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Case studies are the perfect marketing tool: real-life customers telling of their experiences with your company. But not every story or customer makes an ideal case study, and there are many pitfalls along the way.

It’s vital to get the basics right from the start. This means doing thorough research into possible case study candidates. Find a customer whose experience is relevant to the product or service you want to promote, and whose story will resonate with existing and potential customers. It may seem obvious but you also need a customer who wants to tell their story!

It’s important to get customer participation agreement from the highest level. A completed case study not being signed off because the boss didn’t agree to it, is a waste of time and effort all round.

Selecting a case study candidate is perhaps the most critical part of the process – a wrong move here could lead to unhappy customers, abandoned case studies, and wasted time.

Over the years, I’ve written hundreds of customer case studies for dozens of clients. For the most part things go smoothly, but there have been times I’ve had to interview people who are either not used to the process, haven’t been told what the purpose of the case study is, or would rather be doing anything else other than answering my questions.  Here are a few examples of ‘challenging’ case study candidates:

• The monosyllabic customer – Responds predominantly with yes/no answers, doesn’t elaborate.
• The defensive customer – “Why do you want to know that?” Suspicious of all questions.
• The time-poor customer – “Is this going to take long?” They grant the interviewer just a couple of minutes of their time.
• The unhappy customer – Focuses on all the problems they’ve had with your company over the years; sees the case study as an opportunity to get it all off their chest.

While it’s difficult to know in advance exactly how a customer will respond in a case study interview, a quick chat with them over the phone — where you explain the process, why you’re doing it, where it will be published, and so on — should help you make a judgement call.

There’s no doubt the case study process can seem daunting and time-consuming.  This is where a copywriter comes in handy. An experienced copywriter should be able to tease out a story from even the most challenging of customers.

As an independent third party, it’s easier for the copywriter to get your customer to talk: and it’s this uncensored chat that’s most useful for writing up a good case study, with genuine quotes. I have found, again and again, that customers of company X will often not be willing to give direct praise, but during my interview with them, they will give up a nugget of information that turns a by-the-numbers case study into a compelling and engaging story.

If you are working with a particularly skilled copywriter, the interview could even develop into a valuable information-gathering exercise and throw up some intelligence that could prove useful for up-selling or developing a stronger relationship.

Deirdre
@deirdreenn

In my next blog post I’ll talk about briefing a copywriter and discuss good case study interview techniques.

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