How to write a case study — examples, templates, and tools

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It’s a marketer’s job to communicate the effectiveness of a product or service to potential and current customers to convince them to buy and keep business moving. One of the best methods for doing this is to share success stories that are relatable to prospects and customers based on their pain points, experiences, and overall needs.

That’s where case studies come in. Case studies are an essential part of a content marketing plan. These in-depth stories of customer experiences are some of the most effective at demonstrating the value of a product or service. Yet many marketers don’t use them, whether because of their regimented formats or the process of customer involvement and approval.

A case study is a powerful tool for showcasing your hard work and the success your customer achieved. But writing a great case study can be difficult if you’ve never done it before or if it’s been a while. This guide will show you how to write an effective case study and provide real-world examples and templates that will keep readers engaged and support your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a case study?

How to write a case study, case study templates, case study examples, case study tools.

A case study is the detailed story of a customer’s experience with a product or service that demonstrates their success and often includes measurable outcomes. Case studies are used in a range of fields and for various reasons, from business to academic research. They’re especially impactful in marketing as brands work to convince and convert consumers with relatable, real-world stories of actual customer experiences.

The best case studies tell the story of a customer’s success, including the steps they took, the results they achieved, and the support they received from a brand along the way. To write a great case study, you need to:

  • Celebrate the customer and make them — not a product or service — the star of the story.
  • Craft the story with specific audiences or target segments in mind so that the story of one customer will be viewed as relatable and actionable for another customer.
  • Write copy that is easy to read and engaging so that readers will gain the insights and messages intended.
  • Follow a standardized format that includes all of the essentials a potential customer would find interesting and useful.
  • Support all of the claims for success made in the story with data in the forms of hard numbers and customer statements.

Case studies are a type of review but more in depth, aiming to show — rather than just tell — the positive experiences that customers have with a brand. Notably, 89% of consumers read reviews before deciding to buy, and 79% view case study content as part of their purchasing process. When it comes to B2B sales, 52% of buyers rank case studies as an important part of their evaluation process.

Telling a brand story through the experience of a tried-and-true customer matters. The story is relatable to potential new customers as they imagine themselves in the shoes of the company or individual featured in the case study. Showcasing previous customers can help new ones see themselves engaging with your brand in the ways that are most meaningful to them.

Besides sharing the perspective of another customer, case studies stand out from other content marketing forms because they are based on evidence. Whether pulling from client testimonials or data-driven results, case studies tend to have more impact on new business because the story contains information that is both objective (data) and subjective (customer experience) — and the brand doesn’t sound too self-promotional.

89% of consumers read reviews before buying, 79% view case studies, and 52% of B2B buyers prioritize case studies in the evaluation process.

Case studies are unique in that there’s a fairly standardized format for telling a customer’s story. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for creativity. It’s all about making sure that teams are clear on the goals for the case study — along with strategies for supporting content and channels — and understanding how the story fits within the framework of the company’s overall marketing goals.

Here are the basic steps to writing a good case study.

1. Identify your goal

Start by defining exactly who your case study will be designed to help. Case studies are about specific instances where a company works with a customer to achieve a goal. Identify which customers are likely to have these goals, as well as other needs the story should cover to appeal to them.

The answer is often found in one of the buyer personas that have been constructed as part of your larger marketing strategy. This can include anything from new leads generated by the marketing team to long-term customers that are being pressed for cross-sell opportunities. In all of these cases, demonstrating value through a relatable customer success story can be part of the solution to conversion.

2. Choose your client or subject

Who you highlight matters. Case studies tie brands together that might otherwise not cross paths. A writer will want to ensure that the highlighted customer aligns with their own company’s brand identity and offerings. Look for a customer with positive name recognition who has had great success with a product or service and is willing to be an advocate.

The client should also match up with the identified target audience. Whichever company or individual is selected should be a reflection of other potential customers who can see themselves in similar circumstances, having the same problems and possible solutions.

Some of the most compelling case studies feature customers who:

  • Switch from one product or service to another while naming competitors that missed the mark.
  • Experience measurable results that are relatable to others in a specific industry.
  • Represent well-known brands and recognizable names that are likely to compel action.
  • Advocate for a product or service as a champion and are well-versed in its advantages.

Whoever or whatever customer is selected, marketers must ensure they have the permission of the company involved before getting started. Some brands have strict review and approval procedures for any official marketing or promotional materials that include their name. Acquiring those approvals in advance will prevent any miscommunication or wasted effort if there is an issue with their legal or compliance teams.

3. Conduct research and compile data

Substantiating the claims made in a case study — either by the marketing team or customers themselves — adds validity to the story. To do this, include data and feedback from the client that defines what success looks like. This can be anything from demonstrating return on investment (ROI) to a specific metric the customer was striving to improve. Case studies should prove how an outcome was achieved and show tangible results that indicate to the customer that your solution is the right one.

This step could also include customer interviews. Make sure that the people being interviewed are key stakeholders in the purchase decision or deployment and use of the product or service that is being highlighted. Content writers should work off a set list of questions prepared in advance. It can be helpful to share these with the interviewees beforehand so they have time to consider and craft their responses. One of the best interview tactics to keep in mind is to ask questions where yes and no are not natural answers. This way, your subject will provide more open-ended responses that produce more meaningful content.

4. Choose the right format

There are a number of different ways to format a case study. Depending on what you hope to achieve, one style will be better than another. However, there are some common elements to include, such as:

  • An engaging headline
  • A subject and customer introduction
  • The unique challenge or challenges the customer faced
  • The solution the customer used to solve the problem
  • The results achieved
  • Data and statistics to back up claims of success
  • A strong call to action (CTA) to engage with the vendor

It’s also important to note that while case studies are traditionally written as stories, they don’t have to be in a written format. Some companies choose to get more creative with their case studies and produce multimedia content, depending on their audience and objectives. Case study formats can include traditional print stories, interactive web or social content, data-heavy infographics, professionally shot videos, podcasts, and more.

5. Write your case study

We’ll go into more detail later about how exactly to write a case study, including templates and examples. Generally speaking, though, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing your case study.

  • Be clear and concise. Readers want to get to the point of the story quickly and easily, and they’ll be looking to see themselves reflected in the story right from the start.
  • Provide a big picture. Always make sure to explain who the client is, their goals, and how they achieved success in a short introduction to engage the reader.
  • Construct a clear narrative. Stick to the story from the perspective of the customer and what they needed to solve instead of just listing product features or benefits.
  • Leverage graphics. Incorporating infographics, charts, and sidebars can be a more engaging and eye-catching way to share key statistics and data in readable ways.
  • Offer the right amount of detail. Most case studies are one or two pages with clear sections that a reader can skim to find the information most important to them.
  • Include data to support claims. Show real results — both facts and figures and customer quotes — to demonstrate credibility and prove the solution works.

6. Promote your story

Marketers have a number of options for distribution of a freshly minted case study. Many brands choose to publish case studies on their website and post them on social media. This can help support SEO and organic content strategies while also boosting company credibility and trust as visitors see that other businesses have used the product or service.

Marketers are always looking for quality content they can use for lead generation. Consider offering a case study as gated content behind a form on a landing page or as an offer in an email message. One great way to do this is to summarize the content and tease the full story available for download after the user takes an action.

Sales teams can also leverage case studies, so be sure they are aware that the assets exist once they’re published. Especially when it comes to larger B2B sales, companies often ask for examples of similar customer challenges that have been solved.

Now that you’ve learned a bit about case studies and what they should include, you may be wondering how to start creating great customer story content. Here are a couple of templates you can use to structure your case study.

Template 1 — Challenge-solution-result format

  • Start with an engaging title. This should be fewer than 70 characters long for SEO best practices. One of the best ways to approach the title is to include the customer’s name and a hint at the challenge they overcame in the end.
  • Create an introduction. Lead with an explanation as to who the customer is, the need they had, and the opportunity they found with a specific product or solution. Writers can also suggest the success the customer experienced with the solution they chose.
  • Present the challenge. This should be several paragraphs long and explain the problem the customer faced and the issues they were trying to solve. Details should tie into the company’s products and services naturally. This section needs to be the most relatable to the reader so they can picture themselves in a similar situation.
  • Share the solution. Explain which product or service offered was the ideal fit for the customer and why. Feel free to delve into their experience setting up, purchasing, and onboarding the solution.
  • Explain the results. Demonstrate the impact of the solution they chose by backing up their positive experience with data. Fill in with customer quotes and tangible, measurable results that show the effect of their choice.
  • Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that invites readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to nurture them further in the marketing pipeline. What you ask of the reader should tie directly into the goals that were established for the case study in the first place.

Template 2 — Data-driven format

  • Start with an engaging title. Be sure to include a statistic or data point in the first 70 characters. Again, it’s best to include the customer’s name as part of the title.
  • Create an overview. Share the customer’s background and a short version of the challenge they faced. Present the reason a particular product or service was chosen, and feel free to include quotes from the customer about their selection process.
  • Present data point 1. Isolate the first metric that the customer used to define success and explain how the product or solution helped to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
  • Present data point 2. Isolate the second metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
  • Present data point 3. Isolate the final metric that the customer used to define success and explain what the product or solution did to achieve this goal. Provide data points and quotes to substantiate the claim that success was achieved.
  • Summarize the results. Reiterate the fact that the customer was able to achieve success thanks to a specific product or service. Include quotes and statements that reflect customer satisfaction and suggest they plan to continue using the solution.
  • Ask for action. Include a CTA at the end of the case study that asks readers to reach out for more information, try a demo, or learn more — to further nurture them in the marketing pipeline. Again, remember that this is where marketers can look to convert their content into action with the customer.

While templates are helpful, seeing a case study in action can also be a great way to learn. Here are some examples of how Adobe customers have experienced success.

Juniper Networks

One example is the Adobe and Juniper Networks case study , which puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. The beginning of the story quickly orients the reader so that they know exactly who the article is about and what they were trying to achieve. Solutions are outlined in a way that shows Adobe Experience Manager is the best choice and a natural fit for the customer. Along the way, quotes from the client are incorporated to help add validity to the statements. The results in the case study are conveyed with clear evidence of scale and volume using tangible data.

A Lenovo case study showing statistics, a pull quote and featured headshot, the headline "The customer is king.," and Adobe product links.

The story of Lenovo’s journey with Adobe is one that spans years of planning, implementation, and rollout. The Lenovo case study does a great job of consolidating all of this into a relatable journey that other enterprise organizations can see themselves taking, despite the project size. This case study also features descriptive headers and compelling visual elements that engage the reader and strengthen the content.

Tata Consulting

When it comes to using data to show customer results, this case study does an excellent job of conveying details and numbers in an easy-to-digest manner. Bullet points at the start break up the content while also helping the reader understand exactly what the case study will be about. Tata Consulting used Adobe to deliver elevated, engaging content experiences for a large telecommunications client of its own — an objective that’s relatable for a lot of companies.

Case studies are a vital tool for any marketing team as they enable you to demonstrate the value of your company’s products and services to others. They help marketers do their job and add credibility to a brand trying to promote its solutions by using the experiences and stories of real customers.

When you’re ready to get started with a case study:

  • Think about a few goals you’d like to accomplish with your content.
  • Make a list of successful clients that would be strong candidates for a case study.
  • Reach out to the client to get their approval and conduct an interview.
  • Gather the data to present an engaging and effective customer story.

Adobe can help

There are several Adobe products that can help you craft compelling case studies. Adobe Experience Platform helps you collect data and deliver great customer experiences across every channel. Once you’ve created your case studies, Experience Platform will help you deliver the right information to the right customer at the right time for maximum impact.

