CELab: The Customer Education Lab

In this episode of the Customer Education Lab, Adam Avramescu sits down with his Personio teammate and Senior Learning Experience Designer Roberto Aiello for a deep dive into what modern customer education really looks like in 2026. They unpack how an international company with an English working language and a massive German market grapples with localization, terminology, and tone—including why “just translate it” fails, and how to design for truly native experiences instead. Roberto shares concrete stories from Personio’s Voyager Academy, like localizing character names, handling UI screenshots in multiple languages, and deciding what not to translate.

From there, the conversation shifts into AI-assisted content creation and distribution. Roberto walks through how he used AI to co-create a compensation course—turning scarce SME time into a solid 60–70% draft—and then scaled that approach into reusable assistants for brainstorming, course design, and promotional comms. Adam and Roberto also dig into how they mapped academy content to activation milestones, setup wizards, and implementation email journeys, so customers see the right learning at exactly the right moment. If you care about Customer Education, Digital CS, or scaled CX, this episode is a masterclass in moving from “more content” to measurable customer outcomes.

Episode Highlights:

Why localization ≠ translation, and how cultural nuance (e.g., The Simpsons in Italy) changes tone, jokes, and stereotypes.

The trap of forcing English tone and structure into other languages—and why native reviewers must have the final say.

How Personio decides what terminology to localize vs. leave in English (“Dinglish”), especially in tech and HR products.

Practical workflow: producing content in English, then using vendors + native reviewers + AI to localize efficiently.

Using AI assistants (via langdock) to:

Draft HR skill courses (like compensation) from SME interviews and public domain expertise.

Encode style guides, glossaries, and frameworks so drafts are on-brand and consistent.

Generate promo copy (emails, posts) as part of a repeatable, scalable workflow.

The real benefit of AI: freeing up time for strategic thinking—like distribution, campaigns, and mapping to business outcomes.

Why translation memory and maintenance are harder than translation itself, and why integration across tools matters.

Leveraging tools like Parta for on-brand, collaborative content creation, and Clueso for scalable, localized video.

Personio’s AI Surge Week: workshop design to help non-experts adopt AI for content creation through live examples and iteration.

Rebuilding the essentials learning path by mapping:

Activation milestones 

Academy content 

Setup wizard steps 

Implementation email journeys

Example: surfacing targeted content at the people data upload step to reduce anxiety (GDPR, privacy, data scope).

Why “more content” is not the goal—surfacing the right content at the right time is.

The future: products that “talk” to custom...

Customer education is outgrowing the idea of “just an LMS.” In this episode, Dave Derington sits down with Mia Čomić, Product Marketing Manager at LearnWorlds, to unpack how the platform is evolving from a traditional course host into a true learning operating system for modern SaaS. Mia shares how her background in Comparative Literature, localization, and academy building shaped her perspective on learning as a continuous product experience—not a one‑off content drop.

We explore how AI is reshaping Customer Education: from speeding up content creation to orchestrating just‑in‑time learning, routing the right learner to the right asset at the right moment. They dig into the 2026 State of AI in Customer Education report, the idea of “structured professional balance” between humans and AI, and why completion rates are no longer enough. If you’re leading Customer Education, CS, or scaled enablement and wondering how to make AI practical (not gimmicky), this episode is for you.

Key topics & takeaways

Why LearnWorlds is shifting from “course host” to learning product operating system

The difference between a content library vs. a true learning system

Why Customer ed teams “ask for a library but really need a system”

Using AI for orchestration, not just content generation

What “instructionally intelligent AI” means in practice

The concept of structured professional balance: AI speed + human control

AI as an orchestration layer across content, product signals, support, and lifecycle

Customer education as a stress test for AI‑driven learning

Why completion rates are the wrong north star; outcomes and behavior change matter more

Budget realities for AI in CE and how teams are experimenting with small spends

How the 2026 State of AI in Customer Education Report was built (quant + expert interviews)

In this end-of-year special, Adam Avramescu and Dave Derington look back at 2025 through the lens of the things they love most outside of work: video games and live music. They unpack how titles like Helldivers 2, Peak, and Megabonk model great onboarding, community-based learning, and continuous engagement—and what Customer Education and Customer Success teams can steal from modern game design.

On the music side, they explore Louis Cole, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Black Country, New Road, St. Vincent, and Tune-Yards. Adam and Dave connect venue, context, and stagecraft to how we design learning environments, build resilient teams, and foster community around our programs. If you’re thinking about onboarding, product adoption, AI-era education, or how to keep your learners coming back, this episode is packed with fresh, unexpected parallels.

Key topic bullets (Customer Education & CS–focused)

Onboarding by design: How Helldivers 2 uses scaffolding, mission flow, and “muscle memory over menus” to teach complex mechanics—mirroring ideal SaaS onboarding.

