case study about a customer

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

2. Lightico: A1 Comms

3. Hourly.io: Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels

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.

Don't forget to share this post!

Showcase your company's success using these free case study templates.

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Mar 19, 2022

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How To Write a Case Study That Speaks to Your Customers

How to write a customer case study in 6 steps

• Identify the need
• Identify the subject
• Conduct your interviews
• Cover the basics (who, what, how)
• Provide the right framing
• Include emotion

For a prospect who’s just about to make a purchase, a case study could be the most helpful piece of content they could come across.

A case study tells the story of a customer just like them : someone who faced a similar challenge and, with the help of your business, overcame it. This prospect can see themselves in the case study, and the testimony of a real-life customer will have more weight than any other marketing materials you have. 

But, as with any piece of content, a case study needs to be produced in just the right way to have the most impact. Too vague and the effect is lost. Too salesy and the prospect doesn’t trust it.

The best case studies are detailed without being dry, and poignant without being mawkish.

At IMPACT, we guide our clients to write compelling case studies that they can use with prospects in the sales process. Below, we’ll give you the step-by-step guide we teach so that you can put this powerful tool into the hands of your own sales team.

Below, we’ll cover:

• What a case study is (and isn’t).
• How to write a case study in 6 steps.
• Examples of great case studies to inspire you.
• How to know if your case study is working as it’s supposed to.

Ready to tell your customers’ stories? Let’s walk through this process together.

What is a case study?

A case study is a piece of content that tells the story of a customer’s journey. Ideally, this customer struggled with a specific problem before they found your business and your solution, which alleviated the pain point. 

Case studies are so effective because they balance anecdote and quantitative data, so they appeal to both the head and the heart. 

Marketers, after all, are storytellers, and case studies are a wonderful chance to tell the story of a customer . Humans are hard-wired to appreciate stories of struggle and triumph, so your case study should fit right in. 

A case study will usually take the form of an article, but it could be a video or other medium as well.

Most often, case studies are written with bottom-of-the-funnel prospects in mind. As someone approaches a purchase, the case study can help convince them that buying from you is a good idea. 

What a case study isn’t

Although a case study is marketing material for your business, it is not about you . The customer is the hero of this story. Your business is the guide that helped them overcome challenges and succeed.

Case studies should include emotion (more on that later), but they should not be sentimental or emotionally manipulative .

How to write a case study in 6 steps

Jen Barrell is a content trainer at IMPACT who works with businesses to plan their inbound marketing strategy. She has guided numerous clients through the case study writing process. 

She advises a six-step process to produce a rough draft, after which you should follow your normal process for QA and publication. 

These are the steps she asks businesses to follow. 

Step 1: Identify the need

Before you begin, Jen says, you must determine the need this case study will solve. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who are you actually writing this for?
• What key problems are you trying to solve for the reader?
• At what stage in the buying process will this case study be used?

Having answers to these big questions up front will save time in the long run. You want to be sure about your audience and your scope so that you know exactly how to tailor your message to suit your future customers. 

Step 2: Identify the subject

Second, you’ll need to determine who you’ll be writing about. It could be a business or an individual, depending on what you sell, but it should be a single customer, so focus on only one.

Talk with your sales and service teams to decide on some previous customers who could be good subjects. Compile a short list of possible candidates and reach out to them, explaining the process and timeline.

According to Jen, this is a time to follow the path of least resistance. “The best case studies are created out of interviews,” she says. “You want to talk with people who are enthusiastic and genuine.” 

In other words, if they’re resistant to your initial outreach, they’re likely to be a less compelling interview subject. 

Step 3: Conduct your interviews

A good case study tells a story. You’ll need to compile solid evidence to show the effect your business has had on that customer’s life.

• Did your insurance company help them rebuild after a disaster?
• Did your team help them win their court case? 
• Did your marketing plan help them successfully launch a new product line? 
• Did you provide alternative solutions for their design process so they could be more efficient? 

Whatever the case may be, you’ll need the numbers to back it up. What was it like before, during, and after your company’s involvement? What initial challenge did they face? What positive results did that customer eventually see? How long did it all take?

You’ll need to do research to find the raw data to make these key points. You can get some from your team and some from the subject.

But a case study isn’t just about numbers and profit. Sure, these may be your main findings, but you don’t want to overlook the human element. You’re telling a positive story about transformation. 

In your interviews, make sure to ask questions about the people behind the numbers. Ask questions about the emotions they felt during their journey.

Step 4: Cover the basics

Any reader looking at a case study is looking for very specific information. They want to know the same thing:

• Who is the customer being described? What makes their story relatable?
• What were the problems they were facing? What challenges did you help solve? What other possible solutions did they try or consider?
• How did your company’s offerings — whether product or service — help the customer succeed?
• Results: What did their success look like? How long did it take? What were the details of the experience?

If you cover these basics in every case study you write, you’ll produce a consistent product that is digestible for bottom-of-the-funnel prospects in the final stages of a purchase.

Jen says, “This is a time when having a formula to follow will serve you well. Prospects might read several case studies at once, so make sure they’re easy to read and well-structured.”

Step 5: Provide the right framing

As the writer, it’s up to you, to provide the right framing and structure to make your case study grab the reader’s attention while at the same time conveying relevant facts that might feel dry.

This starts in your introduction. 

Most case study intros jump right into the who-what-how without providing the context of what’s to come. Instead, Jen advises using a “P-E-P” approach in the intro to hook the reader. Think of this as the welcome mat of your case study, she explains. “In your introduction, start by identifying the problem , then demonstrate your experience , then offer a promise .”

• Start by connecting with the reader by showing them you recognize the problem they’re experiencing. For instance, if you’re writing a case study that shows how your roofing company helped a customer replace their roof after a hurricane, then most likely the people drawn to that particular case study are experiencing a similar situation. 
• Then you’ll want to provide the context of the case study by telling them who you are and the expertise you have to solve their problem. While the case study certainly isn’t about your company or product, the reader does deserve to know who’s advising them. 
• Finally, your intro should make a promise to the reader about what’s to come. This is the space where you’ll preview to your reader what the payoff is for reading through to the end.

What the P-E-P approach looks like in practice

For the example above, the case study introduction might look something like this:

The worry that natural disasters cause homeowners can easily turn to panic when a worst-case scenario occurs. The loss of a roof during a storm both exposes the physical contents of your home and tests your emotions. You’re left wondering how long it will take to repair, if your house is safe to live in, how you’ll deal with insurance, and who will help you navigate through this mess in the coming days. [Identify the problem.] As a Florida-based roofing company, Acme Roofing has helped 20 families in the past year alone repair their homes when the unthinkable happened. Jane Smith and her family lost their roof in the last hurricane and have some crucial advice for not only making it through this trying time but coming out with a home that’s both beautiful and safe for her family. [Show your expertise.] Keep reading to find out what happened to Jane’s home and the steps she took to secure a safe place for her family. [Offer a promise of what’s to come.]

Any article could rely on this intro format, but case studies are especially well-served by this approach, Jen says.

From there, each section of the case study should smoothly lead into the next. Be sure to provide transitions and appropriate pacing. This should be informative, but not dry like academic writing. 

Step 6: Include emotion

Be sure to include human elements that convey to the reader that this is a real story involving real people. There are emotions connected to every decision we make, and conveying these in the case study will enhance its appeal to your audience. 

Was he afraid he would lose his business?

Was she frustrated by previous products that didn’t solve her problem?

What did they feel when your business stepped in? Relief? Joy? Satisfaction? 

Include these emotions .  Case studies often come across as extremely dry, but this is one article type that can carry heavy emotion. Use the emotion of the people you got to know during the interview process. 

After you’ve completed these steps, you’ll have your rough draft. Share it with the customer whose story you’ve shared. See if anything needs further exploration or additional background information.

Bring together two or three trusted colleagues who can serve as editors. Avoid having too many cooks in the kitchen, though.

Then, polish and refine what you have, including the feedback of your colleagues, to create your final draft. If necessary, work with a graphic designer to create visual elements to help enhance the story. 

Then, get that sucker in the hands of your sales team .

Case study examples to inspire you

What does an actual case study look like? There are dozens of ways your business could approach a case study, but don’t forget those core elements. You must tell a compelling story that will resonate with your target audience: potential customers who are almost ready to make a purchase. 

Example 1: IMPACT and Bill Ragan Roofing

Here’s a narrative-style case study that tells the story of one of our clients, Tennessee-based Bill Ragan Roofing. 

Note how writer Jolie Higazi balances the numbers and the human element. Readers feel like they’re getting to know this business and want to celebrate its success. 

Example 2: Screensteps and The Peninsula Jewish Community Center

Screensteps provides training software to businesses for onboarding and other instruction. Here is a case study explaining how they helped a nonprofit implement a new CRM for more than 200 employees. 

With wit and illustrations, they tell the tale in a way that is accessible and engaging. Again, this doesn’t feel like research writing. It reads as a compelling narrative — and includes quotes from various stakeholders throughout. 

Evaluating your case study

How will you know if your case study is any good? 

Simple, says Jen. Listen to your sales team. 

In most cases, case studies will be used by your sales team with bottom-of-the-funnel prospects who are close to a decision. Jen advises that marketers check in with sales reps to see exactly how the case study landed with a prospect. 

Did they ask follow-up questions? Did they see themselves in it? If your case study is covering all the bases, your sales team should be raving about it. If not, go back to the drawing board and make it better.

If your case study is aimed at a broader audience, evaluate it the way you would any article. “Look at your conversion data,” Jen says. “Make sure that your bounce rate is low because that shows your audience immediately wanted to learn more about what you offer.”

The real-life stories your buyers need

Case studies are incredibly useful for your sales team and helpful for your buyers. However, keep in mind that they need to be regularly updated to avoid looking stale. If you tout yourself as a cutting-edge business but your case studies all come from five years ago, you might inadvertently hurt your chances with a prospect. Even a great example might not age well.

Once you produce a case study, it will be up to you to update as needed. Set aside time each quarter to read through old content and make sure it’s up to date and still makes sense.

If you need help convincing your potential customers that your offerings are perfect for them, case studies are perhaps your greatest asset. Spend the time to tell these customer stories so that your prospects can learn about a real-life situation in which they can see themselves. 

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• Content Management
• Case Studies

I Wrote 100 Case Studies — A 6-Step Guide for Telling Compelling Customer Stories

As many of you know, Muck Rack was my first-ever client , and I’m coming up on a big milestone with the company: I’ve spearheaded 100 case studies over the past five years.

Back in 2016, Muck Rack , the leading Public Relations Management (PRM) software, had a couple of case studies on hand, which served as crucial sales vehicles.

Although those case studies were useful, they weren’t enough. The sales team often approached the marketing team to see if they had any clients in X industry or Y niche or from a Z -sized company. That’s because prospective clients wanted to talk to similar customers to get a feel for how they’re using Muck Rack to hit their PR goals.

Enter: JL&Co. My goal for the past five-plus years has been to help Muck Rack build a robust library of case studies ranging from big companies like Taco Bell and Verizon to PR agencies, hospitals, universities and more.

What is a case study?

Case studies, or customer stories, are basically success stories, so potential clients or customers can see how a product or service works “in the wild.”

Case studies give you the chance to tap into your brand’s super fans and ask them to share with the world why they love working with you, your product or your service.

Case studies are an important part of the content puzzle — and they can be used in a number of ways:

• Sales rep sends a case study directly to a prospect
• Available for download on your website
• Placed in an email marketing funnel
• Video testimonial
• Social media content
• Blog content

And for a writer or content creator who knows what they’re doing, conducting case study interviews and writing case studies for your clients can also be quite lucrative.

Writing a case study: A step-by-step process

I’ve learned a lot through this experience building a case study program from the ground up, so I wanted to share my step-by-step process, plus some big takeaways that could make writing case studies a whole lot easier for you.

Step 1: Identify your subject

When it comes to identifying who should be featured in a case study, I lean on my client’s sales and customer success teams. Both of these teams work directly with customers, so they can identity:

• What type of case study could benefit them (e.g. a large PR agency wants to see how other large agencies use Muck Rack), and
• Companies that use Muck Rack to achieve — and exceed — their unique PR goals

We use a spreadsheet to track what case studies we’ve done. These are broken into categories ranging from specific features companies use to industry and company size.

Step 2: Prepare for the interview

Preparing for the interview is key!

After I schedule the interview, I send the customer about 10 questions via email. This gives them time to think about specific examples and success stories they can highlight in the interview. 

I don’t recommend more than about 10 questions because you don’t want to overwhelm the interview subject — you can always ask follow-up questions along the way.

A few examples of questions I ask include:

• How did you track your team’s journalist relationship history and contact information before using Muck Rack?
• What types of goals or tasks are you using Muck Rack to accomplish?
• What would your job be like if you didn’t have Muck Rack?

My overall goal in the interview is to understand how Muck Rack has improved the team’s performance, collecting specific examples of how they use features along the way. I also keep the questions open-ended, which gives me some really good soundbites I can highlight.

Step 3: Interview time!

Before Zoom became a thing, I conducted these interviews over the phone and took shorthand notes. Let me tell you: This was a huge mistake.

As soon as Zoom became popular, I made the switch. I could easily record my conversations, which allowed me to more actively listen and ask strong follow-up questions. Not to mention, I could nail exact quotes.

Before you start your interview, be sure to ask your subject for permission to record for transcription purposes. I’ve never had anyone say “no” — it’s just a nice courtesy.

Here are a few other tips to keep in mind as you dive into the interview:

• Save room for silence. Sure, it can be a little awkward, but if a customer gives a short answer, I’ll wait a beat before jumping over to the next question. They may be thinking or something might come to mind they hadn’t yet considered. 
• Ask follow-up questions . You don’t have to stick to the script of questions you provided the client. If you want more details, ask follow-up questions and let the interview wander a little. I always try to ask questions that’ll give me specific numbers. For example, if they say Muck Rack saves them time, I’d ask: How much time do you think you’ve saved each week? When you go to write your case study, this will show the value of your product or service.
• Always ask this final question : “Is there anything I haven’t asked that you think would be important to include?” Usually, this question prompts the client to say something really nice about Muck Rack. These are usually the best sound bites.

Finally, once your interview is over, I strongly recommend transcribing it. You can save a lot of time using a transcription service like Otter.ai . It costs me about $100 a year, but in my opinion, it’s totally worth it.

Step 4: Outline your case study

I’ve developed two templates Muck Rack uses for case studies. It took a bit of finagling to get these super solid, but now that we have them, it saves us a lot of time.

The first format highlights major Muck Rack features and shows how the company or person uses these features. We then cap the case study off with a fast questions section. The Motley Fool case study is a good example of this formatting.

The second format highlights life before and after Muck Rack, and we wrap it up with fast questions. The Personal Capital case study is a solid example of this format.

It’s worth noting a case study doesn’t have to be a 10-page PDF. I love Muck Rack’s case studies because they’re short but impactful. We keep the layout visual with lots of white space and bite-sized information. We keep our audience in mind: PR pros are busy, so we want to make sure they can skim these and pick up the big highlights in little time.

