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EPISODE 120: Building a Single Source of Truth for Customer Education
Irana Wasti, CEO, Thought Industries
Over the years, customer education has primarily lived within online academy walls. No more. That’s because AI has rewritten the rules.
Now, customers want instant answers in whatever digital tools and spaces they prefer. This means learning teams must make the right content and information available across an endless variety of channels. But how can you be sure everything is always accurate and up to date?
This challenge seems overwhelming. But Thought Industries CEO, Irana Wasti, isn’t shying away from finding answers. She says the solution starts when organizations commit to a single source of truth for knowledge and content.
How can this strategy transform the way you deliver customer education? Find out, as I dig deeper with Irana on today’s episode of the Talented Learning Show…
Building a Single Source of Truth for Customer Education — KEY TAKEAWAYS
- As AI redefines customer experience before our eyes, it’s exposing serious customer education gaps. McKinsey says more than 70% of consumers expect personalized brand interactions, with 76% becoming frustrated when it doesn’t happen. But this mindset doesn’t stop with a purchase decision. It extends across the entire lifecycle. And for many customer education teams, it’s a very steep hill to climb.
- Traditionally, customer education revolved around the online academy. But that’s no longer the only way to deliver learning content, knowledge, and experiences. The problem isn’t about reversing a drop in academy use — it’s about the need for a unified knowledge strategy. So, rather than trying to bring customers back to the LMS, it’s more beneficial to manage the academy as the single source of truth (SSOT).
- Knowledge silos are not just a nuisance for learning teams to resolve. Fragmented, inconsistent information doesn’t scale. It can put any business at risk by jeopardizing the customer experience. This is why Irana sees the issue as an opportunity for customer education leaders to step up as catalysts for company-wide change.
Building a Single Source of Truth for Customer Education — Q&A HIGHLIGHTS
Welcome, Irana. Your executive pedigree is so strong, you could’ve decided to lead any kind of software company as your next step. Why did you choose customer education, and Thought Industries, specifically?
Thank you, John. Yes, my background includes multiple product leadership roles. As anyone responsible for a product knows, the most important thing is to make sure customers actually use the product and are successful at using it, because you built it to solve a customer need.
This is what attracted me to Thought Industries. The mission is to help end customers succeed with whatever products and services they choose. Originally, we enabled that success through a customer education platform, an academy, a learning management system. These terms are synonymous.
But now, there’s an opportunity to move the company forward in a more strategic direction. It’s exciting to think of how we can empower every business we serve to grow through the success of their end customers. And new technology brings so many more ways to address that need.
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New CEOs often come in with a strategy they immediately start to implement. But you chose another path. Would you tell us about that?
Certainly. I brought my own assumptions and experiences. But since I’m not from the customer education space, I turned to our customers to help me get grounded.
This isn’t a new industry, but it is evolving rapidly. So, for nearly a year, I’ve been meeting with many Thought Industries customers, as well as folks who use other customer education platforms.
I see…
I wanted to learn as much as I could from their perspective about the challenges and opportunities they’re facing. It’s important to understand what’s really working, what’s not, and how new technology is changing both customer behavior and business expectations.
Interested in Thought Industries? Check reviews, demos and more in our independent Learning Systems Directory! SEE THE PROFILE →
Did you start with a hypothesis based on your background? Or did you intentionally avoid that?
I definitely came in with a hypothesis about the nature of the broader business opportunity. But I wanted to explore part of that in more depth.
Specifically, we know academies or learning platforms play an important role in helping end customers succeed. But I didn’t believe they need to be the beginning and the end of that solution.
Beyond that, I needed to understand where business challenges and end customer behavior are evolving, so I could develop a more comprehensive strategy for our company and product.
Interesting. Did anything surprise you?
Many people in this industry seem to be reacting to a sudden rapid change in customer behavior. Here are several examples:
First, as soon as LLMs launched, people started asking ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for answers. And almost overnight, our customers who’ve built academies saw a dramatic drop in the volume of end customers using the content they provide.