To learn more, watch the Adobe Experience Platform story .

Keep in mind that the best case studies are backed by data. That’s where Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Analytics come into play. With Real-Time CDP, you can gather the data you need to build a great case study and target specific customers to deliver the content to the right audience at the perfect moment.

Watch the Real-Time CDP overview video to learn more.

Finally, Adobe Analytics turns real-time data into real-time insights. It helps your business collect and synthesize data from multiple platforms to make more informed decisions and create the best case study possible.

Request a demo to learn more about Adobe Analytics.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/b2b-ecommerce-10-case-studies-inspire-you

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/business-case

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-real-time-analytics

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10 B2B Case Study Examples to Inspire Your Next Customer Success Story

Zeynep Avan

  • October 24, 2023

client success case study

Case studies, also known as customer stories, are valuable content assets for attracting new customers and showing your expertise in a competitive market.

The more case studies you have, the simpler it gets for your customers to make decisions.

Case studies provide a firsthand experience of what it’s like to use your product or service, and it can give an “Aha!” moment to potential customers.

While product demos and white papers are great for generating leads, their use is limited to highlighting product features. 

On the other hand, case studies showcase the transformation a business has undergone while using your product.

A case study offers potential customers a glimpse of the positive changes they can expect, which is more compelling than simply showcasing your product or service’s excellence.

  • Customer mission should be given at the beginning
  • Follow up about specifics and metrics
  • Use quotes from their side to highlight
  • Work out the biggest benefits of your offering and make reference to them
  • Make sure your success story follows a brief and logical story structure

In this article, we’ll review 10 examples of outstanding case studies that have collectively helped secure millions in new client business. Let’s get started.

What Is A Case Study?

In simple terms, a case study highlights how a product or service has helped a business solve a problem, achieve a goal, or make its operations easier. 

In many ways, it’s a glorified and stretched-out client testimonial that introduces you to the problem that the customer is facing and the solution that the product has helped deliver. 

Case studies are invaluable assets for B2B SaaS, where sales cycles tend to get lengthy and costly. They’re a one-time investment that showcases your product’s features and benefits in rooms your sales team can’t be in. 

What Makes A Good Case Study? 

There is no one-size-fits approach to a good case study. 

Some case studies work better as long, prose-forward, and story-driven blog posts. Whereas some are better as quick and fast-fact content that doesn’t add to the chatter but gets straight to the point. 

Here are some of the tenets of good case studies:

  • Product-Led : Focuses on showcasing the product as the solution to a specific problem or challenge.
  • Timely : Addresses the current issues or trends relevant to the business’s ideal customer profile (ICP) . 
  • Well-structured: Follows a clear, organized format with easily digestible writing style and synthesis. 
  • Story-driven: Tells a compelling and relatable story that puts the reader in the customer’s shoes. 

Case studies must tell the customer’s story regardless of style or content density.

Other than that, visuals in case studies are powerful in increasing conversion rates, by providing real evidence and taking attention.

Companies can also use their website, social media, and newsletters to promote case studies and increase visibility.

Below, we have ten diverse case study examples that embody these principles. 

B2B Case Study Template from Our Team

We will share great and proven B2B case study examples that you can get inspired by in the following section, but before that, let’s take a look at an easy and effective template from our team.

b2b case study template

10 Best B2B Case Study Examples To Take Inspiration From

Plaid is a fintech company specializing in equipping users with a secure platform to connect their bank details to online applications. Addressing the pressing concern of financial security, Plaid leverages compelling case studies to showcase the remarkable transformations their clients experience.

Take Plaid’s case study of Betterment, for example. 

plaid b2b case study example

The study begins by stating the goal that the customer is trying to achieve, which is to “onboard new users and drive engagement.” Right next to the goal is company details, and followed below is a singular problem and its solution.

The case study continues by keeping the business’ desired result front and center and offers a generous outlook on the SaaS business.

plaid case study

The core process of how Plaid helps Betterment is cleanly laid out, which is a brief version of a ten-page white paper. 

benefit statement in plaid

What follows are several benefits that Plaid offered to Betterment. 

plaid betterment case study

Plaid’s subtle yet effective product integration and clear, well-organized process make it simple for customers facing similar challenges to envision the solution.

2. SalesHandy

SalesHandy is an email automation software that personalizes high-volume cold emails. The company heroes client success stories for its case studies and opens the heading with their wins. 

Check out this B2B case study example from Sedin’s case study published by SalesHandy.

saleshandy problem statement

Readers need context, and case studies should always begin by outlining the exact problems their product or platform aims to solve. 

Here, SalesHandy expertly introduces us to Sedin’s use case and the challenges that the business is facing.

saleshandy use case statement

After a lengthy context, the case study highlights Sedin’s core challenge in the words of its personnel. 

This personable approach ropes readers in and lets them empathize with Sedin’s challenges. 

saleshandy quote use in case study

With a single scroll in, SalesHandy lays out the solutions to Sedin’s core challenges and integrates its product. 

b2b case study example from saleshandy

This highly detailed case study covers all corners and includes the exceptional results achieved in record time. SalesHandy closes the study with a word from the character already introduced to the readers. 

saleshandy sedin case study example

SalesHandy doesn’t shy away from giving a detailed account of its process, which is crucial for highly technical products and enterprise packages that involve multiple decision-makers. 

B2B Case studies, first and foremost, should be written in a language that your ICP understands. 

playvox case study headline

Playvox is a customer service platform that helps businesses streamline business operations. 

This industry-specific case study of Sweaty Betty by Playvox addresses unique challenges within a niche industry, such as account assessment times for retail and online shops. 

The case study starts with the results it achieved for Sweaty Betty. 

case studies include numers

The case study follows a straightforward, albeit impactful, challenges-solution-results format as we scroll down. 

But instead of listing out solutions in bullet points, Playvox uses customer voice to present the transformation that Sweaty Betty went through. 

playvox sweaty betty solution

With this formatting, Playvox doesn’t have to tout the platform’s usefulness. Sweaty Betty is doing it for them. 

4. Base Search Marketing

We promised diverse case studies, and here is a stellar B2B case study example of a single deck case study of Shine Cosmetics by Base Search Marketing.  

Base Search Marketing is a boutique link-building and SEO agency that works with startups and mid-level businesses. 

base search marketing format

This case study, which can be reviewed as a brochure, gives you an overview of the customer and lays out the challenges that the business is facing. 

You’ll notice how the study uses the CEO’s quote to mention a pretty universal problem that most startups face: “limited resources.”

By highlighting the results in the left tab and laying out the process on the right side, this case study does a masterful job of covering all corners and telling a desirable customer success story.

Another approachable form of case study is slide decks, which you can present in boardrooms and meetings and act as a sales pitch. 

loganix case study slide example

Loganix nails it with its case study deck for rankings.io. 

If you have a complicated product or service requiring an in-depth explanation, then using this format would be a great option. 

The solution, stated in simple bullet points, drives the message home.

loganix bullet points

Fewer words. Cleaner decks.

Using this methodology lets the audience walk through the case study with visuals, bullet points, and concise text. 

6. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a SaaS leader in the social media space, and this Outcome-led Case Study proves just why it is so good at capturing the markets.

The study kicks off with a result-forward headline, piquing the interest of readers who are interested in getting similar outcomes. 

coschedule outcome-led case study example

There’s much to appreciate in this succinctly written case study, but the headlines get our attention and hold it.

With every scroll, results are presented to you in the form of graphs, quotes, and visuals. 

loganix graphics

The study ends with a quote from the customer, which repeats the outcome stated in the headline. 

end with quote example

Leading remote teams is a challenge that numerous teams will face moving forward. CoSchedule makes operations easy for these teams, and it doesn’t shy away from stating just how through its case study. 

7. Wizehire

Case studies have evolved from lengthy blocks of text confined to PDFs to a new digital era emphasizing impact over verbosity.

Wizehire’s succinct case study is a prime example of this shift. It uses fewer words to create a powerful impression.

wizehire example of case study

From the very first page, the case study introduces us to Kris, the customer and central figure of the story. Without the need for extensive scrolling, we quickly grasp vital details about Kris: his role, employee turnover, location, and industry. 

In the second slide, we are immediately taken to the solution that Kris got by working with Wizehire. 

wizehire b2b case study examples

The case study ends with a passionate testimonial from Kris, who deeply believes in Wizehire. 

testimonial example

The case study has less than 300 words, enough for local entrepreneurs like Kris Morales, who want to hire talent but don’t have the resources for proper vetting and training. Until, of course, Wizehire comes along. 

8. FreshBooks

When a reader can see themselves in a case study, it takes them one step closer to wanting to try the product.

This case study by Freshbooks uses a beautiful personal story of an emerging entrepreneur. 

freshbooks case study example

Using a deeply personal story, the study appeals to people who are just starting and aren’t accountants but suddenly have to deal with employee invoices and a dozen other bills. 

The text progresses in an interview-style study, with the customer taking the mic and illustrating the challenges that startups and small businesses face. 

freshbooks challenge statement in case study

This style works because readers crave insights directly from customers. Getting authentic testimonials is becoming increasingly challenging. Well-crafted case studies can be valuable substitutes, provided they seem realistic and from the heart. 

Featuring quotes or testimonials from satisfied customers throughout the case study adds to its credibility and authenticity. Just like this testimonial Case Study by Slack .

slack testimonal case study

Slack is a giant in the realm of digital communication, with more than 20 million active users worldwide. However, it is tough to break into the market of group communications. After all, Slack competes with both WhatsApp and Microsoft Team regarding market share. 

To level the playing field, Slack features case studies from top entrepreneurs and market players who have been served well by it. 

slack case study

Its case studies are laden with personal stories about how the platform boosts productivity. 

At the same time, the software also plugs in the “try for free” banner to make sure that customers are aware of the inexpensive nature of the software.

It’s not easy to get such detailed testimonies from the C-suite, but when you’re Slack, businesses tend to make an exception. 

Some case studies are based on highly niche subjects, where nothing is at the top of the funnel. Kosli nails it with this highly technical case study of Firi.

kosli firi technical case study

Technical case studies are designed for niche audiences who are already aware of the problems that the software can solve. Case studies like these are clean and smart and come with solutions that have a counterpart solution. 

There is absolutely no fluff and nothing that can be a reason for C-suite executives to bounce from. 

It’s full of information-packed pages designed to hook the reader in and present the tool as a formidable solution to their problem. 

kosli firi

You’ll notice how they weave Kosli through the entire case study, and the first-person report comes from the customer. 

B2B Case Study Examples In Short

In the B2B SaaS industry, converting new leads and securing new business has become increasingly challenging. In this landscape, impactful content assets such as case studies and customer stories are sometimes the only things moving the needle. 

Crafting a compelling customer story empowers brands to enable potential customers to engage directly .

🚀 Customer stories evoke empathy from buyers

🤝 Customer stories help build up your relationships with vocal brand advocates

⬇️ Customer stories lower your prospects’ information cost

Once you’ve determined the most effective way to convey information that resonates with your leads, you can collaborate with your content and design teams to create impactful case studies to generate new business and prove your expertise and experience in the market. 

Zeynep Avan

Zeynep Avan

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How to Turn a Case Study into a Customer Success Story [+ Tips from HubSpot Marketers]

Gabi Theard

Published: April 19, 2022

Expression, passion, style, persuasion, authenticity.

marketer turns case studies into customer success stories

These five elements encompass a customer success story — a transformation from a regular case study to an enticing piece of content that encourages a reader to explore what your company has to offer.

Download Now: 3 Free Case Study Templates

When people think about writing a case study, they might feel a daunting rise of tediousness, or perhaps writer's block. In this article, we’ll dive into each step you need to take to create an engaging customer success story and convert leads.