For visual elements, we always ask the customer to send over a headshot and logo.

Step 5: Get to writing

You’ll notice Muck Rack’s case studies are written in first person — from the perspective of the customer. This was a deliberate decision because customers want to hear directly from other customers — they don’t want to hear Muck Rack toot its own horn.

As I write case studies, I also keep these tips in mind:

• If you’re writing in first-person (from the perspective of the customer), embrace the “voice” that comes out in the interview. If a subject is super formal, follow the lead. If they’ve got a silly side and enjoy a pun or two — great!
• Highlight specific examples and numbers to help potential customers understand the value of your product or service.
• Write for your audience. At Muck Rack, we knew PR pros didn’t have time to scroll through pages and pages of information, so we chose to keep case studies as concise as possible.

I also always link back to the customer’s site as a courtesy — it’s a good service for your reader, and the customer will love the exposure and SEO link juice.

Step 6: Send over for customer review before publication

Here’s my final step before a case study goes live: I send it to the customer to review. This is a super important step in the process because I want the customer to feel comfortable with what they said. Usually, there aren’t any big requests, but I like to know they’re happy with the final product. Plus, bonus points if they love it so much they share it on their social profiles.

Once the case study goes live, it’s shared with the sales team so they know a new case study is available to share with prospective clients, and it also gets published to the Muck Rack blog and social channels.

If you want to see more of the Muck Rack case studies me and my team have worked on, feel free to take a look through the archives .

Want to learn more about case studies and JL&Co’s client projects? You can keep tabs on me by  signing up for my content newsletter . Every two weeks, I’ll give you the lowdown on what I’ve been up to and share some of my favorite articles, resources and gigs in the content world.

Meet Jessica

I live by the saying “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” and help others do the same to reach their biggest, brightest goals. Read my story here.

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• Customer Interaction

4 Customer Service Case Studies to Inspire You

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in.

Last updated: November 24, 2022

6 mins read

If you’ve researched any brand it’s more than likely you’ve come across a customer service case study. Real-life customer experiences are a powerful way to advertise a brand and showcase the real interactions customers have when approaching a company’s customer service department.

Instead of simply telling a customer what it’s like to benefit from a company’s customer service, they demonstrate genuine examples of customers who have submitted tickets to their customer service team. 

On the surface of it, one company can appear much like another without powerful customer service case studies to demonstrate its impact. Customers will be required to actually sign up to your service before they can experience your customer support for themselves. 

What is a customer service case study?

A customer service case study is a strategy to show the experiences of customers that have actually signed up to use your product or service and have actually witnessed your customer service for themselves. 

Potential customers who are researching what your company has to offer will benefit from the case studies of customers that have already passed through the buying decision. Instead of a company simply telling prospective customers what they have to offer, they will be able to demonstrate their service in reality. 

A customer service case study goes beyond being a simple testimonial, however. It’s factual evidence of customers who have implemented your company’s product or service and a demonstration of its ability to actually deliver results. 

Why are customer service case studies important? 

Without customer service case studies, your business will struggle to show how it is helping its customers. A case study shows your prospective customers how the business has performed in a real-life example of customer service, and helps them imagine what it would be like to do business with your company. 

Customer service case studies show potential customers how your business has helped customers to solve their problems and further their business goals. Although there are other ways to market your business, customer service case studies are a solid way to reach out to new prospects and convert them into customers. 

Successful customer case studies showcase successful examples of customer service that persuade your prospects to actually buy. They show prospects how well your customer service actually works and highlights your product’s value. 

How do you write a customer service case study?

There are a few strategies you need to follow when writing a customer service case study. Having a variety of different case studies will enable you to reach more potential customers which cover a range of situations and needs. 

1. Focus on your personas

You need to consider the type of the customer that you want to attract with your customer service case study. Mapping out your personas is an important part of your marketing strategy because it helps you identify prospects with unique wants and needs. Your customer service may appeal to different types of individuals and it’s crucial to target each one specifically. 

2. Tell a story

At their core, customer service case studies are stories about particular customers. Simply raving about how great your company is wil be boring for your readers, and you need to take them on a journey. Stories need to have obstacles to overcome, and your case study should show how your product or service is the hero of the narrative. 

3. Emphasize benefits

The benefits of your customer service will help to appeal to customers that have a specific pain point to solve. Instead of focusing on products or features it’s important to show how your service will help them. Your customer service case study is likely to be a representative example of a customer that has similar problems to other prospects, and it’s important to help prospective customers visualize using your service. 

4. Highlight the results 

Highlighting the results that your customer service will help your customers achieve means focusing on the before and after of using your service. Genuine improvements to your customer’s business will help to convince them that your product or service is the answer. Showing the results of your customer service helps customers see how they can save or make more money after choosing your business. 

4 interesting customer service case studies

Quick heal and kayako.

Here’s the first interesting customer service case study from Kayako. There was a company called Quick Heal Technologies which was a provider of internet security tools and anti-virus software. They had millions of global users, but they were struggling to deliver outstanding customer service due to a high volume of customer service requests. 

One of their main issues was the absence of a system to track requests from different sources. Agents were checking many different platforms for customer service requests, and lacked a vital overview of the customer experience. They were losing tickets and suffering from incomplete information. There were delays in the customer support experience and the existing system couldn’t manage its workflow. 

Enter Kayako, help desk software. Their Shared Inbox Solution brought together the different customer service platforms such as email, Facebook, Twitter, and live chat. Quick Heal agents were able to support customers seamlessly and minimize the number of tickets that were dropped. They could significantly reduce their ticket response times and accelerate the time to resolution. Agents were able to much more effectively collaborate and reduce duplication of effort. 

Springboard and Help Scout

The next customer service case study is about Springboard, a platform which provides online resources and personalized mentors to help students build their dream careers. Their aim is to make a great education accessible to anyone in the world. 

So far, they have worked with 250 mentors to train more than 5,000 students over 6 continents. Their success has depended on their ability to create an open environment where students feel comfortable requesting feedback and discovering course information on their own. 

Springboard needed a solution that could help them build relationships with their students, even if it’s over email, and they decided that Help Scout was the answer. They chose Help Scout because it means they can have human conversations rather than treating their students like a ticket number. 

They make use of Help Scout’s help desk features to find key insights into students’ conversations, as well as their Docs knowledge base which provides answers to common questions. As a result, students are able to more effectively learn and overcome problems when they arise. 

We’ve got another customer service case study from an airline – in this case, JetBlue. They really know how to make their customers smile with small gestures and ensure they can win customers for life. 

One customer called Paul Brown was flying with JetBlue from the smaller terminal at Boston’s Logan airport. He realized that he couldn’t grab his usual Starbucks coffee because there was no Starbucks at the terminal. On a whim, he sent a tweet to JetBlue asking them to deliver his venti mocha, and to his surprise they obliged! Within minutes JetBlue customer service representatives had delivered the coffee to Paul’s seat on the plane. 

This example of customer service shows that JetBlue is willing to go the extra mile for customers and will ensure that the company can continue to attract more customers.

Gympass and Slack

Gympass is an international platform that gives companies and their employees 50% to 70% off a global network of fitness studios, digital workouts, and mental health and nutrition services. It was founded in 2012 and has experienced steady growth, now worth more than USD $1 billion. Users of Gympass have access to 50,000 gyms and studios in more than 7,000 cities, so they can work out while they are on the move. 

The problem with this growing company was communication across the globe. The company was overly reliant on emails which led to silos and employees missing out on vital information. The solution to this problem was Slack, a communications platform which is made accessible to all new employees so they have everything they need right from the start. 

Now, teams at Gympass work across a range of 2,000 Slack channels which are open to 1,000 employees. They can share documents, messages and information, keeping connected across locations and facilitating new projects like event planning. It’s enabled Gympass to build a strong culture of collaboration and ensure that every employee can find the information they need. 

Wrapping up

Customer service case studies help attract new customers to your business by showing them how your company can help them. Instead of simply telling customers what you can do for them, you demonstrate it with storytelling and draw them in. Showing your customers benefits and outcomes support them to make the decision to purchase. 

Before they actually have a trial of using your product or service, it’s hard for customers to know what it would be like. Case studies can give a valuable preview into what it would be like to work with your company and highlight customers that have already achieved success. 

Catherine is a content writer and community builder for creative and ethical companies. She often writes case studies, help documentation and articles about customer support. Her writing has helped businesses to attract curious audiences and transform them into loyal advocates. You can find more of her work at https://awaywithwords.co.

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Blog Graphic Design 15+ Case Study Examples for Business, Marketing & Sales

15+ Case Study Examples for Business, Marketing & Sales

Written by: Alice Corner Jan 12, 2023

Have you ever bought something — within the last 10 years or so — without reading its reviews or without a recommendation or prior experience of using it?

If the answer is no — or at least, rarely — you get my point.

Positive reviews matter for selling to regular customers, and for B2B or SaaS businesses, detailed case studies are important too.

Wondering how to craft a compelling case study ? No worries—I’ve got you covered with 15 marketing case study templates , helpful tips, and examples to ensure your case study converts effectively.

Click to jump ahead:

What is a case study?

What to include in a professional case study, business case study examples, simple case study examples, marketing case study examples, sales case study examples.

• Case study FAQs

A case study is an in-depth, detailed analysis of a specific real-world situation. For example, a case study can be about an individual, group, event, organization, or phenomenon. The purpose of a case study is to understand its complexities and gain insights into a particular instance or situation.

In the context of a business, however, case studies take customer success stories and explore how they use your product to help them achieve their business goals.

As well as being valuable marketing tools , case studies are a good way to evaluate your product as it allows you to objectively examine how others are using it.

It’s also a good way to interview your customers about why they work with you.

Related: What is a Case Study? [+6 Types of Case Studies]

A professional case study showcases how your product or services helped potential clients achieve their business goals. You can also create case studies of internal, successful marketing projects. A professional case study typically includes:

• Company background and history
• The challenge
• How you helped
• Specific actions taken
• Visuals or Data
• Client testimonials

Here’s an example of a case study template:

Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, business case studies can be a powerful resource to help with your sales, marketing, and even internal departmental awareness.

Business and business management case studies should encompass strategic insights alongside anecdotal and qualitative findings, like in the business case study examples below.

Conduct a B2B case study by researching the company holistically

When it comes to writing a case study, make sure you approach the company holistically and analyze everything from their social media to their sales.

Think about every avenue your product or service has been of use to your case study company, and ask them about the impact this has had on their wider company goals.

In business case study examples like the one above, we can see that the company has been thought about holistically simply by the use of icons.

By combining social media icons with icons that show in-person communication we know that this is a well-researched and thorough case study.

This case study report example could also be used within an annual or end-of-year report.

Highlight the key takeaway from your marketing case study

To create a compelling case study, identify the key takeaways from your research. Use catchy language to sum up this information in a sentence, and present this sentence at the top of your page.

This is “at a glance” information and it allows people to gain a top-level understanding of the content immediately. 

You can use a large, bold, contrasting font to help this information stand out from the page and provide interest.

Learn  how to choose fonts  effectively with our Venngage guide and once you’ve done that.

Upload your fonts and  brand colors  to Venngage using the  My Brand Kit  tool and see them automatically applied to your designs.

The heading is the ideal place to put the most impactful information, as this is the first thing that people will read.

In this example, the stat of “Increase[d] lead quality by 90%” is used as the header. It makes customers want to read more to find out how exactly lead quality was increased by such a massive amount.

If you’re conducting an in-person interview, you could highlight a direct quote or insight provided by your interview subject.

Pick out a catchy sentence or phrase, or the key piece of information your interview subject provided and use that as a way to draw a potential customer in.

Use charts to visualize data in your business case studies

Charts are an excellent way to visualize data and to bring statistics and information to life. Charts make information easier to understand and to illustrate trends or patterns.

Making charts is even easier with Venngage.

In this consulting case study example, we can see that a chart has been used to demonstrate the difference in lead value within the Lead Elves case study.

Adding a chart here helps break up the information and add visual value to the case study. 

Using charts in your case study can also be useful if you’re creating a project management case study.

You could use a Gantt chart or a project timeline to show how you have managed the project successfully.

Use direct quotes to build trust in your marketing case study

To add an extra layer of authenticity you can include a direct quote from your customer within your case study.

According to research from Nielsen , 92% of people will trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% trust recommendations even if they’re from somebody they don’t know.

So if you have a customer or client who can’t stop singing your praises, make sure you get a direct quote from them and include it in your case study.

You can either lift part of the conversation or interview, or you can specifically request a quote. Make sure to ask for permission before using the quote.

This design uses a bright contrasting speech bubble to show that it includes a direct quote, and helps the quote stand out from the rest of the text.

This will help draw the customer’s attention directly to the quote, in turn influencing them to use your product or service.

Less is often more, and this is especially true when it comes to creating designs. Whilst you want to create a professional-looking, well-written and design case study – there’s no need to overcomplicate things.

These simple case study examples show that smart clean designs and informative content can be an effective way to showcase your successes.

Use colors and fonts to create a professional-looking case study

Business case studies shouldn’t be boring. In fact, they should be beautifully and professionally designed.

This means the normal rules of design apply. Use fonts, colors, and icons to create an interesting and visually appealing case study.

In this case study example, we can see how multiple fonts have been used to help differentiate between the headers and content, as well as complementary colors and eye-catching icons.

Marketing case studies are incredibly useful for showing your marketing successes. Every successful marketing campaign relies on influencing a consumer’s behavior, and a great case study can be a great way to spotlight your biggest wins.

In the marketing case study examples below, a variety of designs and techniques to create impactful and effective case studies.

Show off impressive results with a bold marketing case study

Case studies are meant to show off your successes, so make sure you feature your positive results prominently. Using bold and bright colors as well as contrasting shapes, large bold fonts, and simple icons is a great way to highlight your wins.

In well-written case study examples like the one below, the big wins are highlighted on the second page with a bright orange color and are highlighted in circles.

Making the important data stand out is especially important when attracting a prospective customer with marketing case studies.

Use a simple but clear layout in your case study

Using a simple layout in your case study can be incredibly effective, like in the example of a case study below.

Keeping a clean white background, and using slim lines to help separate the sections is an easy way to format your case study.

Making the information clear helps draw attention to the important results, and it helps improve the  accessibility of the design .

Business case study examples like this would sit nicely within a larger report, with a consistent layout throughout.

Use visuals and icons to create an engaging and branded business case study

Nobody wants to read pages and pages of text — and that’s why Venngage wants to help you communicate your ideas visually.

Using icons, graphics, photos, or patterns helps create a much more engaging design. 

With this Blue Cap case study icons, colors, and impactful pattern designs have been used to create an engaging design that catches your eye.

Use a monochromatic color palette to create a professional and clean case study

Let your research shine by using a monochromatic and minimalistic color palette.

