This is the second installment of a two-part series on customer case studies. The first post looked at the importance of using detail to tell a compelling and credible customer story. In this second post, Molly Dee Anderson, one of the talented staff writers at Projectline, offers 10 practical and insightful tips for conducting customer interviews.

“Interviewing is both art and science. The art comes in how you interact with customers, put them at ease, and encourage them to provide information. The science comes in what you ask and how you ask it.” – Casey Hibbard, Stories That Sell

If you are well-prepared for a case study interview, you can effectively gather the customer’s narrative arc-the challenge, the implementation of a product or service, and the positive results-in an hour’s time. You will also gain some choice quotes. Try these ten tips for conducting customer interviews with both art and science.

1. Review the customer’s website thoroughly. You may find relevant information in unusual places. Press releases often provide a concise description of the organization as well as insight into the strategic direction the company is pursuing. Use what you learn to engage with the customer, even if the dialog is not specifically pertinent to the case study. Interviewees will often appreciate that you’ve done your homework and will be more likely to give you the details you need.

2. Get a good working knowledge of the featured product or service. Customers sometimes assume that you are an established expert in the case study’s featured subject. Chances are you’re a writer with a generalist background, so you’ll need to do some research. Aside from getting detailed information from the product or service team, consider reading product reviews, watching videos, and walking through demos.

3. Build a detailed and focused questionnaire. Use complete sentences. Include questions even if you already have a sense of what the answers will be. Be prepared to prompt the customer with a possible answer in case they draw a blank. Once prompted, the customer will likely provide additional details. It’s also a good exercise to create a comprehensive questionnaire and then cut it substantially, based on the specific customer scenario. You probably won’t have time to ask all the questions anyway.

4. Remove distractions. When doing an interview, you’re on stage. You can’t afford to be distracted by anything. Avoid conducting an interview on an empty stomach. Turn off call-waiting, silence your cell phone, shut doors and windows, mute your computer, and set your instant messaging status to “Busy.” Also, sit up straight: It’s showtime.

5. Communicate the agenda to the interviewees. Prepare a script to introduce yourself to the interviewees. Explain how you plan to conduct the interview and what information you’re seeking. Let them know that you’re recording the interview and that you’ll be asking for details so you can get the most compelling story possible.

6. Adopt a persona. Try on an interviewing style. For example, you could assume the interviewing style of Larry King or Oprah. I’m a fan of Charlie Rose because his style is plainspoken, grounded, and engaged. And he’s good at asking for clarifying details about an interviewee’s statement: “But what do you mean when you say that?” Rose asks.

7. Take notes. You’re recording the interview, but audio devices sometimes fail. Plus, written notes help you ask more relevant follow-up questions. Cover your bases by getting down as much as you can with your pen and keyboard and then hope you never have to refer to those notes.

8. Don’t be afraid to ask a few “stupid” questions. It’s not possible to be an expert in everything. It’s better to ask an interviewee to explain something you don’t understand than pretend that it makes perfect sense and then later not know what to write. If you’re reporting about technology, for example, you can ask your interviewees to describe an implementation for you as if they were speaking to a general rather than a technical audience.

9. Be persistent about metrics. Your interviewees will not always be prepared to state numbers such as return on investment, revenue increases, or cost savings. You can nudge them with a leading question such as: “Would it be fair to say that your employees are saving 20 minutes a day by using the new productivity tools?” If you encounter reticence, then offer to follow up about metrics by sending email or by putting queries in the review draft.

10. Be humble. The art of interviewing is primarily the art of listening and putting the interviewees at ease. When they have explained a complex concept, tell them what you heard them say-in your own words. That way they’ll know you’re listening. Gently direct the conversation, but make sure the interviewees get most of the airtime. You may be the host, but they are the stars of the show.

 

Case studies are true stories, and true stories communicate credibility. They help readers understand how a product or service works in a real setting. Case studies validate solutions by going into specifics and providing details about a customer’s experience. When you write a case study, you tell a story that helps people imagine scenarios-and they are moved to act as a result.

We humans love to hear about other people, and we often look to others to help us decide what to do. Narratives are most powerful when we read about people like us. Stories can build trust, increase sales, and shorten the sales cycle.

Take the example of a company in Singapore that develops business software for managing human resources, customer relationships, and accounting. Its customers frequently asked for customizations, so it decided to build an application with ready-made modules that could be customized by anyone. It hosted the application in the cloud in a way that was reliable, highly available, and scaled on demand. Other software vendors in the same market space will want to know how the Singaporean company solved its challenge. A case study can provide the answers.

In another cloud success story, an online ticketing company needed to ramp up its technology to be able to sell 150,000 tickets in a few hours in order to handle traffic for a large music festival for a marquee customer. Before, its best record was selling 2,000 tickets in two hours, so it had a long way to go. It implemented a cloud solution that used sharding technology to distribute the ticketing data across multiple database servers-and sold 150,000 tickets in 10 seconds. The CTO described the technology as a “windfall” for the company. That’s a pretty compelling result and an example of how a product or service can completely alter a business model. Readers will want to know the details of the story.

The structure of a case study gives you an excellent framework for capturing the elements of a customer’s story. The three main sections are designed to contain the classic narrative arc and tell the age-old story of the hero: People meet with challenges to overcome, find solutions, and ultimately triumph.

• Challenge. Describe the customer’s circumstances. Every customer has challenges to address, or it wouldn’t be shopping around for solutions. For example, a customer might be looking to lower costs, bolster data security, or expand revenue opportunities. It’s especially important to start the narrative in this section. This is where you draw the reader into the story. Use details and revealing quotes. Keep in mind that although people work in a variety of organizations, they are ultimately seeking the same kinds of things-like innovation, profit, competitive differentiation, and success.

• Implementation. Provide information on how the customer met its challenges by using a product or service. This section is the heart of the case study, and can be the most exacting to write. Every customer uses a product or service in a different way and it’s your job to record the specifics of the solution, including any custom deployment details or workarounds. Keep in mind that the customer—and not the solution—is the hero of the story. Avoid constructions such as, “The product made it possible for Company A to sell 150,000 tickets in 10 seconds.” Instead, write, “Company A used the product’s sharding capabilities to scale beyond what a single database could provide.”

• Results. Summarize the advantages that the customer gained by using the product or service. Start with a summary of all results and provide a compelling general quote that speaks to the solution’s overall value. Then give each individual benefit a heading and describe the proof points for each result. This is where you can use metrics related to results, such as productivity improvements, cost savings, improved profits, or increased revenue opportunities.

When writing a case study, keep in mind that your job is to make abstract concepts—such as how a product or service works—concrete and comprehensible. To build credibility, rely on a high level of detail, which helps make prose more convincing. To get readers engaged in an emotional way, provide specifics. Think of case study writing as one step away from journalism. You are the storyteller with a human interest piece to write, and that story is true. It’s honest labor, and it’s fun.