Remember that feeling as a kid when you finally earned that badge you’d been working toward? The sense of accomplishment, the validation, the little rush of pride when you pin it to your uniform?
Well, I’m lucky that I still get that feeling. Every Q, in fact. And in spades. This summer, for example, CloudShare earned 37(!) coveted G2 badges. That’s pretty close to our all-time best. And it tells a story about where enterprise customer education is and where it’s heading.
But let me back up for a moment. G2 badges aren’t just pretty graphics to jazz up your website (though they do look rather nice in our marketing materials, don’t they?). They’re based on real reviews from actual customers who use the products day in, day out. When they take the time to share their experiences, that feedback is pure gold and a validation that everything we’ve been doing truly empowers our end users.
I cherish every one of those badges. But today, I’m going to focus on 10 of them: our enterprise badges, and I’ll start with two awards that are super-gratifying because all too often they’re mutually exclusive. You see, we won both “Easiest Setup” and “Best Meets Requirements.” That’s special, because enterprise software solutions, while invariably powerful, are notorious for being complex. They’re usually comprehensive but clunky.
Winning these two badges proves that for global cybersecurity and business applications providers, achieving value from third-party solutions doesn’t have to be an uphill struggle.
Getting users and end-users up to speed faster is mission-critical, especially as a constantly shifting cyber landscape creates widening skills gaps. Cyber training leaders don’t have any time to waste on navigating clunky virtual labs. That’s what these badges prove. It’s a big part of the value of an intuitive, easy-to-use lab solution.
And value is what it’s all about, n’est-ce pas?
The ROI Revolution
The “Best Estimated ROI” enterprise badge made me particularly happy, because it speaks to CloudShare’s core value proposition. And there are two sides to this particular coin.
The first relates to direct training revenue. For most enterprises, customer education isn’t a cost center anymore. It’s not even a cost recovery operation. It’s a serious profit center.
Take Thales, for example—they grew their training revenue from 750k euros to 2.2 million euros in just two years. That’s what happens when you treat customer education as a strategic business function rather than a cost of doing business.
And here’s the beautiful irony: charging for education makes it even more valuable. People value what they pay for. It’s basic psychology. When someone invests their budget in learning your platform, they’re not just buying training—they’re committing to success.
And what’s the other side of the ROI coin? Well, it spans the entire customer journey. It starts with more engaged prospects. Education Qualified Leads, as I’ve written about before, are the prospects who dive deep into learning your platform before they even buy.
Then comes smoother onboarding. Red carpets matter, and the last thing you want is for your new star customer to stumble and get a nasty friction burn. OK, end of extended metaphor.
Next is accelerated adoption, because your solution mustn’t be the new toy that stays in the box, gathering dust. Then there’s shorter time to value—that’s the $64k question, isn’t it? A software solution has to do exactly what it says on the tin, as the English often put it. It has to save you money or make you money. And the customer has to see it happening. Value isn’t something you intuit. It’s something you can measure.
Higher feature adoption follows naturally, because we all want to see more power users, right? The deeper into your platform a customer gets, the deeper their dependence and even their emotional attachment becomes.
Finally, you get sky-high retention—because losing a customer is like losing a lover. It’s a relationship you’ve—often as not—poured your heart and soul into. With the added pain of all that lost revenue.
The Self-Paced Revolution
But here’s where it gets really interesting. The same customers giving us these enterprise badges are overwhelmingly choosing self-paced learning. Their users want the quality of expert virtual instructor-led training, but they want it on their terms and timelines.
This isn’t only about convenience (though learning in your pajamas at 3 AM does have its appeal). It’s about empowerment. When you give someone the ability to learn however and whenever they want, suddenly training feels like a gift rather than an obligation.
Our Guided Journey feature with automated AI assessment takes this even further. It’s like having a personal tutor who never sleeps, never gets impatient, and always knows exactly what you need to learn next. The result? Better learner outcomes and faster business results.
The Psychology of Enterprise Learning
What these badges really tell us is that enterprise buyers are human too. Shocking, I know. But seriously—they want the same things we all want: to feel smart, capable, and successful. They want solutions that make them look good to their bosses, not software that makes them feel like they need a PhD to operate.
This connects to something I’ve written about before: the psychology of the customer journey. A buyer evaluating solutions has completely different motivations than a customer trying to extract value from a purchase. And an advocate? That’s someone who’s moved beyond just using your product to genuinely believing in it.
That’s why our “Users Most Likely to Recommend” enterprise badge is so important. It comes from people who’ve reached that advocate stage. They’ve not only mastered our solution but feel genuinely empowered by it. That’s not something that happens by accident.
The Land and Expand Effect
Here’s what’s really exciting about these enterprise badges: they tell a story about organizational transformation. It typically starts with the education department—they adopt CloudShare for customer and partner training, see amazing results, and suddenly their status within the organization skyrockets. Then something magical happens. Other departments start asking, “What’s that thing the training team is using? Can we get some of that?”
Before you know it, you’ve got Sales Engineering using virtual labs for demos, Customer Support using them for issue replication, and even R&D using them for testing. What started as a training solution becomes a platform for organizational success.
The Bottom Line (Because Every Badge Story Needs a Business Lesson)
These G2 badges represent more than recognition—they represent a fundamental shift in how enterprise organizations think about learning and enablement. The old model of “dump information and hope for the best” is dead. The new model is about creating experiences that make people more knowledgeable, empowered, and successful.
When customers like Salesforce, Atlassian, Motorola, and Palo Alto Networks invest in your solution, they’re not just buying software. They’re buying into a vision of what learning can be when it’s done right. And when they take the time to review that experience positively on G2? Well, that’s when you know you’ve created something truly meaningful.
Because at the end of the day, customers who learn don’t churn. Educated customers become advocates. And advocates are your best sales and marketing team.
Merci bien!
Ready to see what all the excitement is about? Request a demo today and discover how CloudShare can help your training and demo programs flourish.