By sticking to one color, and leaving lots of blank space you can ensure your design doesn’t distract a potential customer from your case study content.

In this case study on Polygon Media, the design is simple and professional, and the layout allows the prospective customer to follow the flow of information.

The gradient effect on the left-hand column helps break up the white background and adds an interesting visual effect.

Did you know you can generate an accessible color palette with Venngage? Try our free accessible color palette generator today and create a case study that delivers and looks pleasant to the eye:

Add long term goals in your case study

When creating a case study it’s a great idea to look at both the short term and the long term goals of the company to gain the best understanding possible of the insights they provide.

Short-term goals will be what the company or person hopes to achieve in the next few months, and long-term goals are what the company hopes to achieve in the next few years.

Check out this modern pattern design example of a case study below:

In this case study example, the short and long-term goals are clearly distinguished by light blue boxes and placed side by side so that they are easy to compare.

Use a strong introductory paragraph to outline the overall strategy and goals before outlining the specific short-term and long-term goals to help with clarity.

This strategy can also be handy when creating a consulting case study.

Use data to make concrete points about your sales and successes

When conducting any sort of research stats, facts, and figures are like gold dust (aka, really valuable).

Being able to quantify your findings is important to help understand the information fully. Saying sales increased 10% is much more effective than saying sales increased.

While sales dashboards generally tend it make it all about the numbers and charts, in sales case study examples, like this one, the key data and findings can be presented with icons. This contributes to the potential customer’s better understanding of the report.

They can clearly comprehend the information and it shows that the case study has been well researched.

Use emotive, persuasive, or action based language in your marketing case study

Create a compelling case study by using emotive, persuasive and action-based language when customizing your case study template.

In this well-written case study example, we can see that phrases such as “Results that Speak Volumes” and “Drive Sales” have been used.

Using persuasive language like you would in a blog post. It helps inspire potential customers to take action now.

Keep your potential customers in mind when creating a customer case study for marketing

82% of marketers use case studies in their marketing  because it’s such an effective tool to help quickly gain customers’ trust and to showcase the potential of your product.

Why are case studies such an important tool in content marketing?

By writing a case study you’re telling potential customers that they can trust you because you’re showing them that other people do.

Not only that, but if you have a SaaS product, business case studies are a great way to show how other people are effectively using your product in their company.

In this case study, Network is demonstrating how their product has been used by Vortex Co. with great success; instantly showing other potential customers that their tool works and is worth using.

Related: 10+ Case Study Infographic Templates That Convert

Case studies are particularly effective as a sales technique.

A sales case study is like an extended customer testimonial, not only sharing opinions of your product – but showcasing the results you helped your customer achieve.

Make impactful statistics pop in your sales case study

Writing a case study doesn’t mean using text as the only medium for sharing results.

You should use icons to highlight areas of your research that are particularly interesting or relevant, like in this example of a case study:

Icons are a great way to help summarize information quickly and can act as visual cues to help draw the customer’s attention to certain areas of the page.

In some of the business case study examples above, icons are used to represent the impressive areas of growth and are presented in a way that grabs your attention.

Use high contrast shapes and colors to draw attention to key information in your sales case study

Help the key information stand out within your case study by using high contrast shapes and colors.

Use a complementary or contrasting color, or use a shape such as a rectangle or a circle for maximum impact.

This design has used dark blue rectangles to help separate the information and make it easier to read.

Coupled with icons and strong statistics, this information stands out on the page and is easily digestible and retainable for a potential customer.

Case study examples summary

Once you have created your case study, it’s best practice to update your examples on a regular basis to include up-to-date statistics, data, and information.

You should update your business case study examples often if you are sharing them on your website .

It’s also important that your case study sits within your brand guidelines – find out how Venngage’s My Brand Kit tool can help you create consistently branded case study templates.

Case studies are important marketing tools – but they shouldn’t be the only tool in your toolbox. Content marketing is also a valuable way to earn consumer trust.

Case study FAQ s

Why should you write a case study.

Case studies are an effective marketing technique to engage potential customers and help build trust.

By producing case studies featuring your current clients or customers, you are showcasing how your tool or product can be used. You’re also showing that other people endorse your product.

In addition to being a good way to gather positive testimonials from existing customers, business case studies are good educational resources and can be shared amongst your company or team, and used as a reference for future projects.

How should you write a case study?

To create a great case study, you should think strategically. The first step, before starting your case study research, is to think about what you aim to learn or what you aim to prove.

You might be aiming to learn how a company makes sales or develops a new product. If this is the case, base your questions around this.

You can learn more about writing a case study  from our extensive guide.

Related: How to Present a Case Study like a Pro (With Examples)

Some good questions you could ask would be:

• Why do you use our tool or service?
• How often do you use our tool or service?
• What does the process of using our product look like to you?
• If our product didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
• What is the number one benefit you’ve found from using our tool?

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7 Successful Customer Experience Case Studies

Customer experience, or CX, is essential for your brand’s longevity, profitability, and customer loyalty, so it’s worth considering this factor in your marketing strategy. It’s no stretch to say that delivering high-quality customer experiences is critical if you want your brand to remain competitive in the modern business environment.

But it’s one thing to try to incorporate solid CX strategies and methodologies into your workflow. It’s another thing to see them in action as a success story. Today, let’s break down seven successful customer experience case studies. By the end, you’ll be well-equipped and ready to implement the techniques and methods that these successful companies used to bolster and reinvigorate their CX philosophies .

1. Macmillan Research

Macmillan Research, a scientific research institution, discovered in 2012 that various individuals affected by cancer needed extra support with practical tasks like cleaning, shopping, and so on. Approximately one in four people diagnosed with new cancer in the UK lacked support from close family or friends (or roughly 70,000 people each year) at the time of this project.

To solve this, Macmillan devised a Team Up service. The goal was to create an accessible, intuitive online marketplace that would help those affected by cancer get the practical support they needed.

To accomplish their goal, Macmillan worked hard to ensure that Team Up was easy-to-use and accessible across many different devices. It also needed to recruit new volunteers plus appeal to a younger demographic of workers.

Thus, Macmillan faced two primary challenges:

• Getting enough early adopters to test the earliest iterations of the service
• Acquiring the new technologies needed to make the whole project work

Macmillan focused on customer experience by hiring a dedicated community manager. This community manager then worked with various local groups in order to sign people up for the prelaunch of the product.

Furthermore, Macmillan integrated data into its CX testing by running biweekly user testing sessions. These guaranteed that members of the community provided their feedback to the project early on, where it could still be incorporated easily.

Thanks to these CX practices, Macmillan was successful in its overall goal. The Team Up service exceeded its initial expectations and registration KPIs by approximately 40%. Most practical tasks for cancer patients had a turnaround time of fewer than three days overall.

The car sales company CARFAX always looks for new ways to leverage its extensive vehicle database and use its customer knowledge to make new, intuitive digital tools and solutions.

Among the most recent improvements that CARFAX has made to its product is CARFAX for Police, which is a mobile and web application that helps to streamline accident report filing. Customers can now use CARFAX to file accident reports with local police precincts, making the entire process much more streamlined and easier.

To develop this app, CARFAX needed to focus on customer experience. CARFAX did some research to learn about the challenges police officers face while on the job and the difficulties they experience when filing accident reports. Fortunately, the technology to incorporate a solution like this was already present.

CARFAX and its clients conducted extensive user research, including interviews, measuring application user patterns, and so on, with a handful of police officers. They also leveraged skilled developers and mobile app programmers to make navigable, easy-to-use systems that successfully led to a great app.

By the end, CARFAX’s focus on CX resulted in an app that enables law enforcement officers to reduce accident report times by about 50%, as well as capture more data in law enforcement systems.

PBS previously wanted to transition from a more traditional media company into a leading digital media giant. To do that, PBS recognized that it needed to discover new marketing channels and formats through which to deliver educational, informative content to audiences across all age groups. More broadly, PBS wanted to connect and unify its overall network of approximately 200 member stations.

The CX-focused improvements were multifaceted from the get-go. PBS constructed a new technical infrastructure to serve content on multiple channels. This made PBS content more accessible to its users, thereby improving their customer experiences.

Furthermore, PBS developed iPad applications and APIs to ensure that content could be seamlessly delivered on any channel. This required the construction of custom content management systems, too — a high initial expense, but one that ended up being very worthwhile in the long run.

PBS also pivoted into a digital-first culture across the board. This allowed its members to focus on delivering exemplary customer experiences to online users, not just individuals watching television programs.

Trex was a home improvement company that specialized in providing sustainable deck materials. It wanted to improve its customers' experiences by creating a deck design app through which customers could create photorealistic mockups or simulations of what their decks might look like after constructing them.

The deck app would solve a huge pain point by helping customers who had only themselves to rely on when designing and building a deck of their very own. In creating a photorealistic application, Trex could eliminate a lot of the time and costs required in outsourcing the design process.

Therefore, Trex focused on creating an intuitive, navigable app with a good UX experience. This involved performing very deep, comprehensive user testing, as well as designing and building an initial solution and providing it to testers before incorporating their feedback.

In the end, the final app was very user-friendly. Customers were able to upload an image of their deck spaces or backyards, input certain deck dimensions, and even share their preferences. The app then recommends various eco-friendly deck materials and products so they can design and build the deck of their dreams in no time.

5. Thomas Cook

Thomas Cook, a travel agency and operator, wanted to improve its direct relationships with its target audience members and expand its customer base to those who weren’t currently its customers. Thomas Cook also wanted to know more about online customer journeys, as well as better understand customer purchase lifecycles.

With so many disparate goals, Thomas Cook needed to focus on customer experience and data-gathering above all else. To do this, it launched a targeted lead-generation campaign in addition to a travel survey.

The point of both of these methods was to capture key data and information about customers' future buying intentions, as well as specific customer requirements (which could, in theory, affect whether a given customer might buy something).

Furthermore, Thomas Cook utilized a nurturing program to deliver individualized, highly resonating messages and bolster user engagement. After completing the survey, consumers were presented with several different headline offers or redirected to the primary Thomas Cook website.

Thomas Cook didn't stop there. It also displayed various retargeting tags in the marketing campaign, helping the brand deliver more personalized display banner advertisements to respondents. All in all, this marketing effort allowed Thomas Cook to gain much more information than before.

It also acquired over 15,000 leads, saw email engagement rates boosted by over 30%, and saw email open rates at over twice the UK national benchmark average. All in all, it was a very successful CX data-gathering campaign.

6. RS Components

RS Components previously needed a better user experience. Specifically, the CX here was not conducive to quick or efficient processing.

This was a big problem for RS Components, as its marketing campaign was doing well, delivering over 10 million visits to various associated websites per month. Unfortunately, 70 million of those prospective customers left the site right at the search stage over the year.

To bolster conversion, RS Components look to improve its online customer experiences. With 60 websites in the group, this was a monumental task.

To accomplish it, RS Components:

• Collected customer feedback from online surveys, in addition to performing customer lab testing in the real world
• Prioritized things like speed and ease of identifying products. RS Components aimed to make it easier for customers to find and purchase the products they wanted
• Practiced search term correction
• Made significant improvements to search result categorization and presentation
• Emphasized and optimized its websites for mobile searchers

All in all, these efforts were highly successful. RS Components didn’t focus so much on changing its customer experience in terms of customer support or marketing. However, it did make a change in its CX in terms of searchability, website navigation, and product purchasing. This highlights how customer experience can incorporate and encompass many different elements of an online enterprise.

7. Vodafone UK

Vodafone UK wanted to develop an interactive, graphical representation of network performance. This was to be a first for the overall UK telecoms market. Unfortunately, Vodafone UK faced a significant challenge: making this rather technical and complex subject more accessible and simpler to understand for customers.

The primary objective was to create a tool to route queries into a call center using a self-service portal. Then, Vodafone UK aimed to develop a system to help communicate any planned outages to customers that would be affected. By the end of development, the tool needed to be very easy to maintain and be able to update itself in real-time 24/7.

To accomplish this, Vodafone UK focused somewhat on CX or customer experience management. Specifically, it:

• Created a cross-channel working group that included different business areas and people in industries like network operations, public relations, technology, security, and more.
• Carried out various usability studies with the public. This helped to validate its initial graphic design plan and user experience before implementing and improving upon it.

With this CX-focused approach, Vodafone UK successfully constructed a system where telecom information could be updated moment by moment by field engineers. The system was also linked to an email notification center, which enabled affected customers to immediately be notified of outages or changes in their coverage.

These days, users can still register their email addresses with the Vodafone UK telecoms system. This automatically sends an email if an issue is reported or if the network operations center has to impose an outage for technical or maintenance reasons.

The Impact of Customer Research on Customer Satisfaction

Many of these studies show how social media, digital transformation, and customer-centric optimization strategies can have a major impact. Using touchpoint analysis or leveraging contact centers can have an incredible impact on the bottom line.

Customer relationships — for both current and potential customers — only grow if you focus on world-class CX like these companies. Provide your customers with good day-to-day service in the online shopping world. Leverage automation where it makes sense, but don’t forget about the impact of a personal, human touch.

Chat With Awesome CX Today

As you can see, good customer experiences are absolutely vital for your brand. As you look to improve your CX overall, review your customer satisfaction metrics. Decide what pain point you can solve and anticipate the kind of improvements that loyal and new customers will most likely appreciate.

If the ideal way to make sure that your CX improvements are actually improvements and not just changes to your website or customer journeys for the sake of it.

Fortunately, if your CX philosophy needs a bit of work, there are partners you can turn to for help. Awesome CX is well-equipped and ready to assist with all of your CX needs.

In fact, we’ve assisted over 90 brands with their customer experience services , ranging from backend or office support to customer experience center aid and more. No matter what your industry happens to be, Awesome CX can help in more ways than one.

Send us a message today to learn more.

Customer Experience | Tech Target

What Is Customer Experience? | Forbes

What is Customer Experience? | IBM

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So you have an early cohort of happy customers, and you’d like to share their successes with leads and prospects to help attract and close new business.

Now what? We’ve compiled some new and updated tips on B2B business case studies, particularly for developer-led B2B startups, on how to create a case study that accomplishes all your goals.

A well-crafted case study can help show engineering teams why they should use your product, while also showing non-technical stakeholders how their business will benefit.

Distilling a customer’s experience into one brief document can seem challenging, but you can streamline the process with a simple framework. Let’s discuss how to write a great case study that clearly communicates the value your company provides.

Smartsheet covers real-world value to its customers in its case studies.

The Value of Case Studies for Early-Stage Companies

In B2B marketing, case studies are essential to provide social proof. You’re getting a customer (ideally a high-profile one) to say publicly, “Yes, your product solved a problem for us!” For startups, demonstrating that successful organizations are willing to invest in your product is key.

But what makes case studies doubly useful for early-stage companies is that they offer a roadmap for your prospects.

If you’re building a solution with a novel approach or in a completely new space , it can be hard to communicate exactly how your solution is valuable. Case studies provide context and details about how other teams are using your product. The context helps prospects understand specifically how your solution will impact their team.

