The average company now spends $1.1 million per year on customer education.
That's up from $401,000 in 2017 — a 174% increase in seven years (Forrester/Intellum 2024, n=300 decision-makers). By 2026, it's projected to hit $2.2 million.
But here's the thing nobody talks about: nobody owns that $1.1 million.
The Forrester study asked who makes customer education decisions. The answers:
- Customer education/training: 25%
- Marketing: 22%
- Sales: 19%
- Customer success: 16%
- Support: 15%
- Account management: 4%
No single department commands even a quarter of the ownership. Five different cost centers. Five different budgets. Five different definitions of "success."
This is the customer education budget paradox: the money is there, it's growing fast, and it's producing nothing because nobody owns the whole thing.
The $1.1 Million Orphan
Skilljar's 2025 CE Trends Report (100+ CE teams) shows the fragmentation in granular detail:
- Customer Success/Digital CX: 31%
- Customer Enablement: 15%
- Dedicated CE Department: 14%
- Customer Support: 9%
- Professional Services: 8%
- Product/Engineering: 8%
- Marketing: 8%
- Product Education: 5%
- HR/Internal L&D: 2%
Nine different departmental homes. Only 14% have a dedicated customer education department. And per SaaS Academy Advisors (2025), 14% have no clear owner at all.
Only 4% of companies describe their education program as formalized, scalable, and curriculum-based (Intellum 2024).
The rest? Ad hoc efforts scattered across departments, each building their own version of "training" with their own tools and their own metrics.
The Five-Department Tax
Fragmentation isn't free. It creates five compounding costs:
1. Duplicate content creation. Intellum's analysis: "The same modules rebuilt for different systems. Multiple platforms mean multiple admin panels, logins, and workflows." Marketing builds onboarding emails. Support builds help docs. CS builds training decks. Product builds tooltips. Nobody coordinates. The 43-hour development cost per finished hour of training (ATD) gets multiplied by the number of teams doing it independently.
2. Measurement impossible across silos. 43% of companies lack a clear process for measuring education impact (SaaS Academy Advisors 2025). Only 11% have analyzed learning consumption's impact on subscription renewal (TSIA 2020). Only 26% tie training to revenue (Skilljar 2025). When education lives in 5 departments, each measuring different things, nobody can calculate the total ROI.
3. The 5.7x budget cut risk. Teams that can't prove value are 5.7x more likely to face budget cuts (Skilljar 2025). This triggers what we've called the "measurement doom loop": can't prove it works → budget cuts → education degrades → outcomes worsen → "see, it doesn't work" → more cuts.
4. Cross-functional collaboration drag. 84% of leaders report high "collaboration drag" when working cross-functionally (Gartner 2024, n=329 marketing leaders + 78 leaders from other functions). Organizations with high collaboration drag are 37% less likely to achieve revenue goals. Marketing employees with high collaboration drag are 15x more likely to burn out.
5. The consistency tax. "Inconsistent user experience" and "data silos mean you can't measure what you can't see, and you definitely can't optimize it" (Intellum). When a customer gets onboarding from Marketing, training from CS, and troubleshooting from Support — three different voices, three different platforms, three different quality levels — the experience fractures.
The Numbers That Prove Consolidation Works
When companies consolidate education under a single owner, the results are dramatic.
- The macro case (Forrester/Intellum 2024, $1B composite organization):
- Total 3-year benefits: $22.7 million
- Total 3-year costs: $4.6 million
- Net present value: $14.1 million
- ROI: 372%
- Payback period: 7 months
- Year 3 returns: $6.71 for every $1 spent
- Specific impact metrics from the same study:
- 38.3% increase in product adoption
- 35% increase in average lifetime value per trainee
- 28.9% increase in win rates
- 15.5% decrease in support costs
- 7.6% improvement in top-line revenue
- 8.1% reduction in sales cycle length
The case studies:
Qualia (real estate software): Moved from one-on-one, inconsistent training to centralized LMS. CSM productivity increased ~30% within one week. Previously, account managers spent nearly half their time conducting training manually (Skilljar case study).