Why should you tell a customer success story?

Case studies are more than proving your company's achievements. Through eloquence and thoughtfulness, you can demonstrate your product or service's power by telling a real story.

Think about it: Real customers use your product. Real employees deliver successful projects. Real customers, real professionals, real people.

What does that look like? Well, it's educating a prospect through a thoughtful perspective, and answering the following questions:

  • How did the client feel at the beginning versus the end?
  • What struggles did the project manager face?
  • How did they feel when they overcame them?

These questions will help you pull the key sections of your story and craft together a compelling piece of content.

Turning a Case Study into a Customer Story

1. find the right client..

To get started, ask your project management or sales team about their latest projects and which one stood out.

You're looking for a client with a uniquely knotty problem, one that your company was able to solve. The more complex the project, the more you can show off your company's skills.

If most of the projects seem standard, pick the client that was the most hands-on and the most responsive. The more involved the client, the more likely they are to give you more information in their interview.

Send an Enticing Email

Before you begin, get permission from the client and inquire about their interest in participating in a case study . You can incentivize them through social media publication, tagging their company on all social platforms, and including a link to their website at the end of the case study.

Here's an example from Trujay that you can use to write an enticing email to your client:

My name is [Your Name], I'm a [Job Title/Position] here at [Company Name]. I'm so pleased to hear your experience with us was worth it! We're glad we could make all the needs of your project happen and hope you continue to enjoy the results.

Since your project was such a success, I wondered if you would be interested in participating in a case study. We like to inquire about this opportunity to only a few select customers because we find some projects have a compelling story. Yours happens to be a particularly special project, and we'd love to promote your brand by showcasing the results.

All you would have to do is answer six questions about your experience of working with us. You may answer them directly in response to this email, or we can have a phone or video call. Whatever way you'd prefer! Most of our clients like to copy and paste the questions in response and simply fill in the answers.

If you would like to interview over [Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, Other], let me know a good time and date that works for you. The call shouldn't take more than 30 minutes.

I've attached a few examples of previous success stories to get a feel for the final product. We also conduct a social media campaign so you and your company can get as much exposure as possible.

We thank you for using our services and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors! Should you ever need our services again, know that [Company Name's] got your back. We hope you find interest in participating and look forward to hearing from you.

[ Email Signature ]

Once you have permission, let your project management or services team know that a case study is underway.

2. Create interview questions for both project manager and client.

You'll want to create two sets of questions — one for the project manager, and one for the client. These questions will give way to both sides of the story, enlightening you on the experience from both ends.

Client Questions: The Background

The formatting of the client interview questions is essential. You want to get as much detail as you can without overwhelming the client with loaded questions.

Client interview questions are straightforward and relate to a customer's company, goals, passions, and plans. You want to find out how your company solved a significant problem through the clients' perspective. What did the project management team accomplish, in their eyes?

First, get four pieces of standard information:

case study client background information: full name, position/title, company name, company background/function

3. Tell the story using a standard outline.

The responses to your interview questions don't necessarily need to be in a particular order. You can either start with the project manager or client questions.

Let's say you get the client's responses first. What are you looking for, exactly?

You're looking for the message behind their words. Some call it reading between the lines. I call it the sweet spot of authenticity. What about their responses jumps out at you? Here is an excellent place to know your buyer personas and identify what kind of client they are.

After reviewing both sets of interview responses, try telling the story to yourself from beginning to end using the questions below. In your own words, speak the story out loud. Doing so will turn fact into fiction and organize your written outline.

Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 2.21.25 PM

We recommend using case study templates to help turn your customer story into a coherent, well-organized publication.

Case Study Template

2. Lightico: A1 Comms

customer success example

3. Hourly.io: Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels

customer success example

What do they all have in common? When you get to these landing pages, key details are immediately prominent: The issue the company was facing and/or the results they generated.

This is a great way to hook in the reader and get them interested to read on.

By showing the results, you highlight the benefits of using your brand. By emphasizing the problems, you can help prospects identify issues and understand why you’re the solution.

Both strategies can generate positive results, it’s just a matter of figuring out which method converts best with your audience.

How to Leverage Customer Success Story on Social Media

1. figure out which case studies will translate well..

The "right client" will vary from brand to brand.

Samuel Mironko , associate marketing manager on the HubSpot brand marketing team, says that this is what they look for: brand recognition, buzziness, and relationship.

The bigger the brand, the more buzz it can create to share its story. This doesn’t mean that you should only highlight stories from recognizable brands. However, it could be a way to prioritize them.

The second is buzziness – how much interest will this story generate? Is the brand in a booming industry? This is another plus for you.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important according to Mironko, is your relationship with the customer. Building a customer story requires a lot of collaboration between the two companies. If your relationship with the client isn’t solid, you may face several obstacles as you attempt to deliver the product.

"You get a better story knowing more about the customer. You know what questions to ask, how to guide the story, and more details," said Natalie Gullatt , marketing manager on the HubSpot customer marketing team. "The customer tends to trust you more if you have a relationship with them so it makes the process better for both parties."

To narrow down a list of options, you will likely need to work with customer advocacy and/or customer success teams at your company to connect you with the clients.

They can also offer some insight into the problems that the company faces and the issues they were able to solve with your product/service.

2. Write a script.

Once you narrow down your list, it’s time to write the script for your social media campaigns.

While you follow the same format as the case study, you have to adjust it for social media – taking only the key details that will help you tell a story in an engaging but concise way.

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Hellopeter.com (@hellopeter_za)

Mironko says that this format works well for customer success stories because it tells a story. You leave knowing the problems the company faced before, how they attempted to solve the issue, their new experience, and how that has addressed their main pain points.

3. Get feedback from the client.

Once you have a draft, you’ll need to send it to the client for approval.

They may provide feedback on anything from the visual design to the way they’re portrayed.

We are delighted to launch our customer success story series with @GaryWidger , Head of Change at @mercuryeng - about how Mercury leveraged #nocode / #lowcode technology to connect their people through shared knowledge. Read more here: https://t.co/BDvRjRxVgd #innovation #tech pic.twitter.com/9qe7dmEART — Kianda (@KiandaBPM) March 30, 2021

Because this is a collaborative process, it’s essential that both parties are satisfied with the end result.

"Make sure to have the customers approve the drafts before publishing - that's so important," says Gullatt. "Customers may have to ask their marketing teams, legal teams before they say certain things publicly so you don't want to burn bridges."

This is why having a good relationship with the customer is key – this will make addressing issues with the content so much easier.

Gullatt adds that flexibility is key. 

"Be flexible even when it's inconvenient because customers doing stories is a favor to you and your organization," she says. "Making it easy for them and being patient goes a long way."

4. Post and measure success.

Once the content is finally ready and published on social media, you’ll want to track its success.

How are people responding? Are they engaging with the content? Did it help you generate more leads?

Establishing KPIs before publishing on social media allows you to gauge your success accurately. From there, you can review the data to assess improvements for future success story campaigns.

Case studies work to showcase a company's function to the fullest degree. They represent the facts of what happened, who was involved, and what the outcome was.

The main goal of a case study is to earn prospective customers' trust and motivate them to choose you over your competitors.

Turning a case study into a customer success story is done through a meticulous and investigative process.

Now that you have everything you need to get started, design a visually appealing piece of content that gives the reader more than just words, but sparks their imagination of what it would be like to work with your company. They'll want to reap the benefits of your services — and may even become the star of your next customer success story.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in Oct. 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Agency Guide: How To Write a Client Case Study (With Examples)

Joe Kindness

QUICK SUMMARY:

A client case study highlights an agency's impact on a business, showcasing problem-solving skills and success. It serves as concrete evidence of expertise, building credibility and distinguishing an agency from competitors. Engaging case studies captivate potential clients, demonstrating value and encouraging further exploration. Learn to craft impactful case studies, enhancing your agency's appeal and client acquisition.

It’s an age-old question: if you want to get more clients , where should you put your content marketing focus?

Your first instinct might be to say blogging. This answer makes sense—for many years, blogging has been touted as one of the best ways to attract an audience and demonstrate your expertise. While blogging can highlight your agency's expertise, it isn’t necessarily going to be nearly as effective as showing real results to win future customers.

Instead of pouring all of your agency's time and creative energy into blog posts, another approach is to focus on client case studies that prove the effectiveness of your services.

Case studies are, in many ways, similar to blog posts. Writing them takes a similar skill set and, once finished, helps to bring in organic search traffic.

However, they have one major advantage over blog posts: they're a great way to show potential clients your agency's value proposition . They also help tell a customer story in a very different way than blog posts do.

If you haven’t written any in a while (or ever), you’re missing out on a great marketing opportunity. In this guide, we'll discuss how to write a case study to attract prospective customers.

Why Client Case Studies Are Worth the Effort

How to write a marketing case study that lands you more clients, real client case study examples.

If you’ve never written a case study, it can be challenging to figure out where to start and what to include. For example, how do you decide which clients to feature and what details to include?

While there is a slight learning curve to writing a compelling client case study, it’s not as difficult as you might think, and their benefits far outweigh the effort of creating them.

As highlighted by a study from the Content Marketing Institute , case studies are among the top three pieces of content that B2B marketers focus on in 2023:

2023 Content Marketing Institute Stat for B2B, highlighting case studies in the top three position

Image Source

Case Studies Speak Directly to Your Potential Clients.

Your blog posts are probably well-written and informative, but are they driving conversions? Readers are busy, and if your latest blog post doesn’t speak to their current needs, there’s a good chance they won’t read it and you're likely seeing a high bounce rate . Use marketing attribution models to determine where your conversions are coming from accurately.

However, case studies are more likely to grab readers’ attention than blog articles. People love reading about situations like their own. If you can tell a potential client a story about how you helped a business similar to theirs, they won’t just pay attention—they’ll remember you when they’re ready to hire an agency.

Case Studies Can Do Everything Blog Posts Can Do.

Your client case study doesn’t have to be a dry, boring wall of text. It can inform, entertain, and inspire readers. You can share useful findings or advice in a case study, just like you would in a blog post. They are also ideal for displaying your expertise and positioning you as a thought leader and your company as an authority.

Case Studies Build Credibility and Trust.

Your perceived trustworthiness is an essential part of whether people decide to hire you or not. Most people will hesitate to hire an agency that didn’t have any examples of their past work on display. They also give clients a way to evaluate your competence before they commit to working with you.

Case Studies Make You Stand Out From the Competition.

Case studies are a bit more specialized and challenging to write than blog posts, which means that not everyone writes them. If you want your agency to look more professional than your competitors, writing case studies give your brand's image a boost. Be sure to use competitor analysis tools after you've created a few case studies to see how you stack up in your customer's industry.

Case Studies Make a Great Lead Magnet.

They are also useful as part of a cold email marketing strategy. For example, you can let people read the beginning (make sure it’s strong!), and offer to send the full case study in PDF form in exchange for an email sign-up.

Case Studies Work.

In the CMI's survey mentioned above, case studies were ranked in the top 3 highest performing types of content for both nurturing and converting leads:

Marketing funnel activities

Report Smarter, Not Harder.

Better, faster & easier client reports are just a few clicks away, 1. define the type of clients you want to attract.

Before you email any former clients or start working on an outline of your first draft, take some time to figure out who your ideal client is. Write out your ideal customer profile and ask yourself questions such as:

Is there a type of business you especially like working with?

What kind of work do you want to do more of?

Case studies, like any other type of content marketing, work best when targeted towards a specific type of reader. If you design your case study to resonate with your ideal clients’ wishes, insecurities, and goals while including relevant theories, your agency will attract more of the kind of clients you enjoy working with. Use a client profile template to ensure you're team is aligned on who your ICP actually is.