For startups, while you may start from a humble case study brief, the goal is to create a case study that shows both the business value and the technical context of your product.

Planning Your Case Study

For additional insights into the case study process, we got some additional insights from Joel Klettke of CaseStuddyBuddy , which we’ve added to this section. Before you get customers involved, you need to be clear on your goals for the piece(s) you’re planning to create, and (ideally) how you plan to leverage the story you capture.

You want the stories you tell to be intentional, relatable, and persuasive, which means going in with a clear picture of what details will hit hardest for your leads and prospects. Here are some important case study questions to consider before even talking to your customers:

For example:

• What markets or areas are you trying to target? Maybe you can feature stories from a specific vertical (such as fintech or e-commerce) or functional group (such as DevOps or product management) to which your company wants to sell.
• What personas or roles are you trying to reach? Your target personas should inform the level of detail and what you emphasize in the stories. Who are the decision-makers you need to persuade? Are you targeting executives at earlier-stage companies who have purchasing power, or mid-senior engineers at more-mature firms who might have to create a business case for your product? You’ll likely want to consider your ideal persona when choosing people to interview so that leads can see themselves in your story.
• What objections would your sales team most love to be able to counter with a story? You may be able to make those objections—and how the customer overcame them—obvious in the story in such a way that it inspires others to act.
• What questions or hesitations are you bumping into that a story could help illustrate? Similar to the above, you can have your interview subject list the hesitations they had, verbatim, and how they no longer have any such concerns as a happy customer.
• What outcomes are your leads seeking? Focusing on valuable, desired outcomes that appeal to your target audience will appeal to them and may influence a buying decision.
• What aspects of your offering could you clarify through a story? It’s important to remember that you don’t always get to choose your first touchpoint with your prospects. Understanding that your next case study could be the first contact a prospect has with you will help you decide where to spend your bandwidth on details and explanations within the piece. Of course, when you use them properly, case studies can be much more than purely marketing content.

PagerDuty offers case studies in a variety of formats, including written, video, and blog.

Choosing Your Formats

In terms of the format(s), you might think you can only use a B2B case study one way: As a write-up on your website or a PDF you send to potential customers as part of your standard content marketing work. Not the case.

You can use case studies in ads, nurture sequences, RFPs, landing pages, cold outreach, live sales presentations, and more—but not if you only tell the story one way, in one place. Instead, consider the needs of the different channels and audiences.

It’s important to think through every way you can use a case study as part of your larger marketing strategy, to drive lead generation at the top of your funnel and win more deals at the bottom.

For example, could you produce:

• One-sheets: A brief version for cold outreach or post-call follow-up?
• Audiograms: For use on social media (particularly on LinkedIn or Twitter, as applicable) or in ads to let prospects hear those glowing words from your customers themselves?
• Slides: A persuasive slide in your next sales deck that reinforces your product’s value?
• Blog: A Q&A-style blog post that reads like an interview with a prominent person in your space?
• Quotes: An eye-catching pull quote for your company’s homepage from a high-profile customer?
• Talking points: A relevant anecdote to mention on podcasts you may be recording or appearing on?
• PR pitches: And potentially as your company matures, a PR pitch to trade outlets that cover topics relevant to your customers?

Consider the different formats you plan to use for your next customer story and make sure you get everything you need from your initial conversations with your busy customers: The long-form case study story to feature on your website, the quick-hit sound byte for your social media channels, the executive summary containing all the success metrics and value you delivered for your sales team’s next deck, and all the rest.

Getting Customer Buy-In

It’d be nice if every customer spontaneously put up their hand and volunteered to take part in a case study, but in reality, you’re going to have to ask them to take part.

Don’t panic. The key is to set expectations and give them a sense of control.

Clearly Set Expectations for Customers

When you make the ask, be clear about why you’re asking them (specifically) and what parts of the relationship you’re hoping they will speak to. A clear ask helps them feel comfortable and prepared in terms of what they’ll be asked to discuss.

Then, lay out what’s involved from a high level, for example: “The entire process involves a short interview on Zoom, with a chance for you to review the draft before it goes live. It should take no more than 45 – 60 minutes of your time.”

If you can, send an example of what the final product will look like—even if it isn’t your own. Examples help customers visualize a nice, polished asset and take the mystery out of the end product.

Clearly Set Expectations for Your Own Team

It’s probably a good idea to calibrate your team’s expectations as well. Unless you specifically added a clause in the sales contract that requires this particular customer to provide testimonials (which some companies put on the table as a bargaining chip during the sales process), case study participation is optional.

Customers not bound by contractual obligations may decline to participate, potentially because they’re too busy, or because they may be having issues they’d prefer to resolve first. Put yourself in the best possible position to secure case studies. Work with your customer success team to find customers who are happy, successful, and not under time pressure to deliver other projects of their own.

It’s also a good idea to keep in mind that customers at larger companies may need approval from their PR experts, marketing team, or legal department before finalizing case studies. In such cases, you may be in for a considerable wait. One that is, sadly, out of your control.

Give Customers a Sense of Control

Always let your clients know that they’ll have a chance to review a draft and request changes. You can let them know you’ll be happy to make any changes or revisions they request to make the process fast and simple.

Essentially, the better you communicate your process, the ‘why,’ and the final deliverable, the more likely you are to get a “yes!” Here’s a full blog from CaseStudyBuddy that focuses on how to get your customers to agree to case studies.

Sanity ensures that success metrics are front-and-center in its case studies.

B2B Case Study Interview Questions

Who is my ideal interview target.

Your case study should reflect the perspective of your buyer — if you’re selling to VPEs , aim to interview the VPE. Depending on the size of the team and who is using your product, you might need to find a balance between someone who is high-level enough to understand the business value that your product brings, but technical and in-the-weeds enough to know how the product is being used day to day.

It’s OK to interview more than one person, but more viewpoints can be hard to wrangle, and for right now we’re aiming for simple and effective, so stick to no more than two to three interviewees.

10 Critical Case Study Interview Questions (and One Helpful Bonus Question)

Your case study interview should be a conversation, not an interrogation. Prepared questions help you hit all the important points, but before every case study interview, review these template questions and customize them for the particular use case.

Here are the most important case study interview questions to use when interviewing customers for case studies. (Obviously, you should adapt the questions to be most relevant to your company and its audience, and over time, you may want to incorporate them into a case study questionnaire template for repeat use.)

• What is your role/what does your company do?
• What did [process] look like at your company before? What were the biggest pain points you experienced?
• What was the breaking point where you decided to look for a solution?
• How did you find out about [our product]?
• What was the first moment where you realized that [our product] was a unique solution to your problem?
• What does [process] look like at your company now?
• What other software/apps/tools do you use as part of your [process] workflow?
• Are there any quantifiable metrics that you use to measure the impact of [our product]? Can you share any of those numbers?
• What has your team been doing with the time/budget/etc they save?
• What’s one thing you’d want someone who is considering using [our product] to know?

One question that isn’t on the list that you should always ask at least once: “Can you tell me more about that?” An interviewee might gloss over a detail that they find mundane, but which will be critically interesting to your prospects. For technical products, such details often end up being related to their tech stack and the other tools they’re using, and can often help you tell a stronger story about how your product delivers value. Always dig deeper.

As a logistical note, consider recording your case study interviews. Frantic note-taking to capture every word distracts you from staying in the moment and being able to ask meaningful follow-up questions. Just remember to get their approval to record the call before you start the conversation since there are laws in place, such as California’s “eavesdropping” statute , that require all parties to consent to recording in advance.

An Effective B2B Case Study Template

Once you have your customer’s story, you’ll need to transform it into a format that has a strong narrative and is easy to skim. This is the case study framework template that I’ve found most effective for creating concise, impactful case studies quickly. Grab a copy of the template here .

Now you’ve identified and organized your key points and quotes, it’s time to write! Your goal is to craft a cohesive story around the customer’s buying journey and product use. Writing case studies doesn’t need to be an overly long project. Keep it as short as you can without losing the overall context of the use case.

A Note on Success Metrics

As we mentioned earlier, one of the key questions to ask customers is about quantifiable improvements they’ve seen as a result of using your company’s products. While not every customer may have hard numbers on hand to share in the moment as you’re interviewing them, metrics are a key part of making your success stories impactful.

Be prepared for the possibility that your interview subjects might not have the success metrics you’re looking for during your conversation. Keep a few possible alternative metrics in mind you might ask them about that pertain to your product’s value proposition (such as revenue generated, hours saved, number of incidents reduced, improved SLA performance, or whichever metrics are relevant to you). If your subjects are open to double-checking on certain metrics to provide later, it’s a good idea to include placeholder success metrics in your case study draft for customers to fill in or update later.

A Note on Formatting

In terms of formatting, it’s also a good idea to break up your case study into subsections with clearly-marked headers. Subsections and subheaders make your case studies easier to read, easier to skim, and easier to index on search engines for SEO purposes. You can also visually break up all your text with customer quotes, product images, and if you have the resources, an infographic or two that depicts the value your product provides.

It’s also a good idea to consider adding a clear CTA (call to action) within your case studies, such as to read other, similar content you’ve created for similar use cases or similar verticals. Adding a CTA with links to additional, relevant content can encourage your prospects to “binge” on your content and learn more about your product while you have their attention.

A Note on Quotes

Customer quotes are at the heart of a good case study. But people don’t always speak in crisp, clean sentences that lend themselves to sound-bytes. Lightly editing quotes to be clear and usable out of the context of the conversation is an important step.

However, when cleaning up your quotes, be careful not to sanitize them too much. You’ll quickly find that they all start sounding robotic and fabricated. If your final quotes read like carbon copies of your messaging framework , you’ve gone too far.

Ship It and Celebrate!

Get the thumbs-up.

Unless you particularly enjoy speaking with angry communications managers and lawyers, always give your case study subject the chance to review the final version before it goes live.

Two things to do to keep the review process quick and easy:

• Minimize editing rounds: Review limbo is usually where case studies get stuck, so minimize the back-and-forth as much as possible. It’s a good idea to send a PDF of the final mockup along with a Google Doc for editing, as having the “final” visual helps push stakeholders to give feedback.
• Set a hard publish deadline: Saying, “We’re planning to publish on MM/DD, please let me know if you have any edits by MM/DD” can drive a quicker turnaround in a way that open-ended requests can’t.

Distribute Your Case Study

Completing your first case study is something worth celebrating, but your work isn’t done. Publish it to your website, share it with your team and other customers, and promote your new case study to your target audience based on the formats you evaluated previously.

We dive deeper into how to leverage user stories effectively in another article, which you can read here!

Case Study Examples

So now you know some important tips on how to write a B2B case study. To help you get a better sense of what the final product should look like, we asked Joel to share some of his favorite examples of customer stories for SaaS companies and developer tools. Here are some examples of great case studies to consider:

For examples of some real-world B2B, developer-focused case studies, check out these:

• LaunchDarkly follows our case study framework for clear, easy-to-parse user stories
• SmartSheet also uses customer quotes to frame user stories and highlights specific use cases.
• PagerDuty offers a variety of formats for customer case study content, including full written articles, blogs, and video
• Snyk offers compact case studies packed with customer quotes and visuals to be easily skimmable
• Sanity.io offers beautiful case studies broken up into easily consumable subheadings with plenty of embedded visuals
• Radar uses a somewhat minimalist customer case study template that leads with success metrics and tells a before-and-after story by highlighting “the problem” and “the solution”
• Tailscale weaves in-depth stories that cover each customer’s vertical and unique business challenges to properly frame the problem, and how it provided a valuable solution
• Mux , being a video platform, adds both a video and a written component to each of its in-depth case studies

Here are some additional videos walking through best practices for case studies provided by Joel:

• Integrate.io - A walk-through of a case study for this SaaS company covering content layout and how easy your case study is to skim
• Rainforest QA - An additional walk-through of a case study covering the importance of customer quotes and success metrics

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9 Ways to Use Customer Case Studies in Your Marketing

January 29, 2020

By Kristen Deyo

With so many types of content to choose from, it can be difficult to determine the best options for engaging prospects and turning them into customers. However, one form of content that routinely leads the pack is the customer case study. In fact, according to Hawkeye , 71 percent of B2B buyers in the awareness stage and 77 percent in the evaluation stage cited testimonials and case studies as the most influential types of content. 

Whether customer stories exist in PDF format, on their own landing page, or in video form, customer case studies give your personas what they yearn for: proof that your products or services deliver results. Below we dive into nine ways you can start using customer case studies in your marketing.

But First ... What Is a Case Study?

Simply put, a case study is a detailed story about something your customer did or was able to achieve while using your product or service. Case studies go beyond testimonials, instead serving as comprehensive long-form content , each one exploring a topic in its entirety. A case study often discusses a challenge or conflict, how it was approached and resolved, and the positive outcome that was achieved as a result. Great case studies are filled with research and data points that amplify the story and make it more compelling.

The Power of Customer Case Studies in Your Marketing

According to Dimensional Research , 90 percent of buyers who read positive customer success content claimed it influenced their buying decision. And with good reason. Think of it this way: If you were evaluating a solution, what would resonate with you more—a datasheet full with specs and bullets or a story about how a customer had a challenge (possibly similar to yours) and was able to solve it using a product or service? Customer case studies are powerful tools that can help:

• Position your company as a market leader
• Guide your prospects through their buying journey
• Educate prospects on the value and benefits of your product or service
• Provide powerful social proof 
• Serve as key pieces of your sales enablement toolbox to empower your sales team to focus on the “why”, instead of the “what” or “how”

The Anatomy of a Great Customer Case Study

A case study is a story. Compelling customer storytelling takes you on a journey; it doesn’t force statistics down your throat. Perhaps the most celebrated style of case study writing is the “Hero’s Journey” as defined by Joseph Campbell:

• Hero suffers a loss or experiences a serious problem.
• Hero attempts to resolve issues through usual means and fails.
• Hero goes on a journey and discovers an ally or new approach.
• Hero overcomes tremendous odds to resolve the problem.
• Hero returns triumphant and tells all about his conquest.

If you want more great tips for writing your own case studies, check out this blog about writing a killer case study .

9 Ways to Use Customer Case Studies in Your Marketing Efforts

1. showcase case studies on your homepage.

Although customer case studies are powerful tools for building credibility, they also help drive more conversions and click-throughs on your website. In fact, according to BigCommerce , when customer case studies and/or testimonials are present on your website, people are 58 percent more likely to convert. And because your homepage is often the first page your visitors see, it’s prime real estate for offering social proof and enticing visitors to stay on your site longer and ultimately convert. Here’s a great example from Poynt ( a payments platform trusted by over 100,000 merchants across the world) of how to feature customer testimonials:

Bonus tip: Don’t stop at your homepage. Use pull quotes from your case studies and sprinkle them on other relevant pages across your website for added social proof. This could include your individual product and/or service pages, pricing page, or about us page.

