AI feature adoption: how customer education teams keep pace with product innovation. Alicia Fontaine June 22, 2026 Thanks to AI, your product team is releasing new features faster than ever. While the pace of innovation is exciting, it brings with it a new challenge: getting customers to use, adopt, and realize value from all these new capabilities. You may have an established customer education strategy and team, but are you ready to keep pace with the firehose of product enhancements? Thought Industries asked customer education leaders at two rapidly growing software companies with AI-driven products how they keep up with product innovation. They shared two approaches to increasing product adoption that are rooted in learning practice, certification and targeted intervention, as well as a way to track AI product adoption separately. How does certification increase Product Adoption? Gong, the leader in Revenue AI with over $500 million in annual recurring revenue, uses a time-honored learning practice to power adoption of their future-forward product: certification. Their customer-facing and partner certifications include proctored exams, integrated badging, and shareable credentials. Tim Halter, Instructional Design Manager at Gong, shared in a recent webinar how certification increases product usage. In particular, Gong's Program Manager certification has driven an uptick of 46% in team-wide activity, which means certification pathways for the admin role boosts usage across the customer account. Chief Customer Officer Simon Frey posted on LinkedIn that Gong customers with certified Program Managers have 21% higher adoption compared to those without. While certification might be the gold-standard for influencing adoption, badges awarded for shorter learning milestones can motivate users to complete more training. Gong uses an integration with Accredible to allow users to share their certification status on LinkedIn, giving customers something to brag about while spotlighting the Gong brand. Gong also awards badges for early milestones to build momentum for further learning deeper product adoption. "We have badges just for getting through the 'Getting Started'" portion of training, Halter explains, "and we use the nurture campaigns in Thought Industries to follow up with an email that says, 'Hey, congratulations, you completed this, you're not done, but here's your badge. Continue your learning, come back soon." When are targeted learning interventions needed? Ironclad, an AI contracting company that recently surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue, developed an Adoption Accelerator Program to ensure customers realize value from their software purchase. Bill Keller, Senior Manager, Learning Experience Design & Documentation for Ironclad, shared with Thought Industries how his team delivers targeted learning interventions to encourage use of key features. By closely tracking product adoption milestones across the customer journey, Kelleher's team can identify customer accounts with lagging usage in key areas, and offer a series of training sessions to help them meet those thresholds. "Let's say for example we know that having really clean data is going to make a real difference in a customer's ability to derive value from Ironclad, but there's a good subset of customers who haven't touched their data manager," Keller says. "We go in and identify those customers, and we can offer them a series of three or four sessions, as well as pre-work and homework, and Q&A with Ironclad experts, and really go through it in depth." Ironclad then tracks the attendance in each Accelerator program, and measures that against the product adoption and the annual recurring revenue (ARR) from those customers. "The numbers that we've seen are pretty impressive," says Kelleher. "As a training organization, it's great for us to be able to put that into perspective for our stakeholders, because it's always so hard to really show a correlation between users taking training and what the influence is on the bottom line." From 91 participants in a single accelerator program, Ironclad influenced $1.2M in ARR. Sixty-three percent of participants attended two or more sessions, which led to a 200% increase in customers using the platform. Looking specifically at data managers, Ironclad saw a 58% increase in meaningful feature usage, such as utilizing workflows with presets. Gong also intervenes proactively to boost adoption, although with a different approach. Rather than going directly to end-users, Gong's Education Services team provides data to the customer success managers responsible for securing renewals for the account. Mark Banuelos, Senior Manager, Education Services at Gong, worked with colleagues in Operations to add education consumption to a dashboard shared with Customer Success. "Before even six months, ideally a year before [renewal decision], let's start having the CSMs actively go into a Tableau dashboard, and they can see the education consumption," Banuelos told his Operations colleagues. "I don't care if it's in Academy, I don't care if it's done through live training, but have they consumed anything?" Data on consumption of learning content is then paired with adoption data to identify accounts in need of intervention. "If they have low adoption in the platform, and or they have low education consumption, then we immediately have an automated event happen," Banuelos explains. "It's an alert [directed to the CSM] saying, 'Hey, you need to engage with that customer because, maybe they haven't consumed anything, or they haven't had any training." This early warning system gives the CSM the next six months to prepare for the renewal conversation, during which they can nudge users to engage with the learning that will increase product adoption. When the renewal rolls around, Banuelos says, "You look like a hero as a CSM, because now you can say, 'Hey, we went from a year ago to X number, now you have more adoption, you're seeing your outcomes, you rolled out a new sales methodology and it's working.'" Giving Gong's customer-facing teams visibility into learning data creates a holistic picture of customer health and engagement, allowing them to target interventions for accounts with lagging usage. The key is to deliver the learning interventions proactively, well in advance of the renewal date. "We want to make sure we're operationalizing it and getting ahead of it, and not just cramming training in as a last-ditch, hey, they renew in two months," says Banuelos. Why should AI feature adoption be tracked separately? If new AI capabilities are a strategic focus for your business, then adoption of those features warrants closer tracking. Bill Kelleher's team at Ironclad uses a scorecard to monitor product adoption metrics, and they measure adoption of AI capabilities and new features separately. (In February, Ironclad announced that their AI legal assistant delivered nearly six times year-over-year ARR growth, so clearly that focus is paying off.) Tracking AI adoption separately helps the teams responsible for customer outcomes-product, customer success, and professional services-align on goals and identify areas for improvement. When you break product adoption metrics into smaller milestones, it's easier to assess how effectively learning leads to behavior change. Then you can better align learning strategy to customer outcomes, and communicate more confidently to stakeholders and executive leadership. Influence behavior change at scale. Build the learning strategy that drives real behavior change, and customers will adopt and see value from your new product capabilities. Companies with AI products like Gong and Ironclad use certification, targeted interventions to influence product adoption, and monitor usage of new features separately to ensure customer education meets the needs of the business. As Banuelos says, "You can build this amazing platform, and you can get everybody into it, but if you don't have a very great strategy for education, how are your [customers] going to be using what they just purchased day in and day out?" Download its Product Adoption Scorecard to start tracking customer adoption of new AI capabilities.

