A Year of Learning and Progress: What You’ve Taught Us About Customer Success and the Progress We’re Making

Written by: Manish Chawla

Chief Customer Officer, PowerSchool

September 16, 2026

A year ago, I joined PowerSchool with a simple goal: help you get the most value from our solutions so you can focus on your mission more effectively.

Over the past twelve months, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many of you at conferences, advisory boards, executive business reviews, town halls, and through individual conversations. I’ve heard stories about the incredible work you’re doing to support students, families, educators, and communities. I’ve also heard candid feedback about the challenges you’re facing and the expectations you have for PowerSchool as your partner.

The message I’m hearing is clear: you’re looking for greater value from our partnership and technology with greater expertise from us to help answer your questions.

Every day, you and your teams are navigating new expectations, increasing complexity, and limited time and resources. You’re being asked to do more, prove impact, improve outcomes, and make thoughtful decisions about every investment. Technology plays an important role in helping you achieve those goals, but technology alone isn’t the answer.

What matters is whether it helps you save time, simplify processes, make better decisions, and ultimately support the success of your students, staff, and communities.

What you’ve told us matters most

You’ve told us that:

• Solutions should be more simple

• Integrated support should be more responsive

• Every investment should help drive meaningful outcomes for students, staff, and families

You’ve also reminded us that regionally, district and schools needs are often unique, and you need flexibility to engage with us in the ways that work best for your organization.

We know that value matters more than ever. Many of you are being asked to demonstrate the impact of your technology investments. You need to understand whether it’s helping you achieve your goals, improve efficiency, engage families, support staff, strengthen operations, and deliver better outcomes.

Recent research reflects this shift. District and school leaders increasingly want to measure technology effectiveness and demonstrate return on investment, reinforcing what many of you have already been telling us for some time: success is about ensuring tools create meaningful results.

Most importantly, you’ve challenged us to continuously improve. And that’s exactly what we’re focused on doing.

Turning feedback into action

Over the past year, we launched Customer Central. And based on your feedback and partnership, we are continuing to evolve this environment to make it easier for you to find resources, access support, discover training opportunities, and connect with the information you need. We’re working to improve support operations and customer engagement experiences. We’re expanding customer success programs to help you drive adoption, realize value more quickly, and achieve the outcomes that matter most to your organization.

We’re also focused on becoming more proactive in how we support customers, helping identify opportunities and challenges earlier so we can better support you throughout your journey.

Just as importantly, we’re strengthening collaboration across our teams. Customer Success, Support, Services, Product, and other teams are working more closely together because we know that your experience with PowerSchool should feel connected and seamless.

We are also re-invigorating our Partnership program to establish a Services ecosystem alongside us that has a deeper understanding of your local and regional needs. I expect the combination of PowerSchool and the ecosystem will help us achieve many of the objectives you have set for us.

These efforts are not a finish line. They’re the foundation for continued progress.

Looking ahead, together

Our focus remains strong to help you get greater value from your PowerSchool investment.

That means:

• Continuing to invest in your experience

• Modernizing support with more effective self-service options while maintaining access to the expertise and guidance you depend on

• Delivering more personalized and proactive engagement

It also means creating stronger connections between our products, services, training, support, and customer success programs so that every interaction feels more relevant, connected, and valuable.

Thank you for your partnership, for your feedback, for your candor when we have opportunities to improve, and for your willingness to collaborate with us as we continue to evolve.

Your insights have shaped much of what we’ve worked on over the past year and will continue to influence where we go next. While we’ve made progress, we know there is more work ahead. We remain committed to better understanding, learning, and improving.

Please email me at CCO@powerschool.com with any feedback – whether positive or constructive.

As I begin my second year at PowerSchool, I’m excited about what we’ll accomplish together and grateful for the opportunity to be part of your journey.

Thank you for all that you do for the students, educators, and communities you serve. And thank you for allowing PowerSchool to be part of that mission.

About Manish Chawla:

Manish Chawla is the Chief Customer Officer at PowerSchool, overseeing PowerSchool’s Professional Services, Customer Success Management and Customer Support teams. Manish is responsible for growing the organization’s capabilities and the company’s customer-first culture, focusing on customer adoption and value sustainment for PowerSchool’s market-leading solutions. Manish brings over two decades of leadership experience, including improving customer retention rates and increasing NPS above industry benchmarks, as well as driving predictable growth and efficiency.