Case Study
From case studies to a global advocacy engine
Coursera needed to scale customer advocacy across global Business, Campus and Government audiences without losing the quality, consistency or evidence behind each story.
Velo turned existing ad hoc customer storytelling into a structured advocacy programme, creating the processes, formats and strategic foundations to capture and amplify customer success at scale. Fully managed by our team, the program delivered a flow of stories used by 93% of the sales team in multiple formats to bring the voice of the customer to life.
We have come a long way – and I appreciate our partnership, working with the team and your strategic insights!
Puneet Nagpal, Head – Global Customer Growth Marketing, Coursera
Background
Coursera is a global online learning platform serving three very different markets: businesses developing workforce skills, universities transforming learning and governments improving employability and workforce readiness.
That meant customer advocacy had to work just as effectively for a business leader as it did for an educational institution or government organisation. And it had to do so across regions, cultures and markets.
Velo initially partnered with Coursera to help refresh and produce customer success stories. But as the programme developed, the challenge became bigger.
Coursera wanted to increase advocacy activity while maintaining the quality and evidence behind every story. More nominations, stakeholders and outputs meant more complexity. Processes needed to become more repeatable, stories needed to demonstrate measurable impact and advocacy needed to become something the organisation could manage and scale globally.
The requirement was no longer simply to create case studies. It was to help build the operational foundations of a customer advocacy programme.
The program in numbers
0
Audiences – Business, Campus and Government across 3 regions
0
stories every quarter
0%
of C4B commercial teams used case studies regularly as a result of the program
0%
of CSM time before the program was spent on education and non-commercial activities
Strategy
Humans are interested in humans
Learning is ultimately about people. So every story needed a human angle before moving into organisational benefits. Whether the audience was a business, university or government, Velo looked for the personal impact behind the programme: career progression, improved skills, employability, academic achievement or workforce development.
Outcomes over features
Coursera is highly focused on evidence. Each story therefore needed to move beyond what the platform did and demonstrate what had changed because of it.
Velo helped embed a verified-outcomes approach into storytelling, looking for measurable evidence appropriate to each audience – from employee retention and certifications for Coursera for Business to academic achievement for Coursera for Campus and employability for Coursera for Government.
Numbers are universal
Statistics, verified facts and customer quotes were deliberately built into stories wherever possible. They made the stories more credible and created proof points that could travel across markets and be repurposed into multiple communications.
Build an engine, not individual stories
As activity grew, Velo supported the wider process behind the content: nomination, qualification, segmentation, prioritisation, governance and content flow. The result was a move away from treating every story as an isolated project towards managing an ongoing portfolio of advocates.
Creative
One story, many possibilities
A strong customer story should not live in one PDF.
Velo developed a flexible suite of formats that allowed the same evidence and narrative to work throughout the customer lifecycle – from deeper long-form content to short, highly shareable proof points for digital channels.
The existing Coursera programme included long-form stories, two and three-page PDFs, blogs and one-slide summaries alongside social and customer-facing assets.
Designed for global consistency
Coursera’s stories spanned APAC, AMER and EMEA and covered Business, Campus and Government audiences. The system therefore needed enough consistency to remain recognisably Coursera while retaining the flexibility to tell very different customer stories.
Advocacy beyond content
The creative opportunity also extended inside Coursera.
Regional enablement materials, internal communications and advocacy education helped teams understand the value of advocacy, identify potential stories and participate in the process.
As the relationship evolved, thinking also expanded into Customer Advisory Board activity, advocacy communities, Learning Champions concepts and emerging GenAI-focused advocacy.
Customer stories in many different formats squeezed all benefit out of each one
Close to one day a week
An internal study concluded that Coursera CSMs spent ~15% of their time on customer education and non-commercial escalations. The solution? Increasing the number, variety and coverage of customer stories. Case Studies done well can have real commercial impact.
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