combine live classroom training with on-demand digital content to provide both interactive and flexible options.
• Classroom Training: Recognize when a direct connection between experts and learners is necessary to drive deeper engagement and understanding. Live training fosters immediate feedback and builds a sense of community.
• Digital Solutions: Leverage videos, interactive eLearning modules, and virtual simulations to ensure accessibility and convenience for remote learners.
• Scenario-Based Learning Through Role Playing or Simulation: Use real-world scenarios to anchor content in practical, relatable contexts that resonate with learners in a hands on environment.

By incorporating multiple modalities, organizations ensure that learning solutions are inclusive and adaptable, meeting learners where they are while maintaining a focus on meaningful outcomes. The result is a comprehensive learning ecosystem that delivers on the promise of transformation through a mix of data-driven insights, structured pedagogy, and expert-led engagement.

6. Measure and Optimize

Measurement is the linchpin of transformational learning. Too often, organizations fail to connect customer success metrics directly to the learning content provided, missing a crucial opportunity to refine and improve. To truly measure impact, consider tracking the following key metrics:

• Product Adoption Rates: Measure how effectively customers integrate the product into their workflows and assess how the availability and engagement with targeted learning assets contribute to this adoption.
• Reduction in Support Tickets: Monitor whether learning content reduces the frequency and complexity of customer queries.
• Time-to-Value (TTV): Evaluate how quickly customers can achieve meaningful outcomes using the product based on learning solutions provided by the customer learning team.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS): Use these indicators to assess overall sentiment and the effectiveness of the learning experience.

Leverage customer feedback and analytics tools to continuously refine learning content and delivery methods. AI and automation can play a significant role here, streamlining the collection and analysis of feedback while enabling quick updates to content. For example, automation can flag under-performing modules or surface customer pain points, allowing human talent to focus on crafting impactful, transformational learning solutions.

Moreover, organizations must integrate learning-specific questions into customer success feedback surveys. This ensures that the role of learning in customer outcomes—both successes and failures—is clearly understood. By pinpointing whether learning content directly impacts customer success, learning organizations can identify areas of opportunity, refine their strategies, and make a measurable contribution to business outcomes.

Final Thoughts

Transformational customer learning goes beyond the superficial informational content. It empowers customers to integrate your product into their daily workflows, driving long-term value and measurable success. By combining real-world use cases, clear learning objectives, and data-driven insights, organizations can create learning experiences that resonate deeply with customer needs.

The result? Confident, proficient users who see your product as essential to their success. Transformational learning is a commitment to delivering value, fostering loyalty, and building lasting business success. Take your customer education beyond passive informational learning to those that create learning experiences that truly make an impact.

About the Author:

Edward is a seasoned Learning and Development leader with expertise in scaling technical learning operations and building shared services teams for global enterprises. He specializes in leveraging learning ecosystems to deliver high-quality, learner-centric solutions aligned with organizational goals. With an M.S. in Human Resource Management and Organizational Development and a PMP certification, Edward combines strategic leadership with technical expertise in learning and project management to drive impactful learning transformations.