Pearson personalizes learning journeys with the Salesforce Platform.

Pearson’s service model needed to accommodate seasonal spikes and growing learner demands.

Pearson knows that education doesn’t end with a diploma or a first job — it’s a lifelong pursuit. That’s why for almost 100 years, they’ve helped people across the globe grow their skills and knowledge at every stage of life, from kindergarten through retirement. “We focus on the whole learner,” said Gabriele Bauman, Vice President of Customer Relationship Management and Employee Platforms. “Humans are born to learn.”

This learner-first mindset is setting Pearson apart at a critical time in the education industry. AI is transforming how students learn through personalized, adaptive experiences, while also changing how educators teach by streamlining routine tasks and freeing them to focus more on student engagement. Pearson is leaning into this transition, embedding AI across their products and services  to deliver the speed, accuracy, and personalization students and educators expect – built on Pearson’s deep expertise in education, learning science, and industry-leading academic content. 

The first step in that transformation is customer service. Each year, Pearson’s service team manages tens of thousands of order-related inquiries. Routine questions come in quickly, and almost every inquiry involves several steps — from verification and account lookup to issuing credits across multiple systems. 

In addition to providing excellent customer service, Pearson wanted to seize an even bigger opportunity: Connecting the learner journey across their growing portfolio. The company’s rapid growth through acquisitions like Credly, Mondly, and eDynamic Learning added even more tools, platforms, and data sources to the mix. A student might start with Pearson+, certify through Pearson VUE, and upskill later with Mondly. By bringing together customer and course data previously siloed across brands and systems, Pearson can extend its impact from individual course enrollments to building lifelong learner relationships. 

To stay ahead, Pearson knew they needed to automate routine requests while creating the connected, efficient, and personalized experiences learners expect.

If the customer has a question Agentforce can’t answer — for example, “Do the credits I earned abroad apply to my U.S. university?” — Agentforce seamlessly transfers them to a service rep with full context. Every interaction is saved into Data Cloud, giving Pearson a complete customer record so future conversations — whether with Agentforce or a human rep — pick up right where they left off.

Up next, a flurry of agent creation is underway at Pearson. They’ve launched a sales development agent to help prospect and qualify leads, with marketing agents next in line. On the service side, new agents will simplify Virtual School enrollment and enable omni-channel experiences with Agentforce Voice. Pearson’s vision goes further, aiming to ensure different AI agents — and even different vendors — work together. The flexibility and extensibility of Agentforce means it can work seamlessly with AI tools from Pearson’s strategic partners to function as a coordinated system.

As Bauman put it, “we see tremendous potential for agents to supercharge our employees and make it easier for learners, educators, and enterprise customers to do business with us.”

The deeply unified Salesforce Platform connects every chapter of the lifelong learner experience.

From sales and service to marketing, analytics, and data-driven decision-making, employees across Pearson use Salesforce every day to work faster, smarter, and more efficiently.

From the moment a lead comes in, Sales Cloud is the single source of truth for Pearson sellers. Reps can track every lead, opportunity, and deal in one place. And using partner data integrated from high-volume voice campaigns, sales reps have even more context to deliver personalized outreach.

Once a student, educator, or enterprise joins the Pearson community, the focus shifts to ongoing support and engagement. Service Cloud supports the service team’s work, enabling them to resolve questions, share resources, and deliver technical help with ease. With Salesforce Contact Center integrated with Amazon Connect, customers can reach out via whichever channel works best — chat, email, SMS, or social — and Pearson can manage all the conversations in one place. For more complex issues, students can launch a live video session through ScreenMeet for Salesforce, where they share their screen and get guided support to fix technical problems. Behind the scenes, MuleSoft APIs connect data on Contact Center staffing and call quality from AWS to Service Cloud, keeping performance and feedback data inside Salesforce. Together, these tools ensure every interaction meets high standards and gives service reps the context they need to continually improve.

As learners progress through coursework, ace the test, and advance in their careers, Pearson keeps them inspired to grow through personalized outreach in Marketing Cloud. Whether welcoming a new enrollee, or guiding them toward renewal and continued study, the marketing team can send relevant updates, event invitations, and program reminders. 

From the first day of school through a dream promotion, learners are supported at every step of their education journey.

“We’ve been with Salesforce for 25 years and still see tremendous potential to grow our partnership,” said Dave Treat, Chief Technology Officer. That’s why, as Pearson sets out to become an agentic enterprise, they’re trusting Salesforce to help build a roadmap that embeds AI agents into daily operations and empowers Agentforce to take on manual tasks.

The combination of Pearson’s learner expertise with Salesforce’s AI technology is what excites leadership the most. “We bring the context of our individual learners, Salesforce brings unified data, best-in-class models, and orchestrated agents,” said Treat. “The combination is really powerful. It’s a vision that goes beyond chatbots or simple automation.”

Pearson is increasing their usage of Data Cloud to ingest and unify knowledge across divisions, and continuing to integrate new data from their existing apps, systems, and data lakes. This real-time visibility gives Pearson a full view of the customer journey — not just website clicks and email opens, but how they progress through programs, where they struggle, and what helps them succeed. Those insights are then applied to improve outcomes. Pearson values that with Salesforce, they can stay multicloud, deploy multiple agents, monitor performance while ensuring data security, and maintain oversight. The trusted platform enables them to build and edit their AI agents securely – with industry-leading data and agent governance – making it easier to refine and improve with confidence.

And while timing is critical, Salesforce helps Pearson move quickly by offering more than technology. With dedicated engineers, tight communication, and regular cross-team collaboration, Pearson has the real-time support they need to accelerate their path to agent-first experiences. “The demand we’re getting from customers for fundamentally different learning experiences is real,” Treat said. “We’re not waiting. We’re starting now.”