Context > content: Why the venue (Small venue vs. big noisy hall) transformed Louis Cole vs. King Gizzard orchestral shows—and how that maps to learning environments and attention.

Performance support vs. upfront training: Games as a model for balancing early instruction with in-the-moment guidance.

Community-based learning: Peak as a metaphor for learners pulling each other up the mountain via collaboration and shared discovery.

Resilient teams after setbacks: Black Country, New Road rebuilding after losing their lead singer—parallels to CE teams navigating layoffs and org changes.

Emergent learning & retention: How Megabonk and other games keep players experimenting and returning, similar to driving ongoing product adoption.

Edges and surprise in learning: St. Vincent and Tune-Yards using surprise, constraints, and audience participation to create memorable experiences—vs. bland, predictable training.

AI and emergent workflows: Early thoughts on how AI products shift education from “where to click” to “how to think and prompt.”

In this episode of CELab – The Customer Education Lab, host Adam Avramescu sits down with Bessie Weiss, Senior Director of Customer Education at Webflow, to unpack what it really takes to evolve a beloved PLG education motion into an enterprise-ready engine. Bessie shares how she inherited the iconic Webflow University, the “don’t mess it up” mandate from leadership, and the practical tradeoffs her team makes every day between pixel-perfect production and keeping pace with a rapidly changing SaaS + AI product.

They dive into the org design behind Webflow’s modern education function—video production, instructional design, platform, certifications, and onboarding—and how those pieces work together to support both self-serve users and large enterprise accounts. From launching high-stakes certifications in under a year, to deciding when humor helps (or hurts) learning, to using AI for exam development and just‑in‑time learning, this episode is a masterclass for Customer Education and Customer Success leaders building programs that actually move product adoption and revenue.

Highlights:

How Webflow University evolved from PLG top-of-funnel magnet to a dual PLG + enterprise education engine.

The “make it better, but don’t mess it up” mandate when inheriting a beloved program and community.

Balancing high production value vs. speed and scalability in a fast-changing SaaS + AI product.

Where marketing ends and education begins—and how Webflow split teams and responsibilities.

Structuring a modern education org: video, instructional design, platform/experience, certifications, onboarding.

Why rigid instructional design can backfire—and how to flex based on audience (developers vs. designers vs. marketers).

Designing high‑stakes, AI‑proctored certifications that are meaningful to partners and the ecosystem.

Using AI as a tool for question authoring, psychometrics, and in‑product just‑in‑time learning—without replacing humans.

Metrics that matter in PLG vs. enterprise: traffic and conversion vs. time‑to‑value, renewal, and expansion.

The future: customers learning via agents and contextual AI, but still needing conceptual scaffolding and strategy.

What happens when you stop thinking about “training” and start designing a revenue architecture? In this episode, we down with Sean Reay - a seasoned revenue enablement leader with experience at companies like Outreach and Canva, and now leading enablement for an AI-first CX company, Intercom. We unpack how AI, enablement, customer education, and customer success are converging into one continuous fabric of learning that spans your entire go-to-market motion.

This episode dives into ideas like an “operating system for execution that reduces friction,” why many traditional LMS-centric approaches need to evolve (or die), and how AI agents can finally deliver “learning in the flow of work” instead of more information overload. We explore practical patterns - from conversational intelligence tools to AI roleplay and contextual knowledge delivery in Slack - that help revenue and CS teams ramp faster, execute with clarity, and deliver truly personalized experiences at scale. If you’re in Customer Education, Enablement, or Customer Success and trying to make sense of AI, this conversation is a rich, tactical blueprint.

Key Takeaways:

From training to clarity: Why high-performing teams need an operating system for execution, not just more content.

AI in the workflow: How tools like Outreach, Gong, Intercom’s Fin, and AI-powered knowledge systems can surface the right guidance at the exact moment of need.

Personalization at scale: Using AI as a layer across your stack to tailor messaging, content, and guidance for different roles, segments, and customer journeys.

Agentic learning: The emerging pattern where AI agents watch, listen, and respond across tools (Slack, email, CRM, product) to drive just-in-time learning.

Customer education + enablement ≠ silos: How internal enablement content and external customer education should be co-created and re-used, not duplicated in isolation.

“Pull” vs. “push” learning: Moving away from mandated content dumps toward on-demand, contextually triggered support in tools like Slack and in-product.

AI-assisted coaching: Using call intelligence and AI roleplay to coach sales, CS, and trainers on talk time, questioning, and customer-centric behaviors.

Rethinking the LMS: Why static courses and rigid LMS structures struggle in modern SaaS, and what a more dynamic, AI-driven content fabric might look like.

Revenue architecture lens: Viewing the entire customer journey—from acquisition through expansion—as a continuous learning and behavior-change system.

Accountability and impact sprints: Using impact sprints and clear business outcomes to connect enablement & education work to measurable revenue and retention.