2. Create a designated place for your case studies on your website

As you build a library of customer success stories, it’s important to showcase them in a meaningful way. Having a designated marketing case studies hub on your website (see ours below for inspiration!) is one way to prominently showcase all your customers in one beautiful, digitally consolidated place.

And although case studies can certainly exist in PDF format, individual landing pages showcasing your customer stories can provide a rich experience for website visitors. Here’s a financial services customer case study example :

3. Use case studies in your blog content

Consider repurposing your customer stories into an abridged blog post. This can serve as an inspirational, awareness-stage post that focuses less on the data and insights, and more on the achievement and transformation your customer experienced. At the end of your blog post, include a call to action (CTA) to download the full customer story. 

Here’s a great example from one of our clients, Accumula , and their customer spotlight feature for their customer Adorn.

4. Use customer stories and testimonials in your premium content

Take your premium content one step further by adding social proof. Much like the abridged, inspirational blog post, you can use a similar format to include in your guides, white papers, infographics, and so on. This will enhance your topic and build credibility.

5. Turn traditional case studies into video content

According to a report from HubSpot , it is estimated that more than 50 percent of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. I know what you’re thinking: Video is expensive and labor-intensive. But the truth is, it doesn’t need to be. There are some great video tools and apps out there that make shooting, editing, and packaging videos a breeze.

Here’s an example from First State Community Bank , which turned one of their customer stories into a compelling video featured on their homepage and YouTube channel that was created completely in-house!

6. Add case studies to your email nurturing

Whether B2B or B2C, email marketing continues to be the top winner in terms of driving the best return. In fact, email generates $38 for every $1 spent —that’s an astounding 3,800 percent ROI! Here’s an example from Shopify’s Master Series :

7. Give case studies to your sales team

Case studies can be valuable resources for your sales team. In fact, customer case studies can boost your deal closing ratio by 70 percent and your sales by 185 percent ! Customer stories help empower your sales team to focus less on product specs, and more on how and why your product or service adds value, making case studies a powerful tool in your sales enablement toolbox. Use case studies during the sales process to:

• Build credibility during initial sales calls and/or demos
• Overcome objections by contextualizing your offering with a real-life example
• Help your sales team focus on the value your product or service brings, not specs

8. Showcase your customer stories across your social media channels

Your social channels are a great place to share testimonials and snippets from your case studies to engage your audience. Here are a couple examples from Entire FS and Healthinomics :

Companies that share authentic, user-generated content build more trust and credibility with their social audience.

Pro tip: Use a tool like Canva to build testimonial social images. The best part? They have thousands of free templates, appropriately sized for all social channels, from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram and LinkedIn.

9. In-person and digital speaking engagements

If you’ve turned your customers into evangelists, consider having them join you for field events or speaking engagements to share their story. Think about it this way: What would you rather see? A company discussing how great they are or a company letting their customer talk about their own experience with the company’s product or service from their point of view?

Here are a few ways you can include your customers:

• Industry roundtable 
• Speaking sessions at an industry event or trade show
• A podcast episode featuring your customer
• Co-host a webinar on a niche topic

Customer stories are one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. Take the time to delight customers and cultivate trusting relationships. Remember: Customers who love you will be willing to shout from rooftops on your behalf. When you’ve successfully created a compelling customer story, repurpose it and leverage it across channels to engage prospects and turn them into customers.

We want to hear from you! Where are you seeing success with your customer case studies? How are you leveraging them in your current marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments or reach out to us on social!

Easily craft compelling customer interviews & provide leads with the information they need to make an informed decision.

Case Study Questions Template

About the author

Kristen Deyo was formerly a Director of Marketing Strategy at SmartBug based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She has 8+ years experience developing strategies for primarily B2B SaaS/technology companies and hyper-growth startups. She holds degrees from Queen's University (Cha'Gheill!) and the St. Lawrence School of Business. When not digitally plugged in, you can find her enjoying a good happy hour or planning her next adventure. Read more articles by Kristen Deyo .

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15 Examples of Customer Centric Companies – Explained with Case Studies

Business experts often wonder why Customer Centric Companies do better than others. Their financial performance and customer loyalty is significantly higher than any others. In this detailed blog, we explore 15 such companies with case studies and examples and analyze what constitutes customer centricity

In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape , placing the customer at the heart of your business strategy is more important than ever. The ability to deliver a high-quality customer experience can set a company apart and cultivate lasting loyalty. In this blog post, we’re shining the spotlight on 15 companies that have taken the customer-centric approach to new heights. From innovative start-ups to global giants, these organizations have embedded customer-centricity into their DNA, and their success stories provide valuable lessons for businesses of all sizes. So, let’s dive in and explore the strategies, vision, and real-life case studies of these 15 customer-centric companies.

Customer Centric Companies 1: Amazon

Strategy and Vision: Amazon’s “customer obsession” motto drives its business operations, constantly pushing it to improve and streamline the customer experience. Amazon aims to make the online shopping journey as easy and enjoyable as possible.

Case Study: Amazon Prime is the epitome of the company’s customer-centric approach. Amazon identified a key customer pain point—slow shipping—and introduced Amazon Prime. It was a subscription model that gave customers access to two-day shipping, and this service has since expanded to include video and music streaming, exclusive deals, and more. This has resulted in increased customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Customer Centric Companies 2 : Apple

Strategy and Vision: Apple designs its products keeping the customer experience at the forefront, focusing on ease of use, high quality, and sophisticated design.

Case Study: Apple’s response to the “Antennagate” scandal surrounding the iPhone 4 demonstrated their customer-centricity. Users reported that the phone lost signal when held in a certain way. Despite initially downplaying the issue, Apple eventually offered free cases to mitigate the problem and ultimately incorporated the learning into their future product designs, showing a commitment to learning from and responding to customer needs .

Customer Centric Companies 3 : Zappos

Strategy and Vision: Zappos is renowned for its outstanding customer service, which includes 24/7 customer support, a 365-day return policy, and free shipping both ways.

Case Study: There are numerous stories of Zappos’ customer service going above and beyond, but one that stands out is when a customer service representative spent over 10 hours on a call with a customer. Rather than rushing the customer, the representative took the time to genuinely connect with them, illustrating Zappos’ extraordinary dedication to customer satisfaction.

Customer Centric Companies 4 : Nordstrom

Strategy and Vision: Nordstrom sets the standard for customer service in the retail industry with initiatives like personal shoppers and a generous return policy.

Case Study: One well-known story involves a customer returning car tires to Nordstrom—a product they don’t even sell—and the store accepting the return. While the story is from the early days of Nordstrom, it illustrates the lengths the company is willing to go to keep customers happy.

Customer Centric Companies 5 : Netflix

Strategy and Vision: Netflix prioritizes user experience, tailoring its services to the viewing preferences of each user, creating an enjoyable, ad-free watching experience.

Case Study: Netflix’s decision to invest in original content was based on extensive customer viewing data. They recognized a gap in the content they were providing and filled it by creating their own shows and movies, showing a commitment to using customer data to improve the user experience.

Customer Centric Companies 6 : Disney

Strategy and Vision: Disney focuses on creating memorable, magical experiences for customers. This is evident in their movies and theme parks, where every detail is designed to deliver joy and entertainment.

Case Study: Disney’s MagicBand, a wristband for park guests, serves as a hotel room key, park ticket, FastPass, and payment method. This investment in customer convenience greatly enhances the overall park experience.

Customer Centric Companies 7: Trader Joe’s

Strategy and Vision: Trader Joe’s emphasizes making grocery shopping enjoyable through friendly staff, unique product selection, and customer feedback.

Case Study: Trader Joe’s reversed its decision to discontinue a popular product after receiving a single complaint from an 82-year-old customer, demonstrating their dedication to customer satisfaction.

Customer Centric Companies 8 : Ritz-Carlton

Strategy and Vision: Ritz-Carlton sets the standard for luxury customer service in the hospitality industry, empowering employees to go above and beyond for guests.

Case Study: In one famous story, a Ritz-Carlton employee found a guest’s lost laptop charger and mailed it to them at their next destination, along with a note and some additional chargers for different devices. This is a perfect example of Ritz-Carlton’s commitment to exceeding guest expectations.

Customer Centric Companies 9 : Starbucks

Strategy and Vision: Starbucks focuses on consistent, high-quality customer experiences, with well-trained staff, a comfortable store ambiance, and customizable drinks.

Case Study: Starbucks’ mobile order and pay feature was developed in response to customer needs for a quicker, more convenient way to get their coffee. This feature has improved the customer experience and increased loyalty.

Customer Centric Companies 10 : Costco

Strategy and Vision: Costco emphasizes value, offering high-quality products at affordable prices, and additional services like optical and travel.

Case Study: Costco’s decision to keep their rotisserie chicken at $4.99, despite rising costs, demonstrates their commitment to providing value to customers and maintaining customer satisfaction.

Customer Centric Companies 11 : Southwest Airlines

Strategy and Vision: Southwest’s transparent pricing strategy, friendly service, and flexible policies all contribute to its reputation as a customer-friendly airline.

Case Study: When a passenger’s son was in a critical accident, Southwest held a plane at the gate and arranged for her to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. This is a testament to Southwest’s customer-centric culture .

Customer Centric Companies 12 : Salesforce

Strategy and Vision: Salesforce builds its services around customer needs, offering a variety of software solutions for different industries and constantly innovating based on customer feedback.

Case Study: Salesforce’s “Voice of the Customer” program involves extensive customer interviews and surveys to understand and address customer needs, illustrating their commitment to customer-centric innovation.

Customer Centric Companies 13 : Chick-fil-A

Strategy and Vision: Chick-fil-A focuses on high-quality food, exceptional customer service, and community involvement. Their employees are known for saying “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome,” demonstrating their dedication to polite, friendly service.

Case Study: Chick-fil-A has consistently topped American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) rankings in the fast food category, illustrating the effectiveness of their customer-centric approach.

Customer Centric Companies 14 : IKEA

Strategy and Vision: IKEA focuses on providing well-designed, functional, and affordable home furnishings. They aim to create a unique and engaging shopping experience.

Case Study: IKEA’s decision to offer home assembly services was driven by customer feedback and is a clear example of their commitment to improving the customer experience.

Customer Centric Companies 15 : Patagonia

Strategy and Vision: Patagonia places its customers and their values at the heart of their business, focusing on sustainability, quality, and transparency.

Case Study: In 2011, Patagonia ran an ad during the Black Friday shopping frenzy telling customers “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” highlighting the environmental cost of consumerism. This risky move resonated with their customer base, reinforcing their brand ethos and strengthening customer loyalty.

10 Core Elements of Customer Centric Companies

Understanding Customer Needs : The first step is to deeply understand your customers: their needs, desires, pain points, and what they value most. This could be achieved through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or analysis of customer behavior data.

Segmentation : Customer segmentation involves dividing your customer base into distinct groups based on common characteristics such as demographics, buying habits, or interests. This allows you to tailor your products, services, and communications to meet the specific needs of each segment.

Personalization : Personalization is about tailoring experiences, communications, and offerings to individual customers based on their preferences and behavior. This can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and it can be facilitated through the use of data and technology.

Customer Journey Mapping : A customer journey map visualizes the entire process a customer goes through when interacting with your company, from initial contact to final purchase or interaction. This tool helps businesses identify customer touchpoints and find opportunities to enhance the customer experience.

Customer Feedback and Adaptation : Businesses should regularly seek feedback from their customers and use it to continuously improve their products, services, and overall customer experience. This may involve using various feedback channels such as surveys, social media, and customer service interactions.

Exceptional Customer Service : Customer-centric companies prioritize delivering excellent customer service. This might involve providing multiple channels for customer support (like phone, email, live chat), ensuring quick response times, or empowering customer service representatives to solve problems effectively .

Employee Engagement : Employees play a key role in delivering a customer-centric experience . Therefore, companies need to train and motivate their employees to put the customer first. This might involve employee incentives, training programs, or a company culture that values customer service.

Long-term Relationship Building : Customer-centric companies aim to build long-lasting relationships with their customers rather than focusing solely on individual transactions. This may involve maintaining regular communication, offering loyalty programs, or exceeding customer expectations to foster loyalty.

Leveraging Technology : Technology can enhance the customer experience through tools like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems, AI-powered chatbots for 24/7 customer service, personalized marketing , and data analytics tools to gain insights about customer behavior.

Value-Driven Approach : Above all, a customer-centric approach involves delivering value to the customer at every interaction. This means not just meeting their needs, but exceeding their expectations and providing a positive, memorable experience.

Samrat is a Delhi-based MBA from the Indian Institute of Management. He is a Strategy, AI, and Marketing Enthusiast and passionately writes about core and emerging topics in Management studies. Reach out to his LinkedIn for a discussion or follow his Quora Page

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26+ Best Case Study Questions for Customer Interviews

Updated July 2024 : Case studies are a critical element of most SaaS marketing strategies. But what case study questions do you ask in the customer interview to ensure you elicit the details AND emotion you need for an authentic and compelling story?

In research we conducted this year, SaaS marketers ranked case studies the #1 most effective marketing tactic to increase sales—ahead of general website content, SEO, blog posts, social media and other marketing tactics.

But gathering the insights, data and customer quotes that make a case study resonate takes some finesse. This is why it’s so important to develop a set of relevant case study questions for interviews with customers.

Get 26 case study questions, PLUS 19 bonus questions for use case, adoption and switcher stories. Download the cheat sheet now .

What case study interview questions should you ask?

In this post, we share the 26 powerful case study questions we use when conducting a case study interview.

We also included favorite case study interview questions and hot tips from customer marketing and advocacy practitioners in our industry:

• Natalie Gullatt , Customer Lifecycle and Growth Manager, Artera 
• Cecilia Wainio , Customer Growth, Jitterbit
• Helen Feber , Founder, Referential
• Luis González , Head of Global Customer Advocacy, Alteryx
• Deirdre Puleo , former Content Strategist, Wix 
• Kaily Baskett , Director of Revenue Growth, SlapFive
• Jeff Ernst , CEO, SlapFive
• Gabriela Contreras , Independent Marketing Consultant
• Erin O’Quinn , Senior Manager, Customer Marketing, VMware by Broadcom
• Cassie Stevenson , Global Customer Advocacy Lead, Qumulo
• Cindy Aitken ,  Director, Customer Marketing, Collibra
• Diana Yanez-Pastor , Independent Customer Advocacy Marketing Consultant

With these insight-eliciting case study questions in your back pocket, you’ll be able to uncover nuggets of gold that will help you create a customer story that really resonates with your prospects and leads.

Also learn how to conduct a good case study interview

In this post, we also cover tips for conducting a great case study interview, as well as some common interview mistakes to avoid.

Before the case study interview

Find a convenient time for the interview, prepare your case study questions in advance, should you send the case study questions to your customer ahead of time, make your customer comfortable, 26 case study questions for interviews with customers, bonus case study interview questions, an email interview won’t cut it, take notes and record the interview, watch out for these 4 common interview mistakes.