Clever (EdTech): After centralizing education, support tickets 25% lower for educated users. 15-point NPS increase for course completers vs. non-engagers (Skilljar case study).
Asana: 2.25x YOY growth in monthly active learners. NPS scores 19 points higher for training-engaged customers. Salesforce integration enabled tying education to product behavior, adoption, deal size, and NRR (Skilljar case study).
FiscalNote: 16x ROI in first year based on predictable net retention improvements and cost savings (Skilljar case study).
The pattern is consistent: centralize ownership → integrate measurement → see compound returns.
What Fragmented Education Actually Looks Like
Here's the typical $1.1M education spend, spread across five departments:
Marketing ($242K): Onboarding email sequences, webinars, blog content, lead magnets. Measures: MQLs, content engagement, email open rates. Doesn't track: whether the content reduced support tickets or improved retention.
Customer Success ($176K): QBRs, customer health scoring, training sessions, certification programs. Measures: NPS, renewal rates, health scores. Doesn't track: whether training improved product adoption or reduced support volume.
Support ($165K): Knowledge base, help docs, chatbot training data, FAQ pages. Measures: ticket deflection, CSAT, first-contact resolution. Doesn't track: whether articles prevented future questions or drove feature adoption.
Sales ($209K): Product demos, competitive battle cards, customer reference materials, pilot enablement. Measures: win rate, deal velocity, pipeline. Doesn't track: whether educated prospects retained better after purchase.
Product ($110K): In-app tooltips, product tours, release notes, feature documentation. Measures: feature adoption, activation rates. Doesn't track: whether guidance correlated with reduced churn or expansion.
$1.1 million. Five separate P&Ls. Five separate measurement frameworks. Zero cross-functional attribution.
The Engagement Gap This Creates
- The fragmentation doesn't just waste money. It wastes the customer's time and attention.
- 28% of customers are never offered training at all (Forrester/Intellum 2024)
- 47% haven't utilized training offerings even when available
- Only 29% average annual engagement in training (Skilljar 2022)
- 55% only utilize a single training resource for one-time interactions
- Only 16% participate in formal certification programs (down from 25% in 2019)
When training is scattered across 5 departments, the customer sees 5 disconnected experiences. Nobody curates the learning journey from "just signed up" to "power user." Nobody ensures the onboarding email (Marketing) connects to the training course (CS) connects to the help docs (Support) connects to the in-app guidance (Product).
The result: 71% of customers never get beyond the first interaction with any single education touchpoint.
Three Diagnostic Questions
1. Can you name the single person who owns the full customer education journey — from first-touch onboarding email to advanced certification? If not, nobody does. And nobody's measuring the compound impact.
2. How many separate tools does your company use to educate customers? Count: email platform (Marketing), LMS (CS), knowledge base (Support), DAP/tooltips (Product), webinar tool (Sales). If it's more than 2, your education data is fragmented.
3. When your CFO asks "what's the ROI of customer education?" — can anyone answer with a single number? If the answer requires assembling data from 5 departments, nobody has the answer. And teams that can't prove value are 5.7x more likely to lose budget.
The Paradox, Stated Simply
- Companies are spending $1.1 million per year — growing to $2.2 million — on something that:
- No single department owns
- No single system measures
- No single person can report ROI for
- Only 4% describe as "formalized"
Meanwhile, the data shows that when companies DO centralize and formalize education, they see 372% ROI with a 7-month payback.
The question isn't whether customer education works.
The question is whether anyone in your company has the authority, the budget, and the measurement infrastructure to prove it.
Sources: Forrester/Intellum 2024 (n=300), Skilljar CE 2025 Trends (100+ teams), SaaS Academy Advisors 2025, TSIA State of Education Services 2025, Gartner Marketing Collaboration Survey 2024 (n=329+78), Intellum Customer Education Statistics 2024, Skilljar Case Studies (Qualia, Clever, Asana, FiscalNote)