Immediately, everybody started trying to figure out how to adjust to that change in customer behavior and wondering what it meant for their business. Should they care if end customers get answers elsewhere? Do they have to come to the academy?
The answer really depends on the business.
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Mmhmm.
The most important question we heard was: “If our customers get answers outside of our academy, do we control the accuracy of the information?”
That theme has consistently emerged among people who’ve been in the customer education space for a while and are suddenly dealing with this change in customer behavior.
No doubt…
Another very clear finding was that, as new technology arrived, expectations about customer education efficiency rose quicker than any business can adjust.
Suddenly, the assumption was, “If your team can use new technology to create content or run learning operations much faster, why can’t you get there overnight?”
So, they’re feeling pressure to increase efficiency immediately and lead transformation within the business. But those expectations are unrealistic.
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Phenomenal insights. So, do you think the dramatic drop in academy usage is connected to executives wanting to do more with less? Or is AI resetting expectations for every role, everywhere?
Well, it depends on several factors:
First, how do executives view their academies and learning platforms, given the business outcomes they want to achieve? For some businesses, education is a lead generation tool. When that’s your ROI metric and visitors suddenly drop off, then how do you measure lead gen performance? And how can you be sure customers are getting accurate, reliable information?
On the other hand, businesses that monetize education directly need to make sure customers still come and convert to a paid relationship down the line. So, under those conditions, how do you run an education business? As one customer told me, “Customers want either a two-second answer or a PhD in something.”
Yep. Good point…
Plus, there’s another factor. Leader expectations are changing. They tend to assume that with AI, anybody can be a writer. They expect people to create strong content instantly. They assume large content teams, development teams, and so on are no longer necessary. That belief may not be accurate, but it’s gaining ground.
Interested in Thought Industries? Check reviews, demos and more in our independent Learning Systems Directory! SEE THE PROFILE →
Ahh…
So, both business and customer expectations are changing. And I think it means two things must happen:
- We need to set the record straight about what learning teams really can optimize with technology. Where can you improve efficiency, and what can you transform?
- We need to clarify goals. What do you want to achieve with your education platform? What ROI are you targeting, so, as customer behavior changes, you can adapt accordingly?
Right…
For instance, for one of our customers who saw a significant drop in academy activity as soon as Gemini started answering their customers’ questions, the decrease was OK because that wasn’t their end goal.
Instead, they faced a much more critical issue. Information that was broadly available outside the academy wasn’t accurate. Managing that was the real challenge.
So, they started to create workaround solutions. And now we’re working with them to make sure we surface the most accurate information on their behalf through LLMs like Gemini and ChatGPT.
In the past, education was contained in an academy. But that no longer scales across a digital ecosystem or aligns with the ways customers interact with the business.
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Yes. And it’s not “education” anymore. It’s organizational knowledge that manifests itself as training, help texts, agents, and many other forms. But it’s rare to find companies with just one c-level person in charge of knowledge across all these silos, right?
Yes, unfortunately.
So, when I talk about issues like siloed tools, content, and customer interactions, the problem statement resonates. And that helps solidify our strategy and product roadmap.
Mmhmm…
But what happens next when organizations are set up in a siloed way?
When I talk with a chief customer officer or customer success officer, the problem resonates with them. But they don’t own all the surfaces. They don’t own the product. They don’t make app decisions. They don’t own community.
So, this problem isn’t just about data, content, or technology. When a company’s structure gets in the way and makes it hard to break through silos, it’s also an organizational issue.
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For sure.
Building a single source of truth or knowledge is imperative. But cutting through organizational and tool silos isn’t trivial.
Some customers have told us that, even when the same leader owns multiple surfaces, the content isn’t shared everywhere it should be.
That’s because those various surfaces are served by different tools. In combination, these silos lead to a very inaccurate, inconsistent customer experience. And with AI chatbots sitting on top of all this, it only gets amplified and becomes even worse…
Ouch. So, what steps do you help organizations take to make sure accurate information is available wherever customers need it? …
… For complete answers to this and other questions about building a single source of truth in customer education, listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Amazon, or right here on our site.
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