Get a cheat sheet with 26 case study questions, PLUS 19 bonus questions for use case, adoption and switcher stories. Download the cheat sheet now .

Keep in mind that there are 3 important phases to any case study:

• Before: What were the customer’s pain points, challenges, priorities and aspirations before they found you?
• During: Why did the customer choose your solution? How did the implementation go? How are they using your solution?
• After: What can the customer do now that they couldn’t do before? What impact has your solution had on their business?

The best case studies draw readers in by walking them through these phases by using customer quotes and details that bring the story to life and make it more compelling.

Your customers are busy—and they’re doing you a big favor by participating in the case study—so be as flexible as possible when you’re scheduling the case study interview. And while you’ll likely want to talk to them for hours, be respectful of their time and ask for 30 minutes.

You’ll probably have just 30 or 40 minutes to capture your customer’s story so be thoroughly prepared before you even schedule the case study interview.

Hot tip: How to prepare for an interview

Here are three things you should do before each interview: 1. Ask the CSM or account manager about the account. 2. Review the account details in the CRM or customer management tool. 3. Customize your interview questions to ensure they align with the story you’d like to tell, your company’s goals and the customer’s success.

This is hotly debated amongst customer marketing and advocacy professionals. 

Some people worry that sending the case study interview questions in advance will result in less candid and natural responses. 

Others argue that it’s important to provide the case study questions for interviews with customers ahead of time so they have time to think about their responses and dig for metrics.

So, we did a quick poll and here’s the consensus:

I think we can all agree that we want our customers to be at ease during the interview. At the very least, that means sending the metrics-related questions ahead of time. 

Want to scale your case study production? Partner with Uplift .

Before the interview starts, it’s important to make the customer feel comfortable and explain the process—what to expect during the interview and after. Make sure the customer understands that they have complete control over what’s included in the final draft.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to tell us your story. Once we write the story, we’ll send it to you to review. We won’t publish anything you’re not 100% happy with. Are you okay if I record the call?”

Introductions and warm-up

1. Can you briefly tell me about yourself and your role? 

2. What is most meaningful to you about the work you do? 

Case study question #2 makes the story more personal and the answer often aligns with the company’s strategic initiatives.

3. What are you most proud of with this implementation/solution?

Case study question #3 helps put the interviewee into a positive mindset and you can sometimes get great intel that enables more detailed discussion—and this can lead to a more attention-grabbing story.

4. What keeps you up at night as it relates to your job?

Case study question #4 is one of my favorites because leaders who want to drive transformation will obsess over it. They don’t “turn off” ideating at 5pm. They think about it while they’re driving, doing chores… and trying to fall asleep. So for me, this question allows me to get to the core of their thinking—and you’ll often get the most human answer.

5. What was going on at your company that sent you looking for a solution like [company name]? 

5a. Follow-up: Why was this such a big problem for you and your company? 5b. Follow-up: What was the consequence of doing nothing?

Case study question #5 is a non-threatening way to ask what wasn’t working, and helps bring context to the conversation.

Case study question #5b usually uncovers a longer-term or more critical potential problem and helps get to the root of the ‘so what’ of challenges.

6. Before you landed on [our solution], how did you try to solve the problem?

6a. Follow-up: Why didn’t those solutions work?

7. What criteria did the new solution need to meet?

8. What were the top 3 things you wanted to achieve with the new solution? 

9. What are the 3 biggest reasons you chose [our solution] over competitors and the option of doing nothing? 

9a. Follow-up: Did anything else impress you at this early stage?

Emily Amos, CEO & Founder, Uplift Content

Hot tip: Get better answers

Use rapid framing to elicit prioritized responses. Don’t ask: Why did you purchase this solution? Instead ask: What are the top 3 reasons you purchased this solution from us, instead of another vendor?

10. When you first started working with [company name], how did you come up with the implementation plan?

11. What was the implementation process like? 

12. What challenges did you hit along the way and how did [company name] help you through it?

Case study question #12 is great for building trust. It’s also the #1 most frequently asked question on customer reference calls by a wide margin.

13. What changes did you notice early on? How did things progress?

14. Can you tell me about how you’re using [our solution] and how it’s helped you? 

15. Was there anything that surprised you or stood out to you about [our solution]?

16. How has [our solution] made your job easier? 

16a. Follow-up: What about your department or other departments? The company as a whole?

17. What has your personal experience been like working with the [solution/team]?

18. If you couldn’t use our solution ever again, what would that be like? 

Case study question #18 can lead to some great sound bites.

Hot tip: Create distance

Say to your customer: “Assume I know nothing.” This encourages the customer to provide more context, which is where the golden nuggets really come out. 

19. What would you consider to be the biggest success of your relationship with [company name]?

20. What can you do now that you couldn’t do before? 

Case study question #20 is great for eliciting before/after context.

21. Where have you seen the biggest increase/impact?

21a. Follow-up: Can you quantify those results? For example…

Case study question #21a helps you encourage the interviewee by mentioning specific metrics or outcomes. 

22. What have these results meant for your business? 

22a. Follow-up: Were you expecting to see the type of results you experienced?

Case study question #22 gives the interviewee an opportunity to explain how the results are personal and meaningful.

23. How has [company name] evolved with you? How has it managed to remain your ideal solution both then and now?

23a. Follow-up: Can you think of an example of how working with [company name] has changed your thought process, strategy or the way you do business?

Case study question #23 can open up unique avenues of questioning and capture the dynamic nature of the relationship between you and your customer.

24. What unexpected benefit did you find or what did you learn along the way that you’ll take with you through your career?

Case study question #24 is great because it gets the customer excited about what they do.

25. If another company asked you if you would recommend working with us, what would you say and why? 

Case study question #25 is helpful because it gets the interviewee to provide quotes that summarize the company’s value props succinctly.

26. Is there anything you wish I’d asked?

Case study question #26 can give you some of your best quotes.

Do you want your case studies to have a particular focus? Do you want to tell a:

• Use case story?
• Adoption story?
• Competitive steal story?

Do you want to create:

• Customer-led blog posts providing advice or best practices?
• Customer-led blog posts providing thought leadership?
• Video stories?

If you answered yes…

…you need specific case study interview questions.

We created a cheat sheet with the 26 case study questions above, PLUS 19 additional questions for stories with a specific storyline or focus.

Download the interview questions cheatsheet – with the 19 bonus questions.

Don’t settle for a case study interview done by email. Not only are people more candid in conversation, but you’ll also be able to ask spur-of-the-moment case study questions and explore ideas as they’re presented.

Here are the 4 best ways you can conduct your case study interview:

• face-to-face (this is the best and most personable choice; try to arrange this if your customer is in your region)
• phone interview
• repurposing webinar

A recording and transcription of the case study interview will ensure accuracy and give you peace of mind. Down the road, you can also use the transcript for other marketing activities, such as grabbing testimonials and pull quotes, writing blog posts and more.

Use an app to record phone calls, or use Zoom or Google Meet to record video calls. Make sure you have permission to record the conversation.

Learn how to write a SaaS case study in 9 steps.

1 . Using yes/no questions

Does your list have any yes/no questions? If so, be ready with follow-up questions. Better yet, revise the case study question so it’s open-ended to elicit a more thoughtful response.

2 . Not pushing for numbers

Don’t be afraid to ask for numbers, concrete examples or more information. You need these for a quality case study and this is your chance to get them. Don’t be afraid to repeat case study questions or rephrase them to make sure you get what you need.

3 . Not allowing the conversation to flow

You don’t need to be rigid about asking every single question on your list. The best insights are often unexpected so allow the conversation to flow a little—but don’t get too far off-topic or you’ll run out of time.

4 . Not listening to your customer

Don’t think you already have all the answers. Go into the case study interview with an open mind and be ready to listen.

Scale your case study production

We write case studies for high-growth SaaS companies like ClickUp, WalkMe and Lean Data.  Check out our case study writing service .

26 Case Study Interview Questions to Help You Uncover Gold Get the powerful questions we use in interviews, plus 19 bonus questions for use case, adotpion and switcher stories.

As the founder of Uplift Content, Emily leads her team in creating done-for-you case studies, ebooks and blog posts for high-growth SaaS companies like ClickUp, Calendly and WalkMe. Connect with Emily on Linkedin

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Learn from Emily’s 17 years of aha moments, mistakes, observations, and insights—and find out how you can apply these lessons to your own marketing efforts.

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illy caffè: Brewing Success with Amazon

The Challenge

With two massive legacy brands holding more than 50% of the market share, the coffee market is a notoriously tough grind.

Sustainable coffee brand illy caffè hoped to take on its competitors by stealing market share and growing new-to-brand customers. Founded in 1930, the Italian coffee brand hoped to win over customers highlighting its highly regarded quality and its environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable practices.

However, with its two largest competitors each holding more than three times illy’s market share (and customers not easily swayed from their preferred brand), this was not going to be easy.

illy hoped to attract new-to-brand customers, encouraging purchases and fostering brand loyalty from the onset. The brand asked Tinuiti, its performance marketing firm, to create an energizing strategy to achieve this goal. 

Increase in YoY new Amazon sales

Sales performance exceeding target

Increase in YoY glance views

How We Did It

Tinuiti created a campaign to reach consumers at their first touchpoint when shopping for coffee, targeting new customers who had no prior engagements with illy products. 

Tinuiti began by digging into how and when people purchase coffee, finding that customers typically buy a fresh batch of coffee within three months of their previous purchase. This provided Tinuiti an effective messaging cadence to reach coffee drinkers.

Research also showed that multiple touchpoints are necessary to convert new customers on small-ticket, low-research products like coffee – especially when convincing someone to switch brands.

Given its reach, targeting capabilities, and the variety of tactics it enabled, Amazon was selected as the ideal platform. With the introduction of streaming ads, Amazon Prime had recently emerged as a new inventory source, and illy wanted to move quickly on this opportunity to engage high-value customers through previously untapped channels.

Tinuiti ran video ads highlighting illy’s quality and sustainability on both Amazon streaming TV (Prime) and its webpages. To extend reach, Tinuiti also served display ads online, using broad audience targeting and retargeting techniques to advertise illy products even when customers weren’t shopping for coffee.

Tinuiti strategically shifted illy’s historic spend from lower-funnel tactics (such as product loyalty campaigns, which had reached their saturation point in attracting new customers) into upper-funnel awareness activities, like non-branded searches, streaming TV, and online video. The goal was to fill the top of the funnel, strategically guiding customers through consideration to purchase.

Given illy’s premium quality, Tinuiti implemented demographic targeting into its streaming TV campaign to reach high-income coffee drinkers while also targeting consumers who were new to the coffee category. This would help foundationally establish illy as a new coffee drinker’s brand of choice.

This combination of omnichannel tactics proved to be the perfect blend. The first three active months of the campaign saw a remarkable 99% lift in new-to-brand sales on Amazon compared to the prior quarter. For the same period, illy also surpassed its quarterly sales goals by 18% and recorded a 25% gain in overall market share. 

By refocusing efforts on broad awareness, Tinuiti energized a new batch of illy brand enthusiasts, harvesting the seeds of long-term success and engagement.

Tinuiti’s expertise and strategic approach have been invaluable in helping us reach new customers. Their deep understanding of Amazon’s advertising ecosystem allowed us to tap into new media channels and optimize our campaigns beyond what we had imagined. The results speak for themselves; thousands of new customers have discovered and embraced illy coffee, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the partnership. Javier Mendoza Head of Digital & Commercial Operations, illy caffè

See Our Success Stories

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Lacing Up a Revolutionized 1P Personalization Strategy

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Sony Electronics Loves the Sound of Snapchat Performance

Building a Full-Funnel Strategy with Amazon Marketing Cloud Custom Audiences

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Hitting the High Notes with Amazon Shoppers

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Digital Transformation Case Studies: 3 Successful Brand Examples

Learn how three companies—Walmart, Ford, and Anheuser-Busch InBev—successfully transformed their business through digital initiatives to improve the customer experience.

Originally published on March 30, 2022

3 digital transformation case studies

Overcoming common digital transformation challenges, tips for building a digital transformation strategy, always focus on your customers.

Digital transformation is a process in which a company invests in new digital products and services to position it for growth and competition. A successful digital transformation improves the customer experience and enhances the way a company operates behind the scenes.

During a digital transformation, your business deploys new products and technologies and develops new ways to connect with your customers. Once the investment in digital begins, your business can use feedback and data to identify growth opportunities.

The three case studies below—from Ford, Walmart, and Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev)—show how legendary companies went beyond simply creating an app and truly re-thought how digital transformation efforts supported sustainable growth for the business.

• A digital transformation is a major business transformation that employs technology to meet business goals and fundamentally change how companies operate.
• A digital transformation drives new products and services that improve the customer experience.
• A digital transformation gives you more informative behavioral data and more touchpoints with the customer.
• AB InBev, Walmart, and Ford invested in digital technology to accelerate internal processes and develop new digital products, which gave them valuable data on the customer experience and influenced future business investments.

Here are three examples of digital transformation. These leading companies carefully considered how new technology could generate data that made internal processes more efficient and produced insights about how to grow customer value.

Brewing company AB InBev underwent a digital transformation while compiling its network of independent breweries into a unified powerhouse . One of the team’s priorities was moving all their data to the cloud . By doing so, AB InBev enabled all employees to quickly and easily pull global insights and use them to make data-backed decisions.

For example, more accurate demand forecasting means AB InBev teams can match supply with demand, which is essential for such a large company with a complex supply chain. Access to big data from all the breweries means employees can experiment faster and roll out changes that improve business processes.

Gathering more data and opening up that data to internal teams was just the first step of the process, though. AB InBev capitalized on its digital investments by launching an e-commerce marketplace called BEES for its SMB customers—the “mom-and-pop shops”—to order products from. With the BEES platform, AB InBev found that their small and medium-sized businesses browsed the store on the mobile app and added items to their cart throughout the day. However, they only made the final purchases later in the evening.

Based on this behavioral data, the BEES team started sending push notifications after 6:00 p.m. recommending relevant products, which led to increased sales and greater customer satisfaction. Through these efforts, BEES gained over 1.8 million monthly active users and captured over $7.5B in Gross Merchandise Volume.

By closely monitoring metrics such as user engagement and purchasing patterns on the BEES platform, AB InBev has made a big impact with its marketing strategies and improved customer retention.

Jason Lambert, SVP of product at BEES, credits their success with the hard data that told them how their customers behaved and what they needed: “It turned out to be a thousand times better than any of our previous strategies or assumptions.” BEES used behavioral analytics to respond quickly, changing the buying experience to match the needs and habits of their retailers.

As a traditional brick-and-mortar retailer, Walmart began a digital transformation by opening an online marketplace. However, digital transformation is an ongoing process—it doesn’t end at the first website. A digital transformation means companies refocus their operations around digital technology. This usually happens both internally and in a customer-facing way.

