How Personio is Using AI to Level Up Our Customer Education Courses (Without Letting It Take Over)

Hello fellow CE leaders! I’m Roberto, Sr. Learning Experience Designer at Personio, taking over the Skilljar blog today to share my approach to using AI in customer education.

If you’re like me, you’ve seen AI hyped as the answer to everything—from replacing jobs to transforming processes overnight. Here’s my take: AI is a tool—one among many—that makes my work more efficient. It’s about enabling our creativity and expertise, not replacing them. After a decade in customer education, I’ve found that the best results come from using AI to complement what we do best as human designers. Here’s how I’ve made AI a true partner in my work, plus a few lessons I’ve learned along the way that might help you level up your own processes.

AI as an Assistant, Not the Star

One of the big things I’ve realized? AI is great at the repetitive stuff. It’s like having a super-efficient assistant who can draft course content outlines, help with translations, or create quiz questions in no time flat. But for me, AI is about having an assistant to get the groundwork done 50% faster—leaving the final 50% for us to put the polish, personality, and nuance into what we’re creating. This isn't always the case for everything I work on—but I've seen it work incredibly well for some projects.

Take a recent course I worked on for compensation training. The focus was on creating a comprehensive learning path for customers who didn’t have in-depth HR expertise. Here’s how I collaborated with an SME to make the course both relevant and valuable:

Combining AI and Human Expertise to Build a Compensation Training Course

1. Laying the Groundwork with AI: When I started the compensation training course, I knew that many customers, especially smaller ones, didn’t have specialists on staff. Before turning to AI, I had to learn the basics myself. I started with a meeting with our compensation expert - Sebastian Pittaro to understand key concepts, so I knew what to ask AI and could provide the right context. Then, I used AI to help draft a foundational course structure that covered core concepts, from salary benchmarking to regulatory compliance. I used AI to outline each lesson and create quick summaries, like "What is compensation" and steps to "Define your compensation budget." AI gave me a solid overview that helped me progress efficiently through this stage.

2. Adding Depth with an SME’s Expertise: Once I had the basic structure, I met again with the SME. Here’s where the course took on a whole new level of depth. For example, AI had generated an outline for a lesson on “Empower Leaders for Compensation Review,” but it was pretty surface-level. The SME went beyond the basics and gave me insights into why empowering leaders in the compensation review process matters, like ensuring alignment with strategic goals, promoting fairness, and enabling effective decision-making. Together, we developed detailed scenarios and real-world examples. For instance, the SME suggested sharing our practices at Personio, where we empower our leaders during the compensation review process, explaining the steps taken to align leader responsibilities with strategic goals and address potential challenges in promoting fairness. This kind of input was pure gold and something AI alone couldn’t provide. It gave our learners a relatable situation and practical guidance for similar issues they might face in their roles.

3. Bringing It All Together with AI: After SME contributions, I went back to AI to draft quiz questions for each lesson, like scenario-based questions on leading the compensation review process. I also used AI to brainstorm ideas for the strategic distribution of the content, such as organizing community events around specific aspects of compensation or promoting parts of the content during relevant times throughout the year. Again, all of this was reviewed to ensure accuracy and relevance.

The result was a course that didn’t just explain the basics of compensation but also gave learners a nuanced, practical understanding of real-world challenges and best practices.

Tips for Getting the Most from AI in Your Workflow

Aside from using AI as a handy tool for brainstorming, there are a few concrete ways to get started. And if you’re diving into AI for customer education, here are a few things that have helped me make the most of it—and keep my workflow focused and productive:

1. Start with Clear Goals: AI works best when you know what you need from it. Before diving into any tool, get specific about your project’s goals. Are you looking to save time on repetitive tasks, enhance localization, or develop rough drafts? Having a clear direction keeps you in control, letting AI do the legwork while you shape the strategy.

2. Think Outcome, Not Just Output: There’s a misconception that AI is all about more content, faster. For me, it’s about freeing up time to focus on quality.With AI covering the initial drafts and outlines, I can take a step back and look at how we’re iterating on that content, promoting it effectively, and getting it into the hands of the right learners. While we can produce a lot of content, thoughtful distribution and iteration make that content actually valuable.

3. Use AI for Fast Localization, Then Add the Human Touch: AI translation can be  a huge help for localizing content, but I always recommend a final pass from a native speaker. A quick human review ensures the message resonates and avoids any unintended tone issues. The balance between AI speed and human insight keeps the quality high without sacrificing time.

4. Stay Selective with AI Tools: You don’t need every new tool out there—just the right ones that fit seamlessly into your process. I focus on a few well-chosen tools that integrate with Skilljar’s LMS and support the whole team. This approach keeps us adaptable and efficient as AI technology keeps evolving, without having to constantly overhaul our workflow.

Final Thoughts: Why AI is One Piece of the Puzzle, Not the Entire Puzzle

In customer education, we’re all about creating meaningful learning experiences. AI can get us part of the way there, but it can’t bring the expertise, strategy, and empathy that make those experiences truly impactful. So yes, let’s lean on AI to do what it does best, but let’s not forget that the real value we bring is still uniquely human.

If you’re looking to start with AI, remember that it’s a tool, not the solution. Use it to free up your time, speed up repetitive tasks, and support your strategic goals. That way, you can focus on what matters most—making sure learners get real value from your courses and building customer education programs that genuinely make a difference.

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