Case Studies in Customer Success

I recently read an awesome post by Alfred Lua on how Referral Candy use case studies in marketing, and how that content can be repurposed. It got me thinking, how have I used case studies in Customer Success, for existing customers?

One awesome side effect of a good library of case studies is for a customer success manager to be armed with an arsenal of ways in which other people are using and implementing your tool.

Why case studies?

It’s all very well being able to sit in a call and talk through how X company has set up your tool, but being able to send over supporting material really helps to bring authenticity to your expertise.

I can think of a few specific phases in the customer lifecycle where case studies could be effectively deployed, starting with onboarding, through to the QBR phase, as well as renewal cycles and goal setting for the next year. Offering the social proof at this point in the journey is super powerful - proving how other people gained success hits home with the customer, and helps them buy into your approach.

Formats

Typically, case studies exist in a written, blog post format, but in my opinion this is an opportunity to really experiment with formats.

Think how powerful a video interview could be, a real person, suffering the same problems as you, talking through HOW they solved their problems and changed their lives. Powerful stuff.

How have you successfully used case studies?