2. Gather Information and Data Points

Once you know who you’re writing your case study for, decide which project you want to write about. Pick something that your ideal client will find relatable in some way.

Always reach out to any current or former clients before you write a case study about them. You don’t want to post any potentially-sensitive information about someone else’s business online without their permission.

Many of your clients will probably be happy to be featured in a case study, as long as you make them look good and avoid giving away anything they don’t want to be public knowledge.

If your client does not want to be featured under their brand, you can decide to write the case study and highlight the metrics without using their name and simply say “A Company in [blank] Industry”. That said, a more compelling case study features a brand with customer quotes, so try to find projects and clients that are happy to have their name on your site.

Once a client agrees to the case study, set up an interview with them so you can discuss the project. A testimonial is a great addition to a case study—for example, here's what one of our case studies had to say about us:

AgencyAnalytics automated the work of two to three full-time employees. It’s been a massive savings cost-wise and efficiency-wise. It’s also been a dramatic time-saver. I’m very happy with AgencyAnalytics and what the tool offers our clients.

Gather the information and data points prior to discussing it with your client, so they have a clear idea of what will be included in the study. A great marketing case study includes visual data points of the hard numbers. Take screenshots to highlight results from previous customers to add credibility.

Goal completion graph

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3. Outline Your Case Study

Once you have all the information you need, it’s time to make an outline. It may help to create a content brief before you get started.

Think of your case study like a story—it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Present your client’s problem at the beginning, and fill in the middle with the details of how you solved it.

Cap things off with a description of how your client benefited from working with you. For example, you can call out the long-term SEO benefits of a content marketing strategy, including leads that are still being generated months after the post was published. Don’t forget; the client is the protagonist of this story, not you.

4. Be Human

As you start writing your case study, remember to keep it relatable. Don’t just rattle off a list of stats your client wanted to improve. A compelling case study will also be entertaining and enjoyable to read.

Dig a little deeper and talk about the implications of their problem. For instance, was your client frustrated that none of their strategies were working to bring in more traffic? Were they disappointed about having to delay other projects because their conversions weren’t improving? Try to zero in on a specific pain point that your potential clients may be dealing with themselves.

5. Provide Actionable Advice

An effective case study doesn’t just make you and your client look good. It also provides information or advice that anybody can use, whether they decide to hire you or not. You don’t have to give away the key secrets of your trade, but don’t be stingy either—share some of your methods, your knowledge, and any lessons learned while helping your client. Give the reader something they can take away and apply to their own work.

This isn’t as counterproductive as it might sound. Being open about your work will help build valuable trust with potential clients. And even if you’re completely transparent about your methods, most people that aren’t marketing experts will still opt to hire you instead of doing the legwork of implementing your strategy themselves.

6. Write Clearly and Succinctly (Avoid Industry Jargon!)

A great case study is easy to read and digest. These pointers will help you keep your readers interested from beginning to end.

Write concisely. Don’t bog your piece down with unnecessary details.

Avoid jargon as much as possible. Someone outside your field should be able to read and understand your case study.

Break up the page with plenty of white space. Use short paragraphs, sub-headers, and bullet points to organize your content.

Include plenty of charts and graphs. Visual content breaks up the monotony of text and keeps readers engaged.

Include a call-to-action (CTA). After you've told a compelling story to your potential customer, tell them exactly how they can contact your sales team or where they can learn more about your services.

7. Publish and Promote

Before you publish your case study, show it to your client to make sure they’re happy with everything you’ve written. Once they give you the thumbs-up, you can post the piece on your site or start using it as a lead magnet. For best results, promote your case study just like you would a blog post. A few well-timed social media posts can bring your case study a lot of extra attention, and maybe even get you a few more leads.

Locally-targeted Facebook Ads can be really effective for agencies. Using your case study or a pdf expanded version of it can be a great lead magnet to gather the email addresses of potential clients. Don’t just publish the case study and forget it. Make the most of it! One case study can be a powerful lead generation tool.

Spend Less Time Creating Reports and More Time Growing Your Agency

Looking to find a bit of inspiration too? Sometimes the best way to learn is to follow a great example. See how some of these marketers have taken a customer's success story and crafted compelling content with tangible data points for their clients.

Bounteous has an overview section that gives a great overview of the goals, approach, and results.

Bounteous featured clients

KlientBoost includes marketing case studies on their website that are short and to the point. The one-page piece of content focuses on results that are delivered to the clients. You can find an example case study here .

Mention case study

AgencyAnalytics provides another example that includes details about the client, the challenge they were facing, the best solution they used, and the ultimate result. You can read find our case studies here .

AgencyAnalytics testimonial by Brian Dean

The Takeaway

Learning to write case studies is a smart investment in your agency’s future success. They help with your agency's reputation management , earn new clients’ trust, and highlight your agency’s skills in a way that most other types of content can’t. They're also a great piece to use in your client proposal arsenal. When it comes to conversions, a few targeted, high-quality case studies will go a long way, so don’t overlook this powerful marketing tool.

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Joe Kindness

Joe started his career as a developer and since has created many internet businesses. He has now moved on to the position of CEO and has enjoyed all the challenges it has brought.

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What Is a Case Study & Customer Success Story?

Learn the definition of a business case study, its meaning, benefits & use in marketing. Get best methods to research, write & design business case studies.

client success case study

Dominika Krukowska

10 minute read

What is a case study

Short answer

What is a business case study.

A case study, also called customer success story, is a product marketing document used to show how your clients solved a business problem with the aid of your product or service. Case studies include statistics, quotes, and concrete examples with the goal of credibly demonstrating your capability to deliver results.

Bad case studies are not just ineffective - they lead to lost sales

A poorly done business case study can be a real bottleneck in your marketing funnel.

Sure, you have to have them; they're a non-negotiable part of the buying process. But if they're not compelling, you might as well not waste your time on it.

It’s bad enough that it’s hard to make a case study that gets results. But making a weak case study can actually cause you to look less attractive than the competition and cost you leads and sales.

Sometimes more is less.

This post is your roadmap to transforming your case studies from forgettable fillers to customer magnets. And ultimately, turning more prospects into customers.

Let's jump in!

What are the benefits of case studies in business and marketing?

Case studies are an essential part of any well-oiled marketing engine. They demonstrate real-life applications, showcase your unique value, build trust, address concerns, and connect with your audience.

Let’s get a bit into detail.

Demonstrating real-life applications: Business case studies show your product or service in action, offering a peek into how it can be used in real-world situations. It's like offering a test drive before asking customers to commit.

Showing your unique value: Customer success stories let your product or service shine. They illustrate exactly what you bring to the table and why customers should choose you over anyone else.

Building trust: Think of business case studies as your brand's personal advocate. They show how you've helped others succeed, which makes potential customers more likely to trust you with their business.

Easing concerns and objections: Got customers sitting on the fence? Business case studies can gently nudge them towards you by addressing common doubts or worries. It's about showing potential customers that you can deliver what they need.

Connecting with your audience: A good business case study is like a mirror—your potential customers should be able to see themselves in it. It's all about tapping into their hopes, their worries, and their needs.

What to include in a case study?

A successful business case study is the product of a strategic blend of essential components. Each one carries its weight, shaping a narrative that is both engaging and impactful.

Introduction: Set the stage with a one-liner summarizing your unique value proposition. Tailor it to grab your readers' attention and pique their curiosity.

Company overview: Give your audience a snapshot of your customer's business, helping them understand who they are and what they do.

The problem/challenge: Dive into the nitty-gritty of the issue your customer was facing (from their perspective), making it relatable to your audience.

Your solution: Detail how your product or service swooped in as the game-changing solution, addressing the customer's problem.

Results: Showcase the impressive outcome of your solution, demonstrating tangible success that can't be ignored. Back it up with relevant data and metrics.

Customer quotes/testimonials: Add authenticity and credibility to your case study with direct quotes from the customer who experienced the transformation first-hand.

Next steps: Conclude with a call to action, guiding the reader on what to do next, whether it's contacting your company or booking a product demo.

Here's an example of a case study designed according to this structure:

UX case study example

UX Case study

This template for case studies in UX and UI comes with tons of space for text and many visual elements such as charts, timelines, or graphs. This one is perfect for those case studies in which you need to explain the process in greater detail.

What makes a good case study?

A good case study follows a story format of problem-solution-impact. It includes key details of the client’s problem, how they solved it with the help of your product, and the impact it brought them.

8 critical components of a successful case study:

  • Talking from the client’s perspective
  • Addressing well-defined business problem
  • Telling the WHY, not just the WHAT and the HOW
  • Giving concrete example
  • Backing the story with statistics and facts
  • Weaving quotes and testimonials into the story
  • Making the content interactive
  • Including a call to action

In principle, a top-tier business case study is more than a testimonial.

Think of it as a blockbuster movie, where your customer is the hero Luke Skywalker, the problem is the looming death star, and your solution is the trusted guide Obi-Wan Kenobi.

This gives readers an engaging narrative that not only captures interest but also propels action.

Now let's take a look behind-the-scenes. at the key elements that make a good business case study.

1. Story from the client’s perspective

The key to a captivating case study lies in whose story you're telling. Let your customer be the hero, not your product or service. By focusing on their journey, you'll create a narrative that resonates with your audience, making them more invested in the outcome.

A great example is Adobe’s case study with Under Armour :

In this case study, Adobe tells the story of how Under Armour used Adobe Experience Manager Assets to streamline and enhance their creative asset management. The case study is presented from Under Armour's point of view, providing a customer-centric perspective.

2. Common but well-defined business problem

The best case studies revolve around relatable, well-articulated problems. The issue should be common enough for your audience to identify with, yet specific enough to avoid being generic.

Shoot for the sweet spot that makes a specific segment of your prospective clients say, "That sounds like us!"

A great example is Slack’s case study with HubSpot :

HubSpot, a well-known inbound marketing , sales, and service software provider, grappled with the challenge of maintaining internal communication and collaboration across a rapidly expanding global team.

This case study by Slack outlines how they addressed HubSpot's problem - a common issue faced by many growing businesses.

3. Tell the WHY, not just the WHAT and the HOW

The magic of a compelling case study lies in the mystery of 'why' your solution works. It's crucial to share what happened and how, but digging into the reasons behind the decisions and outcomes adds mystery to your story and keeps your audience intrigued.

An example of this is Marketo’s case study with Panasonic :

In this business case study, Marketo digs into why Panasonic decided to implement a new marketing automation solution.

The case study doesn't just focus on the solutions Marketo provided, but also highlights the reasons behind Panasonic's decision, adding depth to the narrative.

4. Concrete examples

Details make your case study relatable and tangible. Incorporate specifics - who did what , when , where , and how . These concrete examples help your audience visualize the scenario, making your narrative more compelling and memorable.

Zendesk's case study with LendingClub presents concrete examples:

It follows how LendingClub used Zendesk's customer service software to improve their customer support operations.

The case study offers a clear narrative about the problems LendingClub faced, the solutions provided by Zendesk, and the impact these solutions had on LendingClub's business.

Numbers lend authority and credibility that words often cannot. They provide concrete evidence of your solution's impact, creating a stronger case for your product or service.

But remember, these stats should be significant, reliable, and, most importantly, show real impact on your customer’s bottom line.

Here's an example of a great animated numbers slide:

Animated numbers slide example

6. Quotes and testimonials

There's nothing like a testimonial from a happy customer to boost your credibility. Direct quotes add a personal touch and authenticity to your case study, making it more believable and trustworthy.

