On Wednesday, July 27th, the Bay Area Customer Education Meetup held its monthly meeting in Palo Alto, 'under the dome’ at the ServiceRocket office.
The theme of the evening: Hiring for a Customer Education Team.
We had a great turnout, and I enjoyed meeting both colleagues I have known for years, as well as many new folks in my industry.
I had the privilege of being on the panel with Christine Souza, from AppDynamics, and Alessandra Marinetti from LinkedIn. Adam Avramescu from Optimizely, moderated the evening.
Here is a sample of the questions we discussed:
- What is the first role you would hire?
- Which role(s) do you wish you had, that you could never get approved?
- How do you handle asking for new heads and building your teams over time?
- How should you work with contractors? And for which roles?
- Who should the education team report to?
- Which is more important? Hiring for technical skill? or culture fit?
- How do you handle career pathing and development over time?
I shared my experiences and learned a lot from Christine and Alessandra, as well as from the rest of the group.
My hiring take aways from the evening:
Data Analyst
Alessandra shared about the importance of having a data analyst on the education team. I was surprised to hear this at first. However, how many times had I wished someone on my team could dig into the data to better understand not only the Education business metrics, but also how Education impacts the rest of the company and the customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately renewal rates.
Graphic designers and video specialists
Christine shared that as her team is building more self-paced micro learning, that it needs to be visually appealing. Again, I realized that in the past, I either went without these extras or had to beg and borrow to get this incorporated in my training offerings. I do see the value of including this role in the team
Who would I hire first?
Having started training organizations from scratch, my first hire would be a Training Coordinator. Getting a Training Coordinator on the team quickly allows me to focus on building the roadmap and scaling the organization why they handle the time-sensitive logistics involved in delivering classes.
I’d love to hear if you have a data analyst and/or graphic/video staff on your team and what difference that makes for your team, company, and customers.What's your experience?
And, if you want to strategize on how to build your Education team, Springboard Solutions is here to help. We look forward to helping you create customers for life.
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