To drive more customer value through digital touchpoints, Walmart set up mobile apps and a website to enable customers to purchase goods online. After analyzing customer behavioral information from its app, Walmart added more services such as same-day pickup, mobile ordering, and “buy now, pay later.”

These changes were made to meet customer expectations and improve the customer experience. Walmart’s introduction of a seamless online shopping experience represents a pivotal step in digital innovation, setting new standards for retail convenience and efficiency.

In 2024, Walmart announced an AI-powered logistics product called Route Optimization. This product uses AI to find the most straightforward driving routes, pack trailers efficiently, and reduce miles traveled. In addition to using this product internally, Walmart plans to offer it to other businesses that need to employ more efficient supply chain and logistic processes.

Aside from improving customer experience and logistics, Walmart’s head of mobile marketing , Sherry Thomas-Zon, also notes the importance of data—and access to data—in digital transformations. “Our marketing and product teams are always looking at numbers,” Thomas-Zon said. “It keeps our teams agile despite our size and the increasing amount of data we collect and analyze.”

Ford has embraced several digital transformation initiatives, including using technology to transform and improve manufacturing at one of its biggest automotive factories.

Not having the correct parts available holds up workers and slows down the production process. Ford introduced a material flow wireless parts system so they could track the quantities of different parts and make sure there were enough available. Ford’s use of automation has significantly improved its inventory management process by reducing manual tasks and enhancing worker efficiency.

In 2016, Ford also introduced a digital product for its customers: the FordPass app . It enables Ford owners to control their vehicles remotely. For example, drivers can check their battery or fuel levels and lock or unlock their cars from their phones.

In 2024, Ford took its digital transformation even further when it launched the Ford and Lincoln Digital Experience . Key features include personalized vehicle settings, real-time traffic updates, and seamless integration with smart home devices. The platform also provides advanced navigation, remote control of vehicle functions via the FordPass app, and in-depth vehicle health monitoring.

To capitalize on these digital touchpoints, Ford uses data from its app to improve user experiences . With the ability to capture and analyze data in real-time, Ford’s leadership can now make quicker, more informed decisions that directly enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Ford’s success is grounded in the same process as Walmart and AB InBev. They used their digital transformation to gather detailed information about how customers interact with their products. Then, they made data-driven decisions to provide more value.

It’s not called a transformation for no reason. You’re changing the way your business operates, which is no easy feat. Planning and effective change management strategies are key to overcoming digital transformation challenges.

Create a digital transformation strategy roadmap that outlines your integration strategy and details how this will affect your teams, processes, and workflows. Once you’ve created your plan, share it with the entire company so everyone can use it as a single reference point. Use a project management tool that enables team members to get a big-picture overview and see granular details like the tasks they’re responsible for.

It takes time for teams to onboard and move away from what was successful under the previous system, for example, shifting from heavyweight to lightweight project planning. Make sure you factor some breathing space into your roadmap—giving everyone a chance to get used to the new way of operating.

As part of a digital transformation, you’ll want your team to develop new skills as well. Upskill your team by incorporating digital skills into your employee development plans . Provide people with opportunities to learn and then track their progress. Promote platforms like LinkedIn Learning to help your teams understand the nuances of digital transformation and boost their skills.

If you believe there’s an end-state to digital transformation, more challenges will arise. New technology and consumer behaviors are always emerging, meaning digital transformation is ongoing. It’s not something you’ll complete in a week. Rather, it’s a continuous state of experimentation and improvement.

At Amplitude, we refer to this process as digital optimization . If digital transformation brings new products, services, and business models to the fold, then digital optimization is about improving these outputs. Both digital transformation and digital optimization are important—digital transformation signals the start of new investments, and digital optimization compounds them.

Examine how each part of the transformation will affect your customers and your employees. Then, you can be intentional and introduce initiatives that positively impact your business.

Diagnose what you want from a digital transformation first

There are different ways of approaching a digital transformation. Some companies prefer to implement an all-inclusive digital strategy, transforming all parts of their organization at the same time. Others opt for a less risky incremental strategy. Every company is different. To choose the best approach, examine your whole organization and analyze where digital systems could help.

Consider your business goals. Investigate how a digital transformation could impact the customer experience. What new products could you provide? How could you improve your services? For example, you might use artificial intelligence to create a chatbot that reduces customer service wait times—or purchase software that does the same.

You’ll also want to review your business processes. How could a digital transformation speed up your current workflows, improve your operations, or enable more collaboration between teams? Asking these questions lets you challenge the way you operate and will help you identify problems in your organization that you might not have noticed before. For example, perhaps your deliveries are often delayed, and you could make delivery smoother by digitizing elements of your supply chain .

Get cross-team involvement

Though different teams may work separately, your customers are affected by each department. Collaboration elevates everyone’s work because it means people can make informed decisions.

Make sure you get input from all of the right stakeholders when you create your digital transformation strategy. Ask:

• What processes hold you up?
• Where are the bottlenecks?
• What data would be useful for you?

Enable everyone to access the data they need without input from anyone else. Help your employees improve their data literacy . Start by training all your employees to use your organization’s data tools and software. To help everyone in your organization access and analyze data, adopt easy-to-use self-service tools (e.g., an analytics tool and a CRM). Then, lead by example. Provide inspiration by using data storytelling in your presentations to explain the decisions you make.

Encourage collaboration between teams by creating shared resources so they have spaces to present insights and submit suggestions. This could be as simple as creating a Google Doc for brainstorming that multiple teams can access or sharing charts directly within your analytics solution, like with Amplitude Notebooks . Then, you can start to experiment and make improvements to the digital customer experience like Walmart, Ford, and AB InBev did.

Once your digital transformation is moving, a digital optimization strategy is an opportunity to generate growth. Your digital transformation initiatives will continue in parallel, and the process will become a feedback loop:

• Deploy new digital systems and products.
• Analyze the data that comes forth from these investments. Use it to draw insights about your customers or processes.
• Make decisions based on the data and make changes.

Keep customer needs at the heart of your work. Let them guide you as you undergo digital transformation. As you gather more data about how your customers interact with your new digital products, use it to make the experience even better for them. This will lead to more trust and loyalty and, ultimately, more recurring revenue.

To continue your learning about digital transformation and optimization, join an Amplitude workshop or webinar or read our Guide to Digital Optimization .

• MIT Sloan. How to build data literacy in your company
• Ernst & Young. How global supply chain strategy is changing and what comes next
• Datanami. From Big Beer to Big Data: Inside AB InBev’s Digital Transformation
• Predictable Profits. How Ford Embraced Digital Transformation
• APMG International. Heavyweight vs Lightweight Management

About the Author

More best practices.

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The guide to data accessibility, what is a product roadmap a definitive guide, new amplitude + snowflake integration delivers the modern data stack, digital optimization vs. digital transformation explained, 6 essential digital optimization skills you need, what is martech full guide and how to build your stack, recurring revenue 101: mrr vs. arr.

Fueling growth through moments of customer delight

Once, at a Ritz Carlton resort, a server noticed a family searching for a coquí frog hidden in the vegetation. 1 A small frog endemic to Puerto Rico. Inspired to create a memorable experience, he orchestrated a surprise: when the family returned to their room after dinner, they found a chocolate lily pad with two chocolate coquí frogs perched on it and a note from “Coquí” himself waiting on the bed. The family was delighted by this thoughtful, fun gesture.

This story raises questions about the potential of delight in customer engagement. Can delight be measured, managed, and institutionally delivered? What is the economic payoff for businesses?

But, to start with delight itself: delight occurs at the intersection of customer joy and surprise. In the past, customer delight was restricted to elite brands due to perceived high costs. However, thanks to technological advancements and a shift toward customer-centric practices, companies now have smarter and more effective methods to deliver delightful experiences that yield long-term returns.

Our Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice has done extensive research to uncover the profound impact of customer delight on business success. Surveying 25,000 customers across diverse industries such as tourism, insurance, and banking, we have discovered compelling evidence: delight not only cultivates loyalty and repurchase but also fuels revenue growth through cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.

In this article, we cover the key findings of the survey, which reveal a clear advantage for companies that prioritize delight. Our research revealed that they outperform their competitors in key metrics such as net promoter score (NPS), revenue, and total return to shareholders (TRS). By prioritizing customer delight and implementing smart, sustainable strategies, companies can unlock new frontiers of service and drive lasting returns without incurring prohibitive expenses.

To have a successful customer interaction, however, both the rational and emotional aspects of customer experience must be addressed. For example, if you are taking a ride in a cab, you expect to reach your destination. If you arrive before the anticipated time, chances are that you will be satisfied with the experience. Meeting customer expectations and satisfaction continues to be mission-critical—they are both vital elements in customer experience before delight can happen—but to elevate the experience, delight is needed; delight has the power to amplify retention, referrals, and revenue of satisfied customers.

Delight: The sweet nexus between joy and surprise

Before exploring the impact of delight, it is important to understand the science behind it. Delight is a deep, emotional reaction characterized by joy and surprise, stemming from an experience that provides something unexpected and extraordinary, transcending daily life. 2 Robert Plutchik,  Theory of Emotion , Academic Press, New York, 1980. Delight occurs only at the intersection of joy and surprise (Exhibit 1).

Surprise unfolds in four stages. First, we freeze, stunned by the unexpected, and we pause. Second, we try to comprehend the reason for the surprise. Third, we shift; the surprise alters our perspective as we uncover something new. Fourth, we experience joy and are so delighted that we feel compelled to tell others about our encounter.

Although surprise tends to be short-lived, it has a disproportionate impact on how well we remember it—the hippocampus, the part of the brain that stores information, is activated when people experience surprise. As a result, our brains retain more details about this event than in an average moment. 3 Vanessa van Edwards, “The ultimate list of emotions and how to control your emotions,” Science of the People, August 2023. Joy, conversely, is the more intuitive, happy, emotional reaction. Combine it with surprise and the magical moment of delight emerges.

And, delight is distinct from satisfaction. Satisfaction is a rational, cognitive response to a service performance or experience based on previously held expectations. If a company just about meets a customer’s expectations, the person is neutral or has no reaction. When expectations are exceeded, the customer is satisfied. And, when something unexpected happens on top of satisfaction, the customer becomes delighted.

Delight your customers and they’ll keep coming back for more

Advocates of customer delight have recognized its potential to forge strong emotional connections and drive desirable business outcomes for a company, such as referrals, retention, and revenue, which all can lead to loyalty (Exhibit 2).

Our customer delight research showed consistent and significant unlocks across sectors, geographies, and product types.

Referrals: Our research revealed an impact on referrals, which reinforces the notion that satisfaction is a vital foundation of customer experience. When customers are not satisfied, delighting them is helpful but does not, and cannot, help fully recover the loss. However, our findings also showed that satisfied customers who experienced delight, versus those who didn’t, had a significantly higher intention to recommend the brand to others, implying that delight is a great amplifier of loyalty.

The NPS amplification impact of delight on satisfied customers was significant across different sectors—28 points in tourism, 18 in insurance, and 15 in banking (Exhibit 3).

Retention: The impact of delight on reusage intentions was 25 percentage points and is evident across other industries. Customers who had a distinct memory of delight during their travel experiences were approximately 19 percentage points more likely to revisit the destination. We witnessed 25 percentage points in banking with regard to reusage intentions (Exhibit 4).

Revenue: There were clear links to value for those who were both satisfied and delighted. Customers who were satisfied and experienced delight tended to cross-sell (buy additional products), up-sell (buy products at a higher price) and were less prone to down-sell (downgrade a product when the price is increased). For example, we noticed 30 percentage points in banking, 11 percentage points in insurance, and 15 percentage points in electric power and natural gas (EPNG) in cross-sell. Given that these activities are directly linked to value, it was possible to calculate an approximate link to the value that moments of delight created.

Our research showed that, in insurance, if companies delighted a significant portion of their customers who were already satisfied, this could lead to additional revenue of 8 to 12 percent—translating into several billion euros a year. More broadly, we noticed that companies differentiating basis customer experience also witnessed their revenue growth double .

Uncover the drivers of delight

We have seen that delight can deliver significant value—so what are its biggest drivers? Through our research, we developed a large database of moments of delight mentioned by customers and analyzed them to understand the type of experiences, triggers, and longitudinal impact of different types of delight drivers. At the most basic level, we found that the majority of delight drivers falls into two categories—service excellence (intangibles) and product innovation. Within these areas, wherever expectations are high, the bar for delight becomes even higher.

Service excellence

We found that genuine, authentic human interactions that lead to personal connections usually result in significant customer delight. Courtesy and kindness create a break from transactional interactions, sparking moments of delight. Take, for example, a barista who learned American Sign Language to be able to deliver a consistent experience to a differently abled customer. Or, imagine if a cab driver had a preset “menu” to offer customers (for example, essential items such as beverages and snacks, or backseat gaming) that would lead to a positive emotional impact, causing delight.

And, as many basic interactions now move to digital, self-service channels, the remaining employee or frontline interactions become even more important—they form connections with customers in more authentic ways and bring the human touch to experiences.

As an example, take a customer who, when referring to his interaction with a call center employee, said, “The agent talked about their personal life, we laughed together and had a wonderful conversation.” This interaction created a personal connection for him.

In another example, a US-based online pet retailer received a call from a grieving customer who wanted to return an unopened bag of dog food as her pet had died. The rep didn’t just give the customer a full refund but suggested she donate the food to nearby shelter, and sent her a personalized note of condolence.

In these types of simple and inexpensive ways, companies can focus on creating environments and playbooks that promote personal interactions between customers and employees. In fact, as digital and cognitive assistants become more human-like, perhaps it is even possible that some of these delightful interactions may be delivered more authentically by digital agents in the future.

Proactive service recovery is also a strong driver of surprise. Many hospitality companies know that guests who experience spectacular service recovery after facing an issue often rate their stays even higher than satisfied customers who have not encountered problems during their stays.

This learning is applicable to other sectors as well, such as banking or insurance. When a service break occurs, most customers have a rational level expectation of what recovery should look like. But brands that significantly supersede that expectation of recovery, or do it in unexpected ways, can generate surprise and create promoters out of detractors.

Product innovation

Tangibles beyond people-driven moments strongly contribute to delight. Unexpected sensory experiences—especially multimodal ones—trigger joy and surprise, while participation and personal indulgence amplify this effect. For example, airlines enhance the first-class customer experience by engaging all five senses with delicious food, signature perfumes, aesthetically pleasing cabins, relaxing music, and comfortable furnishings.

Innovative and novel products or features can also lead to delight—such as an insurer that disrupted the industry when it paid out a claim within seconds.

Personalized tokens of appreciation can help companies stand out from the competition, specifically for customers with high expectations. From our research in insurance, customer verbatims revealed drivers of delight—for instance, one customer told us, “The representative came to our appointment with flowers for me and a bottle of wine for my husband as a thank you for our years of loyalty.”