Here’s a great testimonial example from Hotjar:

Hotjar testimonials example

7. Interactive design

Incorporating interactive design elements will make your case studies stand out, but more importantly, drive high-engagement.

Use eye-catching graphics, use clickable elements like tabs, videos, and menus, include live graphs, animated flipbooks , and so on. Use these elements tactically in order to break up your text into digestible chunks and make your content easier to read and to navigate.

Here’s an example of an interactive business case study:

Marketing case study example

Marketing case study

White glove delivery with a focus on process optimization explained by a compelling story.

8. Call to action

A good case study doesn't just end; it leads your reader to the next step. Be it trying your product, booking a demo, getting in touch with your team, or reading another case study - your call to action should be clear, compelling, and easy to follow.

Here’s what a clear, singular call to action should look like:

Interactive deck with an embedded calendar

If you want to learn more practical tips, check out our post on how to create a business case study that converts .

How to use a case study in business and marketing?

Often underestimated and underused , business case studies have the power to leverage real-life narratives to shape opinions, influence decision-making, and ultimately, drive conversions.

Let me show you how you can use that power to your advantage.

1. Used as sales collateral

In the world of sales, your case study can be the difference between a polite “we’ll consider it” and a bought-in “show me how it works!”

Picture this: you're reaching out to potential clients, and you slip in a case study showcasing how you've helped a similar business overcome a common hurdle. It's not just a pitch, it's proof you can do it.

But the magic doesn't stop there. Weave these real-life success stories into your sales presentations , and watch as they accelerate your pipeline.

They provide tangible evidence of your value proposition, helping you remove objections, demonstrate value, and differentiate yourself in a crowded market.

2. Used as marketing collateral

I) Use on your website:

On the marketing front, case studies can significantly boost your self-serve conversion rate . By featuring them on your website, you're offering visitors a peek into your track record of success - letting them feel like they're missing out.

II) Add to brochures and product catalogs:

Just sprinkle in a few case studies, and you've just added an extra layer of credibility.

III) Leverage social media:

Share your case studies on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, to promote your business; and start a conversation around your brand.

IV) Include in PPC campaigns on Google AdWords:

Add case studies as site links to give potential customers another reason to click. It's like saying, "Don't just take our word for it, see how we've helped businesses like yours."

Here’s an example of what it looks like:

Case study in site links

Obstacles for creating business case studies & how to overcome them

Creating captivating business case studies is essential, but let's be real: it's not a walk in the park.

So let's buckle up and navigate the most common roadblocks and learn how to steer around them.

Hurdle 1: Spotting the right stories feels like finding a needle in a haystack.

Hold on there! Locating customers ready to share their success tales might seem daunting, but it's not mission impossible. Here's the deal: people love to share success.

How to get clients to share their success stories

Collaborate with your customer success team to identify delighted or triumphant clients

Seek out customers who are scoring high on NPS

Team up with sales to single out recent renewals or upsells

Engage with super active customers on social media

Ask your team during meetings about any standout customers

Reach out to customers who have spoken at your events

Connect with Customer Advisory Board members

Do this and you're bound to uncover some star storytellers.

Hurdle 2: Customers might not want to get involved.

Let's flip the script! Instead of begging for a favor, portray this as an opportunity for customers to amplify their industry status.

Make it a hassle-free and rewarding experience for them. Provide data, draft points for discussion, and be their cheerleader throughout the journey.

Remember, appreciation is infectious. A heartfelt thank you can turn a one-time participant into a long-term advocate.

Hurdle 3: It’s a mammoth task.

Creating business case studies can feel like a marathon, particularly when you're juggling multiple roles.

Delegating the task to an experienced industry writer can save your team a ton of time and energy. You might find the right person within your network, or you might need to explore industry-specific job boards.

Creating a structured timeline and using a shared tool can help keep everyone on track and in the loop.

Here's how to streamline the process of creating a case study:

Extend an invitation to the potential customer

Connect them with the lead writer

Conduct an internal review of the first draft before sending it to the customer

Incorporate their feedback into the second draft

Get final approval for the final draft

Publish and promote your case study!

How to design a business case study?

Your case study design supports the text like your body language supports what you’re saying when you talk. It adds that extra layer of emotional meaning you can't quite put into words.

Luckily, even if you're not a design expert, there are tools to help you add that extra emotional depth to your content. Let’s review a few tools that help you design your case study.

Design using a website builder

If you’d prefer to get hands-on with your design, website builders like Wix or Squarespace offer a versatile platform for creating a business case study from scratch.

They provide a blank canvas and a wealth of design elements, giving you the liberty to choose each piece and place it just where you want it.

It takes time and a keen eye for design to make all the elements come together seamlessly, but the end result can be rewarding.

Design using a case study maker

A case study maker gives you pre-set elements ready for use. All you need to do is drop in your content, and the tool takes care of the aesthetics and user experience.

It's a much more efficient way to create a case study with all its unique building blocks than using a website builder.

We know, since we see how fast our users create astounding case studies using our own case study creator. Try for yourself .

Don’t design - use a template

Templates provide an immediate and easy to work with structure for your design and content.

But beyond that, our gallery of interactive case study templates gives you time-tested designs we know have high-engagement and killer conversion (based on more than 100K reading sessions we’ve analyzed).

Grab a template - and you can skip the long design process, save time, money and frustration, and simply start creating.

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Hi, I'm Dominika, Content Specialist at Storydoc. As a creative professional with experience in fashion, I'm here to show you how to amplify your brand message through the power of storytelling and eye-catching visuals.

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Customer Story

Customer success stories: how to craft stories that resonate

client success case study

What’s at the root of a good customer success story? Thanks to the internet, it’s easy to get instant reviews on products and services. Movies, restaurants, workout equipment, cosmetics—one search will get you hundreds or thousands of reviews.

But if you’re a business offering a more specialized product or service, you’ll have customers and prospects who want more in-depth information. And to get buyers to see themselves using your offering, a customer success story is one of the best tools in your marketing toolbox.

In this article, we’ll look at:

  • What a customer success story is
  • Why customer success stories are great for business
  • How to write a customer success story
  • 4 examples of customer success stories from real-life companies

👀  Are you looking for examples of customer success stories? Grab our eBook to dive into five examples.

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What is a customer success story?

A customer success story informs the reader about what a client has gained from the company’s product or service.

They can come in a few different formats: the most common ones are as case studies, either as a page on a company’s site or as a downloadable file. Some companies also choose to turn their success stories into videos.

Remember: a customer success story is not just a customer testimonial. Success stories have a certain structure, which we’ll get to soon. They need to contain relevant information and be properly explained. A satisfied customer saying they love your alarm app because it helps them wake up on time is not a success story.

Creating a good success story takes lots of questions, lots of writing, and lots of editing. But, you may ask, why go to all this trouble? Won’t a quote from a happy customer tell people how great I am?

Sure. But sometimes, to truly convince potential clients, you need to go deeper.

Why are customer success stories so beneficial for businesses?

What’s the ideal outcome when a potential client reads one of your great customer service stories ?

A good story helps the client see themselves in the situation. Not in your place, but in place of the customer who found success with your product. Maybe they’re in the same industry. Maybe they’re having a similar problem. When they read about how you helped a client solve said problem, they’ll find parallels.

Customer success stories can have as broad or as narrow an appeal as you need. Just focus on who you want to read it and what you want them to get out of it. And that brings us to our next point: how to write one.

How do you write a customer success story?

To write a success story, you need a happy client. (Having trouble making your clients happy? We’ve got you covered here .) Since it’s also extra marketing for them, clients usually don’t mind being the subject of a success story. But always ask permission first!

When permission is granted, start by writing a list of questions for your client. Try to make these open-ended, so they can fill in the blanks.

When presenting these questions, a live conversation is always preferable to emailing a questionnaire—call your client over the phone or ask if you can have a video meeting. Writing a customer success story is a collaborative effort, so get up close and personal! Ideally, you’ll have a communication tool that lets you do different things like make phone calls, have video conference calls , and send messages all in the same app.

For example, RingCentral Office integrates all these communication options into one platform, so you won’t have to switch between apps for different calls:

And if you can record your customer conversations—with their permission, of course—to review later, do it! (For example, RingCentral also lets you record your phone or video calls.)

During the interview, let the qualitative information come first. You can always ask them for facts and figures later on.

Once you’ve gotten your answers from the client, you have enough information to start building the story. When writing, ensure the focus stays on the customer. Potential clients don’t see themselves in your shoes, so you need to give them a subject that they can relate to: therefore, put the customer first and showcase their struggles, so that your story will resonate with your intended audience.

A case study has four distinct sections:

1. The introduction

Introduce your client, give some background information, and explain their goals. For introduction sections, infographics or at-a-glance sections like the one below can be really useful—they present facts succinctly, instead of making the reader browse through paragraphs of text.

Company introduction

2. The problem

This is where you introduce the problem your client was facing before you swooped in to help. This problem must stand directly in the way of your client’s goals.

3. The solution

Here’s where you shine! Explain how the customer overcame the problem by using your product or service. Remember, keep the focus on the customer! They’re the hero of this story. Frame your product or service as a necessary tool to solving the problem, instead of making the case study about your company.

4. The outcome

This is where you present the facts. For example: since using your product or service, the customer has seen a 200% sales increase, a 500% increase in social media engagement, and so on. The more concrete numbers, the better! Another important part of a case study is customer testimonials. If you can get some good solid quotes from the client, it will help to drive home the impact of the success story.

A few more tips for this section:

First of all, make sure that you’re collaborating with your customer throughout the writing process. It’s depressingly common for companies to exaggerate or hyperbolize their capabilities in sales calls and marketing material. Don’t do that in customer success stories. These are real situations with real people, and they need to be authentic—otherwise you’re setting potential clients up for disappointment.

4 customer success stories from real-life companies

Here are some examples of customer success stories pulled from the internet. We’re going to take a close look at each of them to help you understand their strengths and weaknesses. In this section, the company will be the one writing the success story that they’ve helped their customer to achieve. All case studies are linked, in case you’d like to examine them further.

1. Keap and Burleson Orthodontics

Company: Keap

Customer: Burleson Orthodontics

Format: On-site case study

Burleson Orthodontics is an orthodontics office located in Kansas City, Missouri. They decided to use Keap, a US-based software company, to automate some tasks in their email marketing strategy.

In the three years since they started with Keap, Burleson Orthodontics has experienced huge growth and success, and the founder, Dr. Dustin Burleson, had high praise. This story highlights Keap’s versatility as a tool for all types of business. Here’s how Keap frames Dr. Burleson’s decision to choose Keap:

This is a great approach—it actively encourages potential clients to think about how they could use Keap in their own business. Since Burleson Orthodontics was their first orthodontics company, it shows companies that Keap welcomes new industries.

The Burleson Orthodontics case study’s “at a glance” section, however, has a couple of problems:

Burleson Orthodontics case study’s “at a glance” section

The “Customer” heading is unclear—what does 2005 refer to? For any customer success story, clarity is key. The information should be easy to understand and process.

In addition, Burleson Orthodontics’ own website states that the company was founded in 2006. Watch out for this, as incorrect information can undercut the authority of your success story.

Key strength: Relatability. This case study tells readers that Keap is useful for all types of industries.

How it could be improved: The at-a-glance section. This section should always, always be clear as day.

2. RingCentral and Stratejm

Company: RingCentral

Customer: Stratejm

Stratejm is a cybersecurity firm based in Ontario, Canada. As the first cloud-based security-as-a-service company in Canada, its founder, John Menezes, knew that he needed exceptional customer success. When it comes to cybersecurity, even tiny delays can be critical.

