How to write a customer case study that a buyer believes

A case study a buyer believes has four parts, in this order: the customer's situation before, the decision they made and why, the work that was done, and the result in the customer's own terms. Add their approval in writing, and the number or fact they would be willing to repeat to a stranger. Leave out adjectives. A buyer reading it should be able to picture the business, check one claim by phone, and see how it resembles their own.

Interview first, write second

Do not write from memory. Ask the customer your questions on a call, which you record only with their permission, and write from what they said. Plan for a conversation of about half an hour. The questions are the study, and seven will do.

1. What was the business doing before we worked together?
2. What was going wrong, in your own words?
3. What else did you consider, and why did you choose this?
4. What did we change, as you remember it?
5. What do you notice now that you did not before?
6. What is one thing that did not go as planned?
7. Would you tell another owner to do the same, and what would you warn them about?

Question six is easy to skip, and it is the one that makes the study believable.

The skeleton

Copy this and fill in each line. If you cannot fill a line from the interview, ask the customer again, do not write around the gap.

TITLE: [Trade, town] [one plain change] and [one plain result]

SITUATION (80 to 120 words)
Who they are: trade, size, town, how buyers reach them.
What was wrong: one problem, in their words. Use a quote.

DECISION (60 to 100 words)
What they weighed. Why they chose this. What worried them.

WORK (120 to 180 words)
What was done, in order. Name the documents, the channels,
the people. No jargon the customer would not use.

RESULT (80 to 120 words)
What changed, in their terms and from their records.
Say what the starting position was. Say what is not known.

QUOTE
One sentence from the customer, approved, with name and role.

APPROVAL
Date, who approved, how (message or email), exact text approved.

Writing each part

Situation. Start with the room, not the market. "Three people take orders for a Coimbatore pump dealer, and quotes were written on a pad" beats "a leading player in the fluid-handling space."

Decision. Buyers want to see doubt. If the customer almost chose someone else, say so. A decision with no tension reads as an advertisement.

Work. Describe things a reader could picture. "We rewrote the quote as an itemised page and added a call date to each one" is picturable. "We improved their sales process" is not.

Result. Use the customer's measure, taken from their records. If they say orders from repeat buyers rose, ask which sheet shows it. If the study is about the work rather than a number, say that clearly. Never convert a feeling into a percentage. Also write what you do not know, such as "walk-in sales were not tracked."

A weak line and its repair

Take any sentence from a first draft and test it against the interview. "The hotel's operations improved significantly" has no picture in it. The manager said the staff stopped counting linen on delivery day, so the line becomes "Nobody counts sets when the van arrives; the manager checks the tally slip and signs." That is smaller and a buyer can verify it. If a sentence cannot be traced to something the customer said or a record they showed, cut it, however good it sounds. A shorter study that survives a phone call beats a longer one that does not.

Getting the approval

Send the full draft, not a summary. Ask for a yes to the exact text, including the name, the numbers and the quote. A short message works:

Here is the case study as we plan to publish it. Please read it all. If anything is wrong or you would rather not share it, tell us and we will change or drop it. If it is fine, please reply "approved" and we will publish exactly this version.

Save the reply with the date. If you change a word afterwards, send it back. If they do not reply, you do not have approval.

For example: a commercial laundry in Hyderabad

Take an invented laundry that washes bed linen and towels for small hotels and guest houses. The owner wants to write up work for one hotel customer.

The first draft says the hotel "saved a lot of money and was thrilled." The hotel manager reads it and declines to approve, because "saved" implies a figure the manager never gave and the manager does not want costs discussed.

So the owner goes back to the seven questions. The manager's own answer to question five is that nobody counts linen on delivery day any more, because the sets now match the sheet. That goes in as the result, in the manager's words, and the line "Rooms were turned faster in the morning" comes out since the manager cannot stand behind it. Question six produces an honest note: the first two deliveries were short, and the laundry now sends a tally slip. The hotel approves the second draft the same evening, but asks that its logo stay off the page. The owner keeps the message.

When not to publish

Skip a case study when the customer is lukewarm, when the result is mostly the customer's own doing, or when the facts are in dispute. In regulated trades such as health, finance, law or education, a customer story can fall foul of advertising rules, so check with your own adviser or the regulator before publishing. Rules differ by state and body and change.

Where to put it

Put the finished page on your site, send the link in quotes to buyers in the same trade, and keep the approval record in the same folder. Tonight, pick one customer. Write their name above the seven questions and leave the call for tomorrow. Our own case studies are there to compare against, and writing them for clients is the customer case studies service. If you have customers you could write about and want help getting the first one right, tell us what you need.