• 1138% year-over-year growth in paid certifications
• 100% renewal rate for certified customers in 2024
• 242% increase in webinar attendance YOY
• 57 total events in 2024 vs. industry standard of 22
• 1 hour saved per event setup
• 1,000+ hours of on-demand learning delivered in H1 2025
• $40K value in time saved for Customer Success in H1 2025
• 434 webinar resource downloads in Q1 2025
• March 2025 Coffee Chat: 793 registrants, 47% attendance rate
• June 2025 Coffee Chat: 754 registrants, 223 unique logos attending, 100% CSAT

Helene Johnson started as a Customer Success Manager at Responsive, working with their SMB clients. She noticed her team was fielding the same questions repeatedly from different clients, and that's when she had her lightbulb moment.

She took initiative and launched two grassroots webinar series: Coffee Chats and Product Updates. The programs were so successful that they helped pave the way for her transition to the Customer Education Team as a Learning Experience Designer.

But as the programs grew, it became clear Helene was bottlenecked by Zoom webinars and their limitations. "There were a lot of manual, time-consuming workflows that I had," Helene explains, "because of the lack of options."

The problems were typical and frustrating. Emails weren't customizable or branded. There was no way to share downloadable content during events. And forget about getting any meaningful data on what was actually resonating with clients. The demand was clearly there, but the tools weren't keeping up with what the program could become.

The timing was pivotal. Responsive had just made a significant investment in the growth of its Customer Education Team, reorganizing it under Ariana Amplo, VP of Services & Implementation. Under her leadership, the company doubled the team’s size and elevated customer education to a strategic priority. With strong executive support and fresh momentum behind the team, the mandate was clear: scale what was working.

The breakthrough came when Responsive's marketing team started evaluating Goldcast and brought Helene into the conversation. And honestly? It was kind of a revelation.

"There were so many things that I didn't know existed," she says. Suddenly, she could create branded registration pages, customize email sequences, share resources directly in events, and actually track what people were downloading and engaging with.

Goldcast actually understood how education teams work. The series functionality meant Helene could set up recurring events without rebuilding everything from scratch every single time. "The ability to duplicate events in Goldcast is super easy for me. I save so much time."

But there’s more. Some of Helene's other favorite features include:

The Docs tab's URL functionality. It lets them link directly to interactive demos and academy courses during events.

The assigned Q&A feature. This helps distribute questions among team members based on expertise and bandwidth.

Customizable CTA buttons. These have opened up entirely new possibilities for how they interact with their audience during events. Find out how they use the CTA buttons creatively here.

The pre-recorded options were a total game-changer for their virtual Certification Programs as well. Instead of running everything live, the team could create polished pre-recorded training sessions and use live time for Q&A and breakout rooms.

For their May Certification Bootcamp this year, the team broke sessions into smaller, pre-recorded segments paired with live breakout rooms, including a Q&A room, an Exam Warm Up Room, and a Brain Break room. This format allowed them to ensure comprehensive exam coverage while driving engagement, with the breakout rooms contributing 55% of total engagement.

They achieved over 1000% growth in their certifications in 2024, and uncovered a powerful insight: 78% of users who earned their certification in June 2024 had previously attended a live webinar session!

The connection runs even deeper. Certified customers consistently demonstrate higher renewal rates. In 2024, every single certified customer renewed their contract with Responsive. It’s a clear success path: webinars drive certifications, certifications build loyalty, and loyalty drives greater long-term value. Webinar attendance isn’t just a vanity metric, it contributes to business outcomes.

Helene has also been able to take post-event screenshots of the event chats to share with leadership, and this simple tactic has added significant value, helping illustrate organic customer engagement and enthusiasm about product updates in a way that numbers alone just can’t capture.

And it’s not just about the features, Helene really appreciates the support she gets from Goldcast as well. The support chat function has been a total lifesaver during live events when something unexpected comes up.

The transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. What started as small coffee chats has exploded into a successful program that's getting attention from the C-suite—both internally at Responsive and with their customers.

"Our coffee chat in March had 793 registrants," Helene shares. "And we had 376 people attend, which was a 47.4% attendance rate with a 91.36 CSAT score."

Those aren't just good numbers—they’re the kind that make executives take notice. And they did. The success of the virtual events led to the creation of their Coffee Chat Committee, bringing together cross-functional leadership from Product, Marketing, Customer Sucess, and Customer Education. Together, they align on high-priority topics, collaborate on content, and continue to elevate session delivery.

This level of executive partnership has been transformative, generating the exponential momentum the company had envisioned when they invested in the program. VPs now regularly join as guest speakers, and CEO Ganesh Shankar is set to make an appearance soon, adding even more credibility and insight to the sessions.

The events, while still casual and friendly, are more polished than ever. They continue breaking attendance records each month, with the June Coffee Chat boasting a perfect 100% CSAT score across 300+ attendees. Select sessions now include prospective clients, extending impact beyond existing customers.

The impact extends far beyond live events. Using Content Lab, Goldcast's AI-powered repurposing tool, the team edits post-event videos by removing pauses and other non-essential segments, then organizing them into chapters to create a more streamlined on-demand experience.

In the first half of the year, on-demand webinar views delivered approximately 1,000 hours of learning, equivalent to about 125 working days for their Customer Success team. This translated into $40,032 in time saved, thanks to the improved accessibility and efficiency made possible by Content Lab.

But the value doesn’t stop there. Goldcast's reporting and integrations also ensure attendee data isn't just stored—it's put to work. Customer Success Managers receive post-event lists automatically in Salesforce and Gainsight, enabling more tailored outreach. Account teams follow up on product interest signals generated from in-event interactions, while Product teams receive direct insights from live polls and chat to inform future updates. This structured, cross-functional follow-up ensures that each webinar drives more than just engagement—it drives action across departments.

The scale they've achieved is pretty remarkable too. "Industry standard is usually like 22 events a year. Last year, our team hosted 57 events, and we're projecting this year to have 66 events." And they're doing this without burning out their small team of six people.

"For Q1, we had 434 downloads total across all of our events," Helene notes. "And those downloads consist of decks that we create, interactive features, one pagers, links to our course." Finally, they can actually see what's working.

But maybe the coolest part is how engaged their community has become. They've built a list of 300+ people who want to be automatically registered for every event. And they just hosted their first in-person coffee chats at BPC Nashville, where Helene got to connect face-to-face with leaders in the bid and proposal space, including clients she’d worked with virtually for years!

What started as a nice-to-have customer education program has become a real revenue driver and strategic asset for Responsive. And that's exactly the kind of transformation that gets senior leadership excited about investing in academy teams.

Sometimes the best solutions come from the simplest observations, like noticing you're having the same conversation over and over again. Helene and her team saw the pattern, took action, and built something that not only solved the immediate problem, but became a cornerstone of customer engagement for the entire company.