Menezes chose RingCentral, a comprehensive, cloud-based business communications platform that allowed customers to contact Stratejm through any method of their choice. Menezes explains that RingCentral takes many problems off his plate:

RingCentral’s desktop and mobile apps let you make video calls and phone calls, and send messages all in the same place.

RingCentral’s desktop and mobile apps let you make video calls and phone calls, and send messages all in the same place.

While this case study doesn’t have a ton of quantitative data, it does have lots of praise for the way the software helps, as well as an estimate on staff savings alone of at least $75,000 annually. The client’s gratitude is clear, which bolsters the emotional potential of the case study.

Key strength: Client-focused. Lots of great quotes from the client about how satisfied they are and how RingCentral helped.

How it could be improved: This case study contains an estimate of savings from the client, but more numbers can always be added to show the benefits.

🤯 You could save up to $400 an hour it IT costs. 

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3. Jacobs Law Group and an unnamed demolition business

Company: Jacobs Law Group

Customer: Unnamed demolition business

Format: On-site client success story

Jacobs law group is a Philadelphia-based law firm. Due to their focus on client privacy, they don’t name any of their clients in their success stories, but that doesn’t stop them from getting into heavy legal detail.

This story is shorter than any of the others we talk about in this section. Jacobs Law Group explains that a partner had left their client’s company to start a competing business and later demanded financial records and dividends.

Jacobs Law Group was able to force out the competing partner with a single cash payment. Their legal work also uncovered improprieties by the former partner, ending the threat of future legal cases.

While this case study shows that Jacobs Law Group satisfied their client and has good legal know-how, the language was clearly written by people with a deep knowledge of the law. Their case studies, while short, consistently use complicated language and terms without much explanation. For the average reader, this could be off-putting. Customer success stories must be clear and easy to understand; otherwise, their impact suffers.

Key strength: They won the case using out-of-the-box thinking. This shows that Jacobs Law Group can find good solutions to complex legal problems.

How it could be improved: Dense language. Case studies should be accessible, so this example would benefit from either explaining some of the terms used or overall simplification of the language.

4. Amplexor and an EU-based bank

Company: Amplexor

Customer: An EU-based bank

Format: Downloadable case study

Amplexor is a digital consulting and content strategy company based in Luxembourg. Their client in this case study, an unnamed European bank, was launching a new online portal and invited Amplexor to send them a proposal on how they could improve it.

Taking the needs of their client into consideration, Amplexor built a new foundation for their client’s digital communication channels using the Adobe Experience Cloud system.

This case study has a few different problems. First and foremost, it’s much more about Amplexor than it is about the client. There are no quotes, even anonymous ones, from the satisfied customer: instead, we’re treated to two different quotes from Amplexor employees, like the one below:

Amplexor case study

The whole point of writing a case study is to tell your client’s story. Your client’s success should speak for itself.

And that’s the other issue: this case study has no quantitative data whatsoever, and not even anything qualitative. While it does present the company’s abilities, as a case study, it’s missing too much information to be truly effective or to show what differentiates it from other companies offering similar services.

How it could be improved: Lots of technical details for interested clients.

Weaknesses: Too focused on the business instead of the client, and lacking any supporting evidence for the conclusion.

What’s your customer success story strategy?

Focus on the customer, make your story accessible, and if you can, always include concrete numbers and customer testimonials.

This will give you a solid foundation for any future customer success story.

Running a business isn’t easy, and neither is finding the right tools for the job; but with well-crafted customer success stories in your marketing toolbox, you’ll have the right supporting evidence to show customers why you’re the perfect choice.

Originally published Mar 15, 2020, updated Feb 24, 2022

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Customer retention is a vital part of building a thriving business. But maintaining a satisfied and loyal customer base takes a fair amount of thought and dedication. Your existing customers are your primary assets. To earn their continued business, you need to offer a great customer experience and build solid customer relationships. In this post, ...

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Consulting MBA

How to Create a Client Case Study that Resonates with Prospects

Consultant Skills

In a business where “proving your worth” is one of the tenants to success, a client case study is a perfect fit.

While it doesn’t sound so wonderful to  prove one’s worth, it can be. This is what renowned experts are doing through their thought leadership efforts. It’s what we all do in our marketing and sales.

Four Steps to Creating a Meaningful Case Study 

It isn’t quite as simple as jumping on a call, asking your client to say nice things about you, and transcribing it. You are telling a story to new prospects, so the onus must be on you to direct that story.

Step One: Select the Right Clients

Theoretically, every client that you can have attest to your expertise and achievements helps. However, theories break down in practice when they are met with the realistic measurement of resources.

Even if you have a healthy budget, you only have so many minutes to put towards any effort. Remember that you should operate with excellence in mind, while moving quickly. You need to pick the best clients to interview, both individually and in the mix among the others.

Your client-selection criteria are:

Magnitude of success

Representative of ideal prospects, diversity among other examples.

Case studies are simply attempts to impress your audience, showing your worth, and standing out among your competitors and alternatives. The more grand of an image of potential results you can paint, while maintaining integrity, honesty, and relevance, the more convincing the case study will be.

However, do not ever break your integrity, nor question the intelligence of your clients. If you use a hyperbolic statement or statistic that is not truly measured to the results you delivered to the clients business ( vanity metrics, in other words), pass on that idea.

Prospective clients are looking to see how you have helped others similar to them. This can be measured by the demographics of the company (do they look like us?) and their motivations (did they face the same situation as we are now?) .

Specializing in certain subject-matters and focusing on a niche are important to show just how deep your expertise runs in a relevant area to your prospect. However, if you plan to pursue clients in a variety of industries, or want to extend yourself outside a single service offering, you need to show how you are flexible and how that flexibility is a benefit to your clients.

Use these criteria to determine  who you should interview before moving on.

Step Two: Asking Guiding Questions

The questions you ask dictate the flow of the interview. If you are creating a written case study, you can do more tailoring of the information later. With video case studies, you will need to be extra particular of how you stage the questions and the responses you receive.

Answer the questions from the client’s perspective first

Before you sit down with the client and begin, prompt yourself with the questions you choose and use their viewpoint. How might you respond if you were asked this question? How do you think that individual will respond? Look for areas that can be improved to fit the narrative you are developing better and to avoid ambiguity and confusion.

Suggested question types

  • What goal did we reach together?
  • What were the main benefits you experienced?
  • Did we solve any specific challenges?
  • Why was this a challenge for you at that time?
  • Did we make your job easier or reduce downtime?
  • Did we help your company save money or earn more? How significant was this?
  • What stood out to you about our process for fixing this?
  • What was different about working with us as compared to similar situations in the past you handled in-house or that you hired others to help you with?
  • Why is the outcome so significant?

The list above proposed several types of questions with different purposes. You should rewrite them as part of your script to be more natural, fluid, interconnected and relevant. However, make note of the overall perspective.

We want to ask our client about the challenge they faced, the solution we presented, their experience working with us, and the result of our engagement. Additionally, we want to do all of this while helping them step into the frame of mind they were in when these things happened, rather than today.

That means leading their thoughts with something like, “Think back to the day you first reached out to us. What was going on that made you want to pick up the phone and figure out what you needed to do?”

Reference that period in their lives to get them back. Continue on with additional questions, like, “how did you feel picking up the phone to call our company cold?” or, “when that was going on in your company, what was it doing to affect you personally?”

The questions are where you find the gold. But only if you plan them out beforehand. (I also discuss asking the right set of questions in my post about standing out in saturated markets . Give that a read next if you are having trouble getting people to care about you to read a case study in the first place.)

Step Three: Produce the Case Study

I won’t go into detail in the logistics of how to record or film your case study. I will, however, walk you through what to consider in designing the final product.

Use the Challenge, Solution, Result framework

This is a popular approach to framing case studies to tell the client’s story in a logical and meaningful way.

Challenge: The Frustration (situation or problem) and the Impact (significance).

Solution: The Theory (what we will do) and the Application (steps taken)

Result: Outcome and lessons (including bits of wisdom and relevant resources)

As you write in this format, look for points to add specifics. Not only do mentions of specific instances and decisions make it more engaging, they make it more believable as well.

We can make this explicit with numbers. Let’s assume you are told about two consultants: one helped a company grow by $10,000,000 in a year, the other helped a company grow $8,640,000 in a year. While the latter is less substantial as a figure, it adds an element of believability based on its specificity.

Focus on readability

No matter the circumstance and no matter the prospective client’s situation, it’s doubtful that reading a case study is the most enthralling activity for your reader. Do right by them by making it easy to read, as well as to skim.

This comes down to proper copywriting techniques that will guide the reader through a piece, keeping them engaged, and also allowing them to briefly review the write-up without needing to read every word.

Use bullet-points where appropriate.

Keep sentences concise. Around fifteen words or less is fine.

Make paragraphs short, rather than in large blocks of texts. Two or three sentences is sufficient.

Leverage technology: The Hemingway Editor is my go-to for quickly cleaning up writing.

I can make countless additional suggestions. For a basic but comprehensive copywriting overview that touches on readability and gets you out of typical corporate-speak, I recommend  Neville Medhora’s book .

At this point, you should have a well-polished case study. You may consider adding a photo, including a clear call-to-action, and add your company branding and contact information. Just don’t forget to check for errors. Who wants to hire the consultant who can’t spell words write on his own marketing material?

Step Four: Put the Case Study to Use

The greatest sin of the consultant who has invested his time, money and energy into developing a quality, professional case study is that it sits in their Google Drive folder, never to be fully utilized.

As with any investment in expanding your influence, you need to put it to use to make it worthwhile. There are several ways I suggest you do this:

  • Create a web page version so online visitors can access the full case study
  • Share your case studies through your marketing channels, like email and social media
  • Develop a one-page PDF version that can be used in email or print collateral
  • Add the case study to your sales nurturing process
  • Place it strategically in your sales funnels on any marketing campaigns you run
  • Ask your client to share it with a select few of their colleagues
  • Use it as a “business card” when introducing yourself to new prospects or referral partners
  • Share them again via email after a year passes or in a week on social. No one is paying that much attention to notice that you are resharing your own content, nor would they care.

To summarize, the four steps are to:

  •  Select the clients that are the best-fit for what you are trying to accomplish
  • Ask questions that develop the narrative you wish to tell
  • Design the case study in a way that makes it an engaging and easy read
  • Leverage the case study in any existing and new marketing and sales efforts

While a case study may not generate new leads on its own (though a website version may have some SEO benefit), it is a pivotal element to help you convert more of the prospects that already know of you. People need to connect with who they buy from. A case study is simply a tool to bridge that gap between a stranger who claims they can help and someone who can be seen as a trusted advisor.

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Client case studies & business success stories

See how we help our clients become the next and best versions of themselves—including behind-the-scenes stories from our people—around the world, each and every day.

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AXA’s claims in the cloud

Building cutting-edge AWS insurance capabilities

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Future-forward learning and media company

Sanoma uses a multi-cloud strategy to accelerate innovation in learning solutions

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Delivering a powerful climate message to the world

Preserving Tuvalu — the world’s first completely digitized nation — in the metaverse

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Petrofac’s digital workforce transformation

Developing one of the energy industry’s first connected worker solutions

Supply chain & operations

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Tomorrow’s demands, forecasted today

A forward-looking supply chain using demand forecasting

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Routing to resilient, sustainable supply chain

The power of proactive risk management

Customer experience

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Stunning visual effects

Helping Netflix bring dramatic on-screen worlds to life

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Human experience that delivers a competitive edge

Creating consistent, world-class customer service across all countries

Sustainability services

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Duke Energy powers platform for methane reduction

First-of-its-kind, end-to-end methane emissions monitoring and remediation solution

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Powering an actionable climate roadmap

Helping a petrochemical giant meet its net-zero commitment

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Everybody wins: How to implement customer success [a case study]

Everybody wins: How to implement customer success [a case study]

Customer-Centricity is bang on trend; 73% of business leaders recognised customer experience as one of the most important purchase-driving factors.