It is important to note, however, that gifting done at scale can add significant cost to a company, which is why driving delight has typically been regarded as expensive and unsustainable by some companies. Yet, as seen through our research, when done selectively with high-value customers to maximize personalized customer value, it can be powerful. And, a simple upgrade to an existing product may not be joyful for most people but may deliver exceptional joy to some—making it vital to understand each customer’s core emotional and functional needs and deliver against them to create a sense of ambassadorship.

Three ways to stoke the delight engine

To be able to constantly drive positive value from delight, companies need to establish a structured and sustainable delight engine—one with approaches that continually measure, design, and deliver delight at the right moment to the right person to generate positive returns. Through our research, we have identified three key levers that companies could use to create an effective delight engine.

Measure delight and its value

Companies first need to understand the moments of delight that resonate with various customer segments. Here, a mix of qualitative and quantitative research can help uncover what causes delight in a particular industry and along which customer journey. A robust delight measurement system that captures the intensity of joy and surprise across the customer journey can help qualify moments of delight. This further needs to be paired with incremental value measurement driven by delight across the journey, as well as the longevity of the incremental value received through various types of delight interventions.

This method can ensure that investment is focused in areas with the highest return potential. In our research, we found that a single moment of delight at the correct time in the right customer journey can increase loyalty and intent to spend for up to six to nine months after the delight experience.

By tracking the impact of delight interventions on key business outcomes such as loyalty, cross-sell, up-sell, and retention, companies can continually refine their delight interventions to create exceptional customer experiences and value.

Match design to experience

Designing unforgettable experiences isn’t solely a creative endeavor—it requires a design methodology that focuses on optimizing surprise and joy. Designing emotion-provoking moments for each target segment calls for a design methodology that has a deep understanding of customer emotions and triggers, followed by the curation, testing, and refinement of delight interventions that induce those emotions. These interventions can be significant, such as differentiating product features, or be micro-interventions such as a handwritten apology or appreciation note.

The design of delightful customer experiences could be embedded in a company’s capability building and culture change initiatives. As those who interact most with customers, frontliners could be empowered to embrace the change—particularly as digital transactions increase and customers look for more meaningful human interactions.

Disney, for example, is well known for consistently delighting people of all ages and under varying circumstances. It instills in guests a sense of joy and surprise through personalized encounters with Disney characters. What guests perceive as random and unexpected experiences of delight are, in fact, carefully choreographed by Disney. 4 Lauren A. Newell, “Happiness at the house of the mouse: How Disney negotiates to create ‘the happiest place on earth,’” SSRN, July 1, 2012. Take what is known as their “water art,” where they create magic while cleaning: this is a special kind of experience devised by the custodial team in which an employee, using just a broom and a bucket of water, draws favorite Disney and Pixar characters on the ground. Disney further embeds capabilities in its frontline staff for meaningful recovery during difficult moments.

Deliver personalized delight micro-interventions through data and AI

Companies can develop their own delight repositories—with major- as well as micro-interventions—that can be tapped into when needed to trigger the appropriate intervention at the correct moment for a specific individual. As we have shared previously in our Experience DNA article, the future of customer experience is holistic, predictive, and proactive, and this applies to delight, too. We believe that customer insights, in the age of big data, are a key reason why delight no longer needs to be an expensive proposition. In fact, data can be used to hyperpersonalize and prioritize delight-inducing micro-interventions for each customer, and can be delivered in a way that is sustainable, maximizing immediate ROI and customer lifetime value.

After years of considering customer delight to be an expensive option, companies now have a real opportunity to reconsider and unlock its benefits, while being prudent and effective. No longer do they need to have customers who are solely satisfied—once delighted, their customers could be motivated to return, refer, and add value.

Ankit Bisht is a partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office, where Sangeeth Ram is a senior partner and Kashiff Munawar is an associate partner; Andreas Giese is an associate partner in the Riyadh office.

The authors wish to thank Divya Mittagunta, Harald Fanderl, and Jochen Binder for their contributions to this article.

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More From Forbes

Better customer interactions: new insights from hbr study.

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There's a gap between the importance of customer interactions and how successful companies are in ... [+] delivering very positive ones, a new study from HBR and Tata Communications shows.

A recent study by Harvard Business Review, conducted in collaboration with Tata Communications, reveals some unexpected news and at least one unwelcome trend in customer experience.

Despite the widespread adoption of digital tools intended to enhance customer experience (CX), the study found that a mere 38% of those surveyed thought their organization was very successful at delivering positive customer interactions. Even that number could be high. Past research has shown companies often wildly overestimate the quality of their customer experience.

Clearly, simply implementing digital solutions isn’t enough; they must be thoughtfully integrated to truly benefit the customer.

About the HBR/Tata Study

The study surveyed 264 members of the Harvard Business Review Audience, all of whom were familiar with their company’s approach to customer interactions. Typically, these were senior executives and customer experience leaders across various industries worldwide.

The participants represented all major global regions and were primarily from large organizations with significant customer interaction needs. Industries included telecommunications, finance, retail, and healthcare. The study attempted to capture a comprehensive view of current CX challenges and strategies by gathering insights from those directly responsible for shaping and implementing customer interaction initiatives within their companies.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, cx matters: it’s (almost) unanimous.

How important are customer interactions and CX? Fully 92% of the participants said that every customer interaction impacts customer experience. And, 93% agreed that CX impacts the organization's ability to succeed.

The only surprising thing about this finding is that apparently 7% of those surveyed think CX is unimportant . Who are those people? Cable and internet provider executives? Pharma bros?

Complexity and Confusion: The Downside of Too Many Channels

One significant finding was the impact of having too many customer interaction channels. While offering multiple channels seems like a good way to meet customers where they are, the study indicates that it can actually lead to increased confusion and frustration.

Mauro Carobene, VP and Global Head of Customer Interaction Suite at Tata Communications, highlighted this issue in an exclusive interview , noting that often changing channels means starting over. “A bad interaction is when you repeat the same experience, the same information... You contact technical support, you go through a number of menus, explain your problem, and so on. And at the end, you switch to an agent and you need to start again from scratch.”

Carobene emphasizes the importance of seamless interactions, even when customers change channels or encounter new representatives.

Chatbots vs. Humans

A major shift in customer interactions is looming as companies deploy chatbots to assist and/or replace human representatives. At the moment, customer opinion on chatbots is split. While they appreciate instant, 24/7 availability, many feel frustrated by their interaction with chatbots. We’ve all encountered useless chatbots that seem to serve mainly to delay or prevent human interaction.

In my conversation with Carobene, I stated my belief that people didn’t dislike chatbots per se, but rather disliked bad chatbots. I suggested that as AI-driven chatbots improved, they would displace millions of call center workers.

Carobene’s take was different. “Chatbots represent one of the biggest opportunities today to interact better with customers,” he said. He notes that to be truly useful, LLM-based chatbots will need extensive training to understand what customers are experiencing. For example, a non-technical customer might say their wi-fi wasn’t working when in fact the problem was their 5G data. Nuance is necessary, and fixed interaction flow charts will have to become dynamic.

Ultimately, Carobene sees chatbots as useful partners to human representatives, particularly in offering instant availability. “People forget when they were waiting for 20 minutes, or even hours, for an agent to be available.”

Carobene is optimistic on chatbot improvement. “AI will move from solving maybe 5% of the problems today automatically with bots to maybe 80%. And that will represent big savings for the company, but also huge time savings for customers.”

Customer Experience vs. Employee Experience

Customer experience doesn’t stand alone. In the study report, Carobene states, “In a hyperconnected ecosystem, enterprises need to think about creating superior experiences for their employees, customers, partners, and users.”

In our conversation, he pointed out that experience must be seamless for both employees and customers. A tech support person, for example, who is unhappy, upset, or struggling to find information will create a negative experience. A happy representative delivers positive energy and a good interaction.

“Successful companies,” he notes, “manage to increase their engagement internally and externally.”

CX Will Get Better

Perhaps the best news from the study is that 97%. of the respondents said their organization is focused on making one or more improvements to customer interactions over the next 12 months.

At the top of the list for improvements are making interactions more seamless (55%), enhancing personalization (50%), and delivering a more consistent experience (50%). Nearly as many are working on improving marketing messaging (48%) and making interactions more seamless for employees (45%).

While these projects don’t actually guarantee that customer experience will improve, they indicate an understanding that CX has plenty of room for improvement and a commitment to making it better.

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3 Case studies demonstrate the power of modern enterprise content management

Customers in insurance, banking, and healthcare find benefits in replacing aging content management tools with modern systems..

From insurance to banking to healthcare, organizations of all stripes are upgrading their aging content management systems with modern, advanced systems that introduce new capabilities, flexibility, and cloud-based scalability. In this post, we’ll touch on three such case studies.

Global insurance company

A large insurance company adopted a cloud-based document management system to enable paperless operations around the world and simplify regulatory compliance. The organization had some tactical document management systems, but they were siloed and based on slow, outdated technology. Plus, all files were stored in U.S. data centers, creating obstacles for a globally dispersed user base.

After adopting Alfresco Content Services and Alfresco Governance Services running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the insurer fully digitized its operations. The IT team worked closely with business users to build a solution “in which paper wasn’t part of the process,” the company’s SVP and CIO said.

The solution provides electronic file and records management capabilities that integrate seamlessly with the company’s core insurance applications, automating everything from document retrieval to records management . The solution is saving the company $21 million over five years thanks to massive reductions in paper, printing, and storage costs.

Large community bank

When a 28-branch community bank decided to sunset its document storage system, it needed a solution that would work with its cloud-based core banking system.

After identifying dozens of company requirements, the organization selected  OnBase  running on the Hyland Cloud. With support from Hyland Professional Services, the bank migrated 2.5 million documents, representing the past 15 years of business documents, to OnBase. Soon after, the bank added WorkView , Hyland’s low-code application builder, to create solutions and address new challenges with speed and agility.

“With WorkView, you can build workable solutions with almost no code at all. It’s enabled us like a force multiplier. We can accomplish so much with a small team,” said the bank’s enterprise process manager.

Among the benefits, the solution helped the bank’s lending department retire its manual, paper-based workflow in favor of more automated processing using OnBase workflows. The results have been significant: a mortgage loan process now takes less than 20 minutes to complete each day, down from two hours.

What’s more, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the bank was able to bring on remote, temporary workers to handle an onslaught of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) applications.

“All the documents needed were visible in OnBase without relying on paper to complete the work,” said the bank’s senior vice president and director of operations and process improvements. “We couldn’t have managed the loan volume without OnBase in the cloud.”

Large pharmacy and healthcare firm

A large American retail pharmacy and healthcare company was looking to upgrade its aging knowledge management systems. Its executive leadership team directed the business to select a knowledge management platform with a modern, open-source approach that would reduce the company’s dependence on IBM, Oracle, and other proprietary solutions.

The company opted for Hyland’s  Nuxeo Platform , an open-source and highly scalable platform that enables the provider’s customer care representatives to quickly access their customers’ current coverage details. It also gives the company the flexibility to introduce new solutions in the future without worrying about being constrained by proprietary technology.

Ultimately, the healthcare firm used Nuxeo to replace two aging platforms:

• A mission-critical solution, previously based on IBM File Net, that’s used by more than 20,000 customer care agents to serve clients daily.
• A content management solution based on Oracle Stellent for managing policies, procedures, and other business content.

Now, the company is confident its agents will be up to date on the latest information they need to do their jobs effectively, from patient details to urgent notices about drug recalls.

“We’re confident the Nuxeo Platform will enable us to inform our reps ASAP,” said a healthcare company rep. “This is critical not only for our business, but also for the well-being of the millions of people who use [our] services.”

To learn more, visit Hyland .

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From payment to plate: How PayPal’s orchestration helps HelloFresh optimize subscriptions

PayPal Editorial Staff

August 21, 2024

​​​HelloFresh’s mission is to “change the way people eat forever.” They accomplish this with their flexible and customizable meal kits. HelloFresh simplifies food preparation of nutritious, delicious meals through customizable subscriptions. With a customer-focused approach, they've taken meal prep from effortful to easy.

In 201​1​, HelloFresh began with a simple vision - to bring out inner chefs while minimizing food waste. ​In 2023 alone​, HelloFresh delivered more than a billion nutritious meals across eighteen markets.

From offering ready-to-eat options to expanding plant-based meal choices, HelloFresh keeps evolving to meet changing customer needs. Emina Zahirovic, Associate Director of Global Payments at HelloFresh, discussed payments, processing, and parallels between the two companies.

Success metrics

• 3% incremental increase in approval rates as a result of PayPal Braintree’s Optimization Suite. 1

The opportunity

Hellofresh wanted to enhance the customer experience..

The meal kit industry has seen rapid growth amidst fierce competition, macroeconomic factors, and supply chain disruptions. For HelloFresh , continuing to be a market leader means diversifying and innovating their product offerings while also optimizing their subscription base.

To increase customer retention and support their global scale, HelloFresh ​requires​ a seamless, secure payment experience for customers. Critical to this is maintaining a reliable infrastructure across various payment partners.

The solution

Hellofresh finds a reliable and scalable payments platform in paypal braintree..

​​HelloFresh has collaborated with PayPal Braintree t​o address the scale and growth of its businesses while maintaining reliability and security​.​

Leveraging PayPal Braintree’s versatile payment infrastructure, HelloFresh implemented PSP-agnostic solutions tailored to its unique requirements. This unlocked solutions including the PayPal Braintree Vault as well as PayPal Braintree’s Optimization Suite of products like Network Tokens, Account Updater, and Retries.

The Braintree Vault provided HelloFresh with the security it needed across providers within a single, unified layer. Network Tokens and Account Updater maximized customer retention. This helped reduce involuntary churn, a critical metric for HelloFresh – and any subscription business.

Zahirovic ​highlighted the focus of​ the relationship between HelloFresh and PayPal: “​Our aim is​ to continuously optimize how we process payments.”

PayPal Braintree’s Optimization Suite helps HelloFresh increase approval rates.

Enhancing payment processes has never been more crucial for HelloFresh. As Zahirovic explained, “An increase in approval rates directly correlates to delivering more meal kits to more customers and therefore driving customer retention and lifetime value. Any improvements in our approval rates drive a material impact on our business.”

HelloFresh turned to PayPal Braintree’s Optimization Suite to drive an incremental 3% increase in approval rates. 1 This increase also helped to improve the lifetime value of their customers.

By securely vaulting acquirer-agnostic tokens, the Braintree Vault enabled HelloFresh to streamline operational efficiency across regions, providers, and lines of business.

“PayPal strives to revolutionize the digital commerce space, just as HelloFresh strives to do so in the food solutions space. By practicing similar values, PayPal is giving us the tools and support to further grow our business,” noted Zahirovic.

Both PayPal and HelloFresh are excited about building a happier, healthier future for consumers’ plates and payments. Ultimately, streamlining payment processing helps customers spend less time planning meals and more time enjoying them.

Learn how to drive conversion with PayPal’s end-to-end payments optimization.

Hello Fresh Case Study (PDF)

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