Deloitte and Ironclad form strategic alliance to expand agentic contract lifecycle management capabilities. Jun 08, 2026, 08:02 ET New alliance combines Deloitte's transformation experience with Ironclad's AI contracting platform to help enterprises accelerate, govern and optimize the full contracting lifecycle NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, June 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Deloitte Tax LLP ("Deloitte") and Ironclad today announced a new strategic alliance designed to help organizations modernize contracting as AI reshapes how legal and business teams create, negotiate and manage agreements. By combining the broad legal and business transformation experience, industry knowledge and scalable delivery capabilities offered by Deloitte's Legal Business Services (LBS) practice with Ironclad's AI contracting platform and AI-enabled capabilities, the alliance aims to support clients across the full contracting lifecycle. Contracting is a core enterprise consideration that can impact revenue velocity, cost management, compliance and customer and supplier experience. Yet many organizations still rely on fragmented tools and manual workflows that slow execution and limit visibility into obligations and risk. Enterprises are looking to deploy AI-enabled contracting that can accelerate cycle times, improve consistency and surface valuable insights from contract data. Ironclad's AI-first functionalities and seamless user experience, combined with Deloitte's systems implementation, integration and optimization capabilities help clients transform their end-to-end contracting with the potential for measurable business value. "Contracts sit at the center of how organizations operate and manage risk, yet many still rely on fragmented and manual processes," said Carin Giuliante, chair and CEO, Deloitte Tax LLP. "Our alliance with Ironclad reflects our focus on helping clients modernize critical business functions by combining leading technology with practical transformation experience to drive faster cycle times, better insight and stronger outcomes." "This alliance with Deloitte is a significant step forward in helping enterprises harness the power of AI contracting," said Dan Springer, CEO, Ironclad. "By combining our AI contracting platform with Deloitte's deep industry knowledge and transformation experience, we empower our joint clients to not just modernize their contracting processes, but to turn them into a strategic advantage that accelerates business with every contract." "AI is rapidly reshaping contracting, but value only materializes when innovation is embedded into the operating model, controls, data foundation and ways of working," said Teju Deshpande, lead Ironclad Alliance partner, Deloitte Tax LLP. "Together with Ironclad, we can help organizations modernize contracting end to end - deploying AI-enabled workflows with the appropriate governance, human oversight, and adoption strategies to support efficiency, manage risk more effectively and unlock actionable insight from their contracts." The alliance underscores Deloitte and Ironclad's commitment to helping organizations modernize their legal and business operations through technology-enabled contracting, responsible AI adoption and stronger governance, with the goal of supporting agility, compliance and growth. Read here for more information on the Deloitte and Ironclad alliance. About Ironclad Ironclad is the AI contracting platform that transforms agreements into assets. Contracts are easy and insightful, and agents push work forward with you in control. Whether you're buying or selling, Ironclad unifies the entire process on one intelligent platform, giving leaders the visibility they need to move faster and make better decisions. Trusted by many of the world's largest, and most sophisticated companies - including leading foundation model builders - Ironclad is recognized by Forrester, Gartner, and IDC as a category leader. For more information, visit www.ironclad.ai. About Deloitte Deloitte provides industry-leading audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to many of the world's most admired brands, including nearly 90% of the Fortune 500(R) and more than 9,000 U.S.-based private companies. At Deloitte, we strive to live our purpose of making an impact that matters for our people, clients, and communities. We bring together distinct talents, technologies, disciplines, and an ecosystem of alliances to help tackle today's most complex business challenges and drive long-term progress. Deloitte is proud to be part of the largest global professional services network serving our clients in the markets that are most important to them. Bringing more than 180 years of service, our network of member firms spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte's approximately 470,000 people worldwide connect for impact at www.deloitte.com. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee ("DTTL"), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities. DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") does not provide services to clients. In the United States, Deloitte refers to one or more of the US member firms of DTTL, their related entities that operate using the "Deloitte" name in the United States and their respective affiliates. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more about our global network of member firms. Deloitte Legal refers to the legal practices of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited member firms (or their respective affiliates) that provide legal services outside of the US. For legal and regulatory reasons, some member firms, including the US member firm, do not provide legal services. SOURCE Deloitte