{"id":7361,"date":"2017-11-03T12:30:19","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T12:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intercom.com\/blog\/?p=7361"},"modified":"2020-07-30T12:57:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T11:57:08","slug":"make-customer-enthusiasm-work-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/make-customer-enthusiasm-work-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Using case studies to tell your story for you"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s easy to forget how much those of us in B2B SaaS companies ask of our potential customers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not just asking them to whip out their credit card and download our product, we\u2019re asking them to change their existing operation and potentially their teammates\u2019 too. This is a big ask.<\/p>\n

Case studies make this ask easier. They play a vital role in de-risking this effort, particularly for the vast majority of your potential market who are not technology enthusiasts and are more averse to change. Crossing the Chasm<\/em> author Geoffrey Moore would categorize these people as the Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

According to Moore, these are people in the market for step improvements to their existing ways of working, rather than revolutionary changes. They look for tried and true solutions. They want to know that others slightly<\/em> better than them have successfully used your product.<\/p>\n

A good case study fulfills part of this job. As someone who’s produced far too many case studies in my life, early on at Intercom and Atlassian, and on the side for Google, I’ve noticed that the components of great case studies and process for getting them done don’t vary much.<\/p>\n

Elements of a case study<\/h2>\n

Case studies generally follow a tried and true formula: How Person A achieved XYZ by using Product B. What makes the difference between a dry, inauthentic story to one that truly captivates is how you tell it. A good case study shares the elements of a good story, period:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Protagonist:<\/strong> a relatable customer from an aspirational company<\/li>\n
  2. Tension:<\/strong> a portrait of their workflow and challenges before using your product<\/li>\n
  3. Resolution:<\/strong> how they solved it by replacing their workflow with your product<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Tension<\/em> is the driving force of your case study. It grabs the reader\u2019s interest, puts them in your customer\u2019s shoes, and without it, your resolution (and “BUY NOW!” call-to-action) will sound completely unconvincing. I\u2019ll share questions that get to these sections further down.<\/p>\n

    Who should you profile?<\/h2>\n

    As the first person at Intercom who worked on case studies (a job now split by my esteemed product marketing colleagues George<\/a> and Christine<\/a>), I was given access to our entire customer database and a daunting task: find the best stories.<\/p>\n

    Moore is prescriptive with who you should target for these stories: “The only suitable reference for an early majority customer, it turns out, is another member of the early majority.”\u00a0Behavioral data<\/a>\u00a0will narrow your pool of customers to those of the right profile, but I\u2019ve always found that the best stories come from a mix of data and customer conversations.<\/p>\n

    At Intercom, the owner of most of those conversations is our Support team. They go far beyond<\/a> simply solving customer issues to routing important parts of conversations to different teams, ie. feature requests to Product, bugs to Engineering, and in our case, positive feedback to Marketing.<\/p>\n

    If you don\u2019t use Intercom there are loads of other sources of positive conversations: ask your execs, your researchers, attend customer meetups, dive into Twitter, Quora, etc.<\/p>\n

    What should you ask?<\/h2>\n

    Now for the fun part: the customer interview. Treat these more like informal conversations, in the sense that it\u2019s good to have a few questions to structure your conversation, but let the customer talk freely. You want to hear their passion and put that on a page.<\/p>\n

    Use the interview to dig into the three elements of a story I mentioned above, spending most of your time teasing out Tension and Resolution. By now you should\u2019ve done plenty of research to paint a favorable portrait of your Protagonist. Here are some questions to get a conversation going:<\/p>\n

    Protagonist<\/strong><\/p>\n