The truth is, there are no conniving, cheeky tricks you can use. Instead, it takes consistency, persistence, and a shared team ethos. Here are the top customer experience strategies our company employs, that we know our customers love us for.

Why did we decide to move to customer success?

As a bootstrapped company with no side investments, we were very selective about where we spent our money at first. Besides the nature of our business means we emphasise the necessity of quality customer relations. Eventually, we came to the decision that we needed our team to become advocates and voices for our customers. We needed a mediator between customers and the product team, and so it made sense to switch from Customer Support to a Customer Success model.

Customer Support is centred on providing a one-time solution to a problem. Sure, it can help when a customer faces a challenge and reaches out for a solution. The problem is that this model is limited by the issue that your customer is trying to overcome at any specific moment. With Customer Support, you only ever interact with your customers when they’re angry or upset. Customer Success is one of the ingredients of a company's CRM strategy .

Customer Success should be in the DNA of your business and Customer Success team.

On the other hand, Customer Success builds long-term relationships with customers, and instead of simply reacting to their problems, you make sure there are none in the first place. Customer Success is sustainable. As a subscription-based SaaS company, we can only be successful if our customers are too. We started to develop our Customer Success department in the end of 2017 and now it comprises four customer success managers. Anastasia leads the department; you might have read a few good words about Anastasia in our user reviews.

If you’re an enterprise-sized business that can afford to have separate technical support and customer success departments, awesome. But if you’re an early-stage startup that counts every penny, we strongly recommend to switch to a Customer Success model, from your existing Customer Support one. But simply renaming your support department is not enough. To effectuate your new Customer Success Department for the potential results, your business needs a high-touch customer relation mindset with passionate employees at the helm.

How we implement our customer success strategy

Our Customer Success model helps us achieve a beautifully-low churn rate of just 4.3%. On average, SaaS companies achieve an NPS score of 30; we come in at 26. Alas, we’re not bragging; we want to help. Here are the Customer Success strategies we have implemented that have helped us achieve these numbers.

Onboard and activate customers based on their needs

We put together a buyer persona, which is a depiction of our ideal customer. After registration, this helps us to identify the conversion probability of a customer and the value they can bring to our business. For prospects and clients with bigger teams, those who might need more help from our end to start using the product, we have a dedicated activation program.

First, the customer success team develops a thorough understanding of the client’s business and their workflows. Afterwards, they bend our product to fit the customer’s specific needs and processes. Before the first interaction with a potential customer, a Customer Success Manager needs to answer four questions about a prospect. Answers to these questions help define the use case more clearly, shape the first conversation, and hint at the features we need to show first.

  • Which industry are they in, and what product or service do they provide
  • Which problems will our product or service help them to solve?
  • Which other tools are currently in their tech stack?
  • What processes and workflows are already set up to fit our product in there?

We define an ‘ activation ’ as when a customer first imports their existing customer data, from a spreadsheet or elsewhere, alongside an invitation for their teammates to join the workspace. Whilst onboarding, the aim of our CS managers is to bring customers closer to their ‘ aha!’ moment, and faster. Going further, we want to bring our customers to these milestones quicker.

Assisted onboarding and activation helps shorten customer learning curves, reduces product friction, and helps them understand the value of the product faster.  

Educate your customers

Educating customers is at the core of a customer achieving success with your product. After you onboarded clients, the education doesn't stop. This is especially true as your product grows and gains more features.

Apart from newsletter and in-product notifications alongside major updates and releases, we run live webinars to walk-through the features we have added or improved. This opens up a two-way conversation and helps us answer all the questions our customers have. Furthermore, we constantly produce educational content on our blog such as guides, ebooks, cheat sheets, and checklists. Take a wild guess where we get our ideas for new content from.

That’s right, from our Customer Success team. We transform their insights into comprehensive copies. Some other activities that SaaS companies can employ as part of customer educational programs include...

  • An FAQ page split into sections based on different product features.
  • Audio content to help customers troubleshoot product problems can be difficult to consume, but hosting a business- or industry-related podcast can bring value to your clients.
  • Conferences or product workshops.
  • A learning management system (LMS) with educational videos and tutorials.
  • Academies and certificates for those who want to become partners or resellers.    

Another resource we developed to educate our customers is our customer community . A community group adds immeasurable value to your product; networking opportunities offer another reason to stay with your brand. People know that, along with the product, they gain a group of like-minded professionals that share similar pain points that need soothing.

Community groups relieves the load from the Customer Success Department’s shoulders by suggesting the best solutions and workarounds to users, from other users.

client success case study

Run assessment calls

We understand that the success of our clients’ businesses depends on our product to some extent. Between every one to three months, our Customer Success managers do their homework and review client accounts . They take a look at the customers’ initial inquiries inside our CRM system, along with communication history, to estimate whether their initial business pain point is satisfied. Afterwards, they book an assessment call with the customer to offer advice on deeper, more specific use of our product. Not only will that help them achieve their goals by using it efficiently, but encourages them to go beyond these goals by using features they didn’t know about before.

A common issue for SaaS companies can be that once initial users have set up the system, they don’t change their usage of it... even though the system evolves a lot. For users that have been with us since the first days of our product, our Customer Success representatives have constantly helped them to totally restructure their accounts to be able to use the whole functionality to its full potential.

After six months of successful product experience, our clients are offered the opportunity to share their thoughts and show what they could accomplish using our product.  We aim to showcase peer-to-peer stories where our clients show how our product helps them to address challenges they have had and how it’s improved their business. We make sure our stories are industry- related, so that our prospects can walk in the shoes of real product users and hear the first-hand experience.  

Another responsibility for our Customer Success representatives is also to pay attention to clients with low account activity. We defined some triggers that may be a sign of an upcoming customer churn, such as if there is no workspace activity for two weeks. If so, they reach out with an email to get to know what went wrong and if they need any help from our end.

client success case study

Implement a conversational experience

A conversational customer experience is one that offers continuous support and guidance to customers, through means of one-to-one communication with a brand. It implies highly-personalised conversations between a brand and their customers offer help with every stage of the buyer journey: from evaluating the product to product issues and eventual renewals.

It should be agreed that customers might not want to email you with a detailed explanation of every problem they experience. This is time-consuming for both them and your business. It’s a similar story regarding product-related questions that prospects might have as they are surfing your website, trying to identify whether your solution is the best fit. One of the easiest ways around this is to implement a conversational experience by employing live chats and chatbots for your website and inside the product itself.

52% of consumers are more likely to make repeat purchases if the company offers support via live chat.

We did that. We installed an Intercom chat function on our website and inside our product. Now, our customer success managers are online and ready to help. At the moment, it’s not realistic for us to be online 24/7. Still, we cover EST working hours because this is the audience that makes up the majority of our client and website traffic.

The main thing with live chats is the need to act fast. Most prospects expect an answer within one minute, and why wouldn’t they? Our average response time is around two minutes, but we are striving to shorten it to 90 seconds. Yes, the chats also help us hit growth points. During the first online-chat conversation, we try to qualify the lead . If necessary, we can move the conversation away from livechat and jump on a live demo to provide a hands-on product experience.

client success case study

To relieve the workload from constant chatting and emailing with repetitive questions, we created a self-service base of educational content as well as lots of YouTube videos for certain use cases. Of course, it doesn’t cover every possible question, but it works for 85% of requests.

Conversational experience is not just about omni-channel support, it’s also about integrated apps and a centralised hub where we can store every multi-channel interaction with clients.

NetHunt CRM has recently developed an integration with Intercom. With it, we can instantly create or link records for each incoming chat. As a result, we can maintain an individual conversation history, from multiple channels, with each customer within our dashboard.

client success case study

Collaborate with other departments

We aggregate all client requests using tags in our CRM, so our product manager can evaluate and prioritize them. We hold weekly meetings with the product team and share client feedback and relay frequently-asked requests. To provide best-in-class customer experience, we always close feedback loops. No customer request is left unanswered, regardless of whether it is satisfied or we are not going to make any changes in the near future. If we don’t plan to implement the requested feature, our customer success team finds a workaround to satisfy the request.

As well as weekly meetings, we also have a dedicated Slack channel to post about product bugs. Here we can communicate issues that affect our clients’ businesses, and which need a prompt respoonse. Even though we have a roadmap that we strictly stick to, we always leave the room for urgent requests from our customers.

Internal cooperation instead of competition

Where most businesses force competition between customer success managers, we don’t. We promote cooperation. We clearly outline what the department is for and what it aims to achieve. As a result, every team member wants to collectively contribute to achieve common goals. In the face of particularly difficult hurdles to overcome, we discuss them as a team. We know each other’s strengths, based on the product and previous experience.

Tips for communication with customers

  • Ease off the technical jargon. Speak to your customers in a language they understand.

For example… instead of ‘when you import data from spreadsheets, you get columns depicted as record fields’, we simply say, ‘when you import data from spreadsheets, the columns turn into separate profiles in CRM’.

  • Define dudes with a bro-mindset or customers who come strictly to solve their problem . This does not mean that you should not be friendly with the second ones. It is to build a demo scenario and the tone of voice.
  • Befriend your customers. It’s impossible to be a friend to your customers when you don’t know anything about them. Abandon bureaucracy and talk about what their favourite show is and whether they have a pet; find some common interests. Even if you don’t match, you should start with unrelated business topics. Keeping it casual brings you closer together, helping them trust you more.

Look at your customers as individuals; don’t just treat them like cash cows for your business to milk.

  • Don’t be shy; ask a lot of questions. Some customers want to hear a no-nonsense solution to their issue without diving deep into the details. You need to explain to them that even though some questions you ask might seem irrelevant, this is the only way to come up with a truly efficient, sustainable solution.
  • Clients can be rude; don’t be rude back . Try and diconnect from your normal emotions and put your professional hat on. It’s nothing personal.
  • The work of the Customer Success department does not imply pages of scripts and running calls through predefined scenarios . Representatives need an in-depth knowledge of the product and a similarly deep understanding how to apply certain features to business processes.

Bonus: How we managed customer success through the crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way businesses communicate with their customers to ensure retention. One strategy to this end is to provide a better customer experience. We’ve always strived for this, and recently discovered just how important it is for our business. We realised that businesses would minimise their costs, meaning they might want to stop using our software. So, we added a few Customer Success activities to persuade them to stay with us.

Pandemic or not, a business can reap huge benefits from these activities.

We reach out to a client and ask how things are going, without any transactional questions.

We show flexibility. For businesses that have been heavily affected by the crisis, we offered discounts or split payments. Of course we were very selective with this, so as not to undersell our product.

In return, you can ask clients for something in return...

  • A review on dedicated platforms like G2 or Capterra.

client success case study

  • To act as an affiliate and recommend your product to partners and friends. Help them with content if necessary, create a special offer, and increase virality.
  • Host a partner webinar if you have an audience overlap. This strengthens partner relationships and decreases the chance of them churning. Furthermore, partner webinars require less preparation as you split the responsibilities.
  • Ask clients to share a success story on  your social media or blog. Let them explain how much they benefit from your product and love your customer success team!

How to select customer success agents and which personality traits are essential

Customer success can either make or break a business. It’s extremely important to hire people who share your company values and possess the appropriate set of personal traits. Our business is built upon a foundation of customer-centricity, and so we are selective to people who will accompany customers along their journey.

