15 Customer Education Examples and Strategies (2026)
Fifteen customer education programs worth copying, the strategy behind each, and how to start, with real data on adoption, retention, and support costs.
Customer education is the work of teaching people to get real results from a product, and the companies that treat it as a discipline can point to the payoff on metrics a business already cares about. Drawing on Intellum’s benchmarks, HubSpot reports that programs like these lift feature adoption by about 38%, improve retention by 56%, and cut support tickets by roughly 40%. I spend most of my week on the production side of this work, building the walkthroughs and short videos these programs run on, so I have opinions about which ones earn those numbers and which just look busy.
This is the version I wish I could hand a team on day one: fifteen programs worth studying, the specific move to copy from each, the formats that pull their weight, and how I would build a first useful version without waiting for a perfect platform.
What customer education does to your numbers
The reason customer education keeps earning a line item is that it moves numbers a business already watches. Most churn happens early, with around 20% of it landing in the first 30 days, before a customer has felt the product work. That opening window is exactly what a good onboarding and education flow is built to survive. Teach someone to reach their first real outcome and they stay longer and stop filing the same tickets your team has answered a hundred times. The averages that programs report are large enough to plan around.
Average increases reported across customer education programs; results vary by company and program maturity.
The demand side backs this up. About 81% of customers try to solve a problem themselves before they contact support, so the material you publish is often the only help most of them will ever meet. This is not a fringe activity, either: Statista forecasts the global e-learning market to approach $400 billion by 2026, and a growing share of that is companies teaching their own users rather than schools teaching students. If you want the mechanics of turning lessons into product adoption, that is a longer conversation, but the pattern is simple: adoption follows comprehension.
Fifteen customer education programs worth studying
These are the programs I point to when someone asks what good looks like. Each one solves a different problem, and you can copy the mechanic without copying the company.
1. HubSpot Academy
HubSpot Academy grew out of a real problem: customers bought the software and then stalled. Instead of writing more documentation, HubSpot built free, certification-backed courses that teach marketing and sales skills, not only which button to press, and more than 10 million learners have gone through it. The move to copy is to certify a job skill so a customer’s career becomes tied to your product. A certificate someone adds to their profile does more for retention than any feature tour.
2. Salesforce Trailhead
Trailhead turned a famously deep platform into a game. Learners earn badges and climb ranks inside the Trailblazer community, and more than 6 million people have worked through over 1,500 badges. The move to copy is to make progress visible and each module short. When the path is legible and every step feels finishable, people finish, and Salesforce made learning its product feel like leveling up.
3. Canva Design School
Canva’s promise is that a non-designer can make something good, and its education exists to protect that promise. Canva Design School offers short, hands-on tutorials and free certifications, and most of it needs no account to begin. The move to copy is to pitch every lesson at the audience’s real confidence level. Canva never assumes you know design jargon; it teaches you to feel capable, which is what keeps you inside the tool.
4. Webflow University
Webflow University is the reason many people ever get past Webflow’s learning curve. It teaches web design as a craft, layout and responsive behavior included, through polished video lessons rather than dry product mechanics. The move to copy is to let production quality do some talking, because a well-made lesson signals that the company respects your time. I get into why below, since Webflow’s videos are a clinic in it.
5. Slack
Slack’s education is contextual and low-friction: use-case libraries and short webinars that show a team what good Slack looks like instead of listing features. The move to copy is to teach team workflows rather than single buttons, because a collaboration tool only sticks when a whole group adopts the same habits at once.
6. Gusto Academy
Gusto sells payroll and HR software to small businesses, and Gusto Academy teaches HR fundamentals, not only the Gusto interface. That is the clever part. It makes customers better at their actual job, and a customer who is better at their job is better at using the product. The move to copy is to teach the domain around your product so growing competence and your software become the same thing in a customer’s mind.
7. LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning is education as the product itself, with more than 24,000 expert-led courses and recommendations tuned to a member’s role and industry. The move to copy is personalization. A big library only helps if a person can find the two or three things worth their time this week, and LinkedIn routes them there using data it already holds.
8. Notion
Notion leaned on templates and community as heavily as formal courses. Its guided templates and creator ecosystem let people learn by duplicating a working setup instead of reading a manual. The move to copy is to make your fastest lesson a template someone can copy and adapt. Show the finished thing, then let them take it apart.
9. Google Skillshop
Google Skillshop is Google’s free training and certification hub for Ads, Analytics, and the Marketing Platform. The clever part is where the certificate leads. To keep the Google Partner badge, an agency needs at least half its ad strategists to hold a current Skillshop certification, so the training stops being optional and becomes a business requirement. The move to copy is to wire your certificate into a status your customers actually need. When a credential gates something commercial, people pull themselves through the course.
10. AWS Cloud Quest
Amazon took gamification past badges and built an actual game. AWS Cloud Quest drops the learner into a 3D city as an avatar who fixes residents’ cloud problems through hands-on labs wired to real AWS services. The move to copy is to let people learn by doing, not watching. A lesson you finish by solving a real task sticks in a way a video lesson never manages, and the first role is free, so a beginner has no reason not to start.
11. Adobe
Adobe gives its craft away. Its tutorials for Photoshop and the rest of Creative Cloud are free to watch without a paid account, so a beginner can build real skill before spending anything. The move to copy is to teach the craft, not just the software. Someone who learns to edit a photo well soon needs the tool to keep doing it, so the free lesson quietly widens the path toward the paid product.
12. MongoDB University
MongoDB University has taught database skills to developers since 2012, and passed a million and a half registrations along the way. The sharper move came later. MongoDB put its intro course on Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, in front of the tens of millions of people already learning there, instead of waiting for them to find its own site. The move to copy is to distribute your education where learners already are. Meeting them on the platforms they open anyway beats hoping they come to you.
13. Shopify Academy
Shopify Academy teaches the thing its customers actually want, which is a working business, not a working dashboard. Its “First Day to First Sale” course follows a real expert taking a product from idea to launch, and you can take it without an account or a store. The move to copy is to teach the outcome, not the buttons. Educate people on the goal they are chasing and your product becomes the obvious way to reach it.
14. Semrush Academy
Semrush Academy hands its courses to people who do not work at Semrush. Brian Dean of Backlinko, Eric Enge, and other independent names teach SEO and content marketing as a craft, with the software along for the ride. The move to copy is to borrow outside authority. A respected instructor gives a course credibility a vendor’s own trainer cannot, and learners come back for the teacher.
15. Zendesk
Not all of Zendesk’s education lives on a screen. Alongside self-paced courses, Zendesk runs full-day, in-person Training Days around the world, with hands-on lab time and trainers in the room. The move to copy is to use a live event as your flagship lesson. A day someone travels to and spends with your team builds a commitment and a community moment no on-demand video can match, and it leads straight into the certification.
Here is the whole set in one view:
| Company | Program | Format that carries it | The move to copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | HubSpot Academy | Certification courses | Certify a job skill so careers tie to the product |
| Salesforce | Trailhead | Gamified badges | Make progress visible and modules short |
| Canva | Design School | Hands-on tutorials | Pitch lessons at the audience’s confidence level |
| Webflow | Webflow University | Scripted video lessons | Let production quality show respect for time |
| Slack | Adoption hub | Use-case libraries and webinars | Teach team workflows, not single features |
| Gusto | Gusto Academy | eLearning on HR basics | Teach the domain around the product |
| LinkedIn Learning | 24,000+ role-based courses | Personalize what each learner sees | |
| Notion | Help center and templates | Duplicatable templates | Ship a finished setup people can copy |
| Skillshop | Free certification courses | Wire the certificate into a status customers need | |
| Amazon | AWS Cloud Quest | A 3D role-playing game | Let people learn by doing, not watching |
| Adobe | Adobe tutorials | Free craft tutorials | Teach the craft, not just the software |
| MongoDB | MongoDB University | Courses on Coursera and LinkedIn Learning | Distribute where learners already are |
| Shopify | Shopify Academy | Outcome-based courses | Teach the outcome, not the buttons |
| Semrush | Semrush Academy | Expert-led courses | Borrow outside authority |
| Zendesk | Training Days | Live in-person events | Make a live event your flagship lesson |
Why video carries so much of the load
If I had to keep a single format, it would be video, because it is the one that survives a distracted first-time user. Webflow University is my favorite example, so here is Webflow showing how its own learning platform works.
