Why Community and Customer Education Need Each Other
Community and customer education teams can unlock adoption, retention, and engagement when they work as partners instead of in silos.
Customers don’t (and shouldn’t) care which department helps them. They just want to solve their problem, get value quickly, and know they’re supported.
Inside companies, though, these responsibilities are usually divided. Community often sits within marketing or success. Customer education might report to success, support, or product. From an internal org chart perspective, that makes sense. From the customer’s perspective, it creates a fragmented experience. Customers end up navigating multiple portals, hearing slightly different messages, or not realizing valuable resources even exist.
The irony is that both teams are working toward the same goal: helping customers succeed. The difference is in how they approach it. Community leans on peer-to-peer connection, conversation, and engagement channels. Education focuses on structured content, training, and expertise. Each has something the other needs. When they work together, customers get a seamless experience and GTM leaders see measurable impact on adoption, retention, and growth.
Why the overlap matters
Community thrives on energy, relationships, and discovery. People come to forums, events, and member programs to connect with others like them. They want to see how their peers solve problems and apply tools in the real world. Education brings the discipline of structured learning, product depth, and the ability to design experiences that guide people step by step.
When these two functions align, you get a multiplier effect. Training resources don’t just live in a learning platform. They get surfaced in forums, referenced in events, and amplified by members. Community conversations don’t just rely on the luck of peer responses. They can connect people directly to accurate, expert-created content. The result is faster learning, deeper engagement, and stronger customer outcomes.
A closer look at Asana
At Asana, the community and customer education teams treated each other as essential partners. When the education team launched Asana Academy, the community team helped distribute it. Academy courses were highlighted in community newsletters, surfaced in the forum, and embedded in live events. Members were encouraged to participate and then share what they learned with their networks.
This partnership produced clear results. Monthly active users of the Academy doubled after launch, and engagement could be tied directly to NPS, adoption, and retention. Nearly a quarter of members reported discovering the Academy through community programs. That feedback loop showed how each team extended the other’s reach.
The collaboration also flowed in the other direction. When recurring themes surfaced in the community (like confusion about advanced workflow features), the education team created new modules or videos to address them. Community became an early-warning system that directed where education should invest next. The loop kept both teams relevant and closely aligned to customer needs.
Other companies proving the model
This approach isn’t unique to Asana. Several other companies have seen success by connecting community and education:
MongoDB: The company offers free courses through MongoDB University, which has trained millions of developers worldwide. Their community forum often points people to these courses when questions arise. Instead of duplicating answers, community managers rely on the education team’s resources. Learners gain confidence, and the education program reaches audiences it might not otherwise.
Airtable: Airtable blends structured training with real-world community use cases. The education team builds foundational content, while the community team highlights workflows created by members at events and in online spaces. Customers get both guided learning and inspiration from peers, which accelerates time to value.
Miro: Miro’s education team builds learning paths for new users, while its online community showcases templates and boards designed by experts and practitioners. Community discussions regularly reference education materials, and education resources point learners back to the community for discussion and collaboration. The handoff between the two functions helps reduce churn among new users.
Each example underscores that when customers experience education and community together, they learn faster, gain confidence, and stick with the product longer.
A playbook for GTM leaders
For GTM leaders, the question isn’t whether these teams should work together, but how to make that collaboration real. Here’s a simple playbook you can start applying right away:
Set shared objectives. Start by aligning both teams around one or two common goals. Instead of community aiming for engagement and education aiming for course completions, agree on outcomes like product adoption or improved retention. Shared goals create shared accountability.
Build regular feedback loops. Establish a monthly sync where each team shares insights. Community managers can bring top customer questions and member feedback. Education leads can share course data, common drop-off points, and content gaps. Use this meeting to identify joint priorities.
Create co-owned programs. Choose one initiative each quarter to run together. This could be a webinar series, a certification tied to community recognition, or a challenge where learners apply new skills and showcase them in the community. Co-owned programs build trust and deliver visible wins.
Integrate content and channels. Make cross-promotion the rule, not the exception. Every course should point learners to the community for discussion. Every community event should highlight the latest education resources. Build simple processes so these connections aren’t left to chance.
Measure what matters. Define a small set of shared KPIs that link activity to business outcomes. Examples include time-to-first-value, retention within trained cohorts, or expansion within accounts that participate in both community and education. Report on these together, not separately.
Use tools to connect data. Modern tools like Gradual that span community and educational initiatives let you easily see how members are moving between them and the impact they’re creating. If you have multiple community and learning platforms, connect the dots between tools so you can better understand the overlap between learning activity and community engagement. Even lightweight integrations through Zapier or APIs can help create a clearer picture. Leaders are more likely to invest when they see the combined impact.
Decoded Takeaways
Here are the lessons to carry forward if you’re thinking about how to connect community and customer education:
Customers expect a seamless experience. They don’t care which team delivers the answer, only that it feels consistent and accessible.
Community and education bring complementary strengths: peer connection and distribution on one side, structured expertise and depth on the other.
Examples from Asana, MongoDB, Airtable, and Miro show that when these teams collaborate, adoption, retention, and customer confidence all improve.
Leaders can activate this partnership by setting shared goals, creating feedback loops, co-owning programs, integrating channels, aligning metrics, and connecting data.
The result is more scalable engagement, stronger retention, and a clear path toward community-led growth.
Bringing these teams together isn’t just about efficiency. It’s how you create customer experiences that stick and build programs that reinforce each other.
The cost of staying siloed
When community and education continue to operate in isolation, customers get a fragmented experience, teams duplicate work, and valuable insights never reach the right audience. You end up with great content that no one sees, and rich conversations that never inform training or strategy. That’s a missed opportunity at every level, from the customer who struggles to find answers, to the GTM leader who misses the chance to accelerate adoption and retention.
The good news is that the fix is within reach. These teams don’t need a complete re-org to start collaborating. They just need permission and a push to connect. The payoff is worth it: a seamless customer journey, stronger GTM outcomes, and programs that multiply each other’s impact.