  • They need to be empathetic . Customer Success is all about fulfilling your customers’ longing for success and ensuring they achieve their goals. If you want to be proactive, you need to have a genuine desire to help. Get to know the goals your customers are trying to achieve with your product and offer them appropriate solutions.
  • They need to be responsible. We look for Customer Success representatives who can take responsibility. We want people who take initiative, and don’t rely on their managers. They should even offer ways on how to improve internal processes and interaction with clients.
  • They need to be business-savvy. Customer Success representatives need to understand the client’s business in order to deliver them with high value from your product. We often hold training sessions with industry experts to dive deeper into the specifics of each business.
  • They need to be proactive. We look at people with active lives, hobbies, and for those who participate in social projects.
  • They need to be team players. As we want our Customer Success team to act as a single organism, we are looking for true team players to join our company.

Looking ahead

If you listen to everything you customers have to say, they’ll listen back. Apart from the obvious revenue benefits a longer customer lifetime brings, it can also be a great addition to your collection of real-use case studies. Furthermore happy customers can be very generous with their recommendations, so prepare to enjoy the power of word-of-mouth that’ll give a boost in customer growth.

Even though we’ve hit some nice numbers, we still want more. We aim to achieve a negative churn rate by improving both our product and Customer Success processes. We will do this with the help of valuable feedback from our customers.

Consistency, persistence, and shared team ethos. We did it; anybody can do it.

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Transforming customer success management for a SMB digital services leader

How a laser focus on customer success metrics and conversions boosted growth

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Who we worked with:

One of the world's largest providers of digital services and platforms for small and midsize businesses.

What the company needed:

  • Slicker middle- and back-office operations to support growth and expand market share
  • A replicable, scalable operating model and business processes to achieve annual growth targets
  • Increased customer satisfaction in a cost-effective way
  • Better use of business insight to maximize customer share of wallet

How we helped:

  • Transformed customer success and renewals with revised performance metrics, skill-based call routing, and smart scheduling, all supported by analytical forecasts
  • Natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML)-driven bots, predictive analytics, and dynamic workflows to create a 360° view of the customer and maximize the value of customer relationships
  • Geography-specific social media platform listening, and management for effective and tailored responses to alerts

What the company got:

  • An increase in its customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 10% in Q3 2022
  • Outbound per-day revenue up by 30% in Q4 2022
  • Conversion rates improved to 17% within the first quarter and are now trending at 25% in Q4 2022
  • Average order size increased by over 15%

When companies armed with hyper-scale technologies set big growth targets, middle and back offices often hamper expansion, leaving customers disappointed.

This leading global internet company adopted a human-centered design-thinking approach combined with analytics, technology, and process design to address these challenges and make big gains in customer loyalty, revenue, and market share.

Matching customer experience with robust growth

This enterprise initially enjoyed exponential growth, reaching four times the size of its largest competitor within three years of launching in the US.

But it struggled to grow at the same pace in emerging markets. The customer experience was far from ideal, with the typical customer journey punctuated by multiple friction points that required considerable time and effort to navigate the purchase, service, billing, renewals, and refunds processes.

Customers didn't receive targeted sales strategies either. There were no product recommendations for website visitors, reactive customer service and crisis management, billing issues, and delays in refunds. Customer engagement wasn't sustained through social media or proactive alerts and support. As a result, the company wasn't maximizing the lifetime value of each customer relationship.

A customer success team armed with digital insights

To improve the customer experience, Genpact helped establish a customer success and renewals operation to support technical issues, manage end-user queries, and consult on product purchases.

This foundation of industrialized operations harnessed the data-to-insight-to-action loop (figure 1), using meaningful data to extract relevant insights at scale.

Figure 1. The data-to-insight-to-action loop

Related graphic 1 transforming customer success management for an internet domain leader

We started by identifying target outcomes such as increased revenue growth, improved customer satisfaction, and reduced costs. Next, we selected target metrics, such as call volumes per day, conversion rates, average order size, and outbound revenue per day, to measure progress toward the target outcomes.

The company used insights from the metrics data to create models for NPS improvement, revenue improvement, call and revenue forecasting, and capacity planning. This included:

  • ML-driven bots analyzing complex data (~40 parameters relating to calls and chat) to make recommendations to improve performance
  • A personalized ML-based prediction model that identifies dissatisfied customers and detractors on 100% of calls to improve the customer experience
  • A call forecasting model to map call volumes to factors such as marketing campaigns, new product launches, and seasonality
  • A revenue forecast model to estimate conversion rates
  • Capacity planning modeling-aligned customer support with demand

Finally, we implemented a centralized tracking system to track callbacks and resolution, enabling the client to monitor this component of call conversions.

Additionally, a smart-scheduling system helped align the right skills within teams and links top-performing teams with the prime shifts or peak loads.

The result is an intelligent operating model in which business processes could now sense the environment, act appropriately, and continuously learn from the effectiveness of those actions at scale.

Embracing the art of the possible

We adopted Genpact's Lean Digital SM approach – a practical and effective way to achieve bold outcomes. It amplifies the power of digital technologies and analytics using Lean and design-thinking principles.

A cross-functional team of company leaders and members of sales, marketing, and operations took part in a design-thinking workshop with Genpact's training, human resources, digital, and customer success analytics experts. This revealed what customers – as well as stakeholders within the organization – valued. It also helped prioritize actionable ideas, enabling rapid prototyping and iterative testing of digital solutions.

Multiple ongoing projects have now jointly implemented across the client's operations. Rapid prototyping and an agile implementation approach have helped accelerate the acceptance, deployment, and impact of key solutions:

  • Effective cross-selling and upselling of higher-value products, using technologies such as NLP, predictive analytics, and dynamic workflows to identify which customers are likely to buy additional products or services, the best channel to use, and which customer success manager should contact the customer
  • Campaign effectiveness by combining structured and unstructured data , such as engagement data (online behavior, contact reason, and so on) and historical data (customer history, preferences, segment, and so on)
  • Sophisticated analytical techniques such as customer response models, customer profitability models, customer churn models, reactivation models, and customer lifetime value models are then applied to optimize channel mix, communications, offers, and targeting strategies
  • Renewals-as-a-service using multivariate analysis to optimize the offers, pricing, or customer segment targeting to maximize renewals
  • A crisis response mechanism that proactively monitors multiple channels (social media, surveys, and calls) to capture customer concerns and applies automated workflows to triage by severity/risk and assign to resolver groups
  • Geography-specific social media platforms monitoring for a faster, more effective, and tailored response to alerts and positive/negative comments and a 360° view of customers

Client engagement, average order size, and revenues are all up

Our combination of analytics and technology, supported by a feedback loop for continuous learning and improvement, have helped the client target customers more effectively and use resources more efficiently, resulting in significantly higher conversion rates.

  • Conversion rates improved from 17% to 25%
  • Outbound per-day revenue has shot up by roughly 30%
  • Effective consulting has increased the average order size by over 15%
  • The client is realizing 20% more revenue from these operations compared to just a year ago with reimagined processes

The robust operating model and enhanced visibility into the customer base have laid the foundation for the next quantum leap to generate significantly higher revenue growth and increase the NPS by 10%.

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Digital Third Coast gives client healthy returns during peak seasonal moment

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​​The Open Enrollment period is the most competitive time for health insurance companies. Digital Third Coast, the award-winning agency, was up to the challenge to help their client during this peak time.

Their strategy: engage customers across the buying funnel to build a pipeline of high-quality leads. Spoiler alert, they succeeded.​

​​The solution​

​​The first step of Digital Third Coast’s strategy was simple. They launched prospecting campaigns with search and native audience ads to fill the funnel in preparation for Open Enrollment. All the while, they attracted the right customers Similar and In-Market Audiences .

​Next was the real genius of the plan—how they converted previous website visitors to buyers using Remarketing and expanding this practice to new audiences using Customer Match targeting. This top-to-bottom funnel strategy was a success and helped their client achieve a healthy boost in website traffic and conversion rates.​

The Microsoft Advertising team is simply delightful, and their powerful network helped us grow our lead volume during the most important time of the year for us.

​​The results​

​​By the end of the Open Enrollment period, the strategy Digital Third Coast put in motion—powered by Microsoft Advertising’s Audience Network and Search Network—achieved a 1.6x* lift in site visitation rate and 1.7x* lift in conversion rate.

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Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide

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Welcome to our preparation tips for case interviews!  Whether you are just curious about case interviews or are planning to apply for consulting internships or full-time jobs, these tips and resources will help you feel more prepared and confident.

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A case interview is a role playing exercise in which an employer assesses how logically and persuasively you can present a case. Rather than seeing if you get the “correct” answer, the objective is to evaluate your thought process. ( Adapted with permission from Case In Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation by Marc Cosentino). 

Case interviews are very commonly used in the interview process for consulting firms and companies in similar industries. In the case interview, you will typically be given a business problem and then asked to solve it in a structured way. Learning this structure takes preparation and practice. You can learn more and practice using the resources listed below.  

Why are Case Interviews Used?

Case interviews allow employers to test and evaluate the following skills:

  • Analytical skills and logical ability to solve problems
  • Structure and thought process
  • Ability to ask for relevant data/information
  • Tolerance for ambiguity and data overload
  • Poise and communication skills under pressure and in front of a client

How can I prepare for Case Interviews?

1.) Read Management Consulted’s “Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide (2024)”

Management Consulted is a FREE resource for Tufts students : case and consulting resources such as 500 sample cases, Case Interview Bootcamp,  Market Sizing Drills, Math Drills, case videos, consulting firm directory, and more

2.) Review additional resources:

  • Case in Point – This book, by Marc Cosentino, is a comprehensive guide that walks you through the case interview process from beginning to end. This guide has helped many students over the years and can serve as an excellent foundation for how to approach business problems
  • Casequestions.com – The companion website to Marc Cosentino’s book listed above offers preparation for case interviews, along with links to top 50 consulting firms
  • Management Consulting Case Interviews: Cracking The Case – tips for case interviews from the other side of the table, from Argopoint, a Boston management consulting firm specializing in legal department consulting for Fortune 500 companies
  • Preplounge.com – Free case preparation access for to up to 6 practice interviews with peers, selected cases, and video case solutions
  • RocketBlocks – Features consulting preparation such as drills and coaching
  • Practice sample online cases on consulting firm websites such as McKinsey , BCG , Bain , Deloitte and more!  

3.) Schedule a mock case interview appointment with  Karen Dankers or Kathy Spillane , our advisors for the Finance, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, and Business Career Community.

4.) PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE cases out loud on your own (yes, that can feel odd) or preferably, with another person. See #2 and #3 above for resources and ideas to find partners to practice live cases

5.) Enjoy and have fun solving business problems!

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COMMENTS

  1. How to write a case study

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  2. 10 B2B Case Study Examples to Inspire Your Next Customer Success Story

    The company heroes client success stories for its case studies and opens the heading with their wins. Check out this B2B case study example from Sedin's case study published by SalesHandy. Readers need context, and case studies should always begin by outlining the exact problems their product or platform aims to solve.

  3. How to Turn a Case Study into a Customer Success Story

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    A customer success story informs the reader about what a client has gained from the company's product or service. They can come in a few different formats: the most common ones are as case studies, either as a page on a company's site or as a downloadable file. Some companies also choose to turn their success stories into videos.

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  27. Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide

    A case interview is a role playing exercise in which an employer assesses how logically and persuasively you can present a case. Rather than seeing if you get the "correct" answer, the objective is to evaluate your thought process. (Adapted with permission from Case In Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation by Marc Cosentino).