What Webflow does well is not fancy. The lessons are short and tightly scripted, shot so the interface stays legible the whole time. How-to content is also where attention holds best; Wistia’s 2025 State of Video report found that short how-to videos reach around 82% engagement, higher than almost any other type. That is the entire case for video in education. People will watch someone do the thing, then go do it themselves. If you want the workflow for scripting and shooting these, our guide to making educational videos walks through it, and the tools for making educational videos worth having are collected separately.
The formats, and when each one earns its place
No single format wins; the right mix depends on where your customers actually get stuck. Here is how I think about the menu:
- In-app guidance (tooltips, product tours, checklists): best for the first session, when a wall of text would lose someone. Teach as they click.
- Knowledge base and FAQ content: the backbone of self-service, the thing that 81% of customers reach for first. Keep it searchable and current, or it does more harm than good.
- Courses and certifications: for products deep enough to reward real study, and for turning power users into advocates who put your badge on their profile.
- Webinars and live demos: best for launches and for the questions people did not know to ask.
- Video tutorials: the format that travels, from a 40-second tooltip clip to a full walkthrough.
- Community and templates: teaching at scale, where customers answer each other and share setups that work.
The trap is treating this as a checklist to complete. Pick the two or three that fit your customers’ real sticking points, do those unusually well, and add the rest later.
How I would build a first useful version
You do not need a platform or a team to start. You need one lesson at the exact point where people give up.
- Find the stall. Locate the single moment where new customers lose momentum, your first-value milestone. The onboarding data usually points right at it.
- Make one thing that gets them past it. A three-minute video or a single clear checklist is enough. Ship it before it is perfect.
- Mine your support queue. Watch what people ask anyway, then turn the top five questions into content. Your ticket backlog is a content backlog, and it is the most reliable guide to what customers need explained.
- Reach for a platform last. A learning management system is worth it once you have enough material that organizing it by hand becomes the bottleneck, and not a day before.
Most of these programs live or die on whether the videos are clear enough to follow on the first try, which is the part teams underestimate. At Moonb, most of the education work we produce for clients is exactly that: short, legible walkthroughs a first-time user can copy without pausing to guess. You do not need us to begin, though. Start with one useful lesson where people get stuck, then make the next one.
Frequently asked questions
Onboarding is the first slice of it. Onboarding gets a new customer to their first real result in the opening days, while customer education is the ongoing version that keeps teaching as they grow into advanced features, new use cases, and eventually the role of advocate. You can run onboarding without a full education program, but the programs that move retention treat onboarding as chapter one rather than the whole book.
Tie it to metrics the business already tracks instead of course completions. The useful ones are feature adoption among people who consumed the content versus those who did not, retention and expansion in the same cohorts, and support ticket volume on the topics you covered. If educated customers adopt more features and file fewer tickets than uneducated ones, the program is paying for itself, and most teams see a clear signal within a quarter or two.
No, and starting with one is a common way to stall. Begin with the single moment where new customers get stuck and make one clear asset that gets them past it, a short video or a checklist. Reach for a learning platform only once you have enough lessons that organizing them by hand becomes the real bottleneck. The material earns the platform, not the other way around.
