If Case Studies Are Too Hard Try Writing Customer Use Cases Instead
I am a huge believer in customer case studies. I’ve written many of them for Microsoft Dynamics partners, and I think every partner should have case studies on their website.
But I also know firsthand what a pain it can be to get them approved.
More than once, I’ve written a case study after being told that the customer had agreed to participate, only to find out later that the owner of the company never approved it, or someone didn’t realize the legal department needed to sign off. Awkward!
Other companies simply have policies that prevent them from participating in case studies at all. And even when everyone is willing, the back-and-forth required to get a case study approved can take a long time.
I still think it is 100% worth the effort, and I think every Microsoft partner should be actively collecting customer case studies.
But there is another type of customer content you can produce much more frequently: customer use cases.
What Is a Customer Use Case?
A customer use case tells the story of a real customer situation without identifying the customer by name.
The goal isn’t to strip out so many details that the story becomes generic. In fact, I recommend doing the opposite. Include as many details as you reasonably can without crossing the line into information that would identify the customer or violate their privacy.
Instead of writing:
“One of our manufacturing customers needed better reporting.”
You could say:
“A 200-employee industrial equipment manufacturer in Ohio was struggling to consolidate financial reporting across three locations after acquiring a smaller company.”
Now I can picture the company. And if I happen to work for a 250-employee manufacturer with several locations and a recent acquisition, I’m probably going to keep reading.
Think about the details you can safely include. What industry are they in? Approximately how large is the company? How many employees, users or locations do they have? Can you mention the state or region? What Microsoft products are they using? What other systems were involved? What business process was causing the problem?
You aren’t trying to give readers enough clues to figure out the customer’s identity. You are trying to give the right prospect enough information to recognize themselves in the story.
You can use a use case as a blog article. But I would also recommend creating a section on your website called “Success Stories” and give each use case a landing page, perhaps separated by industry focus.
A Use Case Doesn’t Need to Tell the Whole Customer Story
This is another important difference between a traditional case study and a use case.
When I write a case study, I generally want the larger story: Why did the customer select the partner? What challenges were they facing? What was implemented? What were the results? What does the customer say about the experience?
A use case can be much narrower.
Perhaps a Business Central customer had an unusual process for allocating freight costs across orders from several warehouses. That problem and the way your team solved it could be the entire article.
Or perhaps a Dynamics 365 Sales customer needed commissions calculated differently depending on whether a sale involved a direct salesperson, an outside rep or both. You don’t need to tell me everything about their CRM implementation. Tell me about that problem, why it was difficult and how you handled it.
This is one reason use cases can be produced much more regularly than formal case studies. You aren’t waiting for the perfect customer success story. You are documenting useful pieces of customer experience as they happen.
Case Studies and Use Cases Should Work Together
I don’t see this as an either/or decision.
If a happy customer is willing to participate in a named case study, make the effort. Get the approvals, interview them and tell the full story. A real customer willing to put their name behind your work is one of the strongest marketing assets a Microsoft partner can have.
But don’t wait for those formal case studies before you talk about customer experience.
Case studies may be something you produce several times a year. Customer use cases can become a regular part of your content calendar because they are narrower, faster to produce and don’t always require the same level of customer participation.
Give me the industry. Give me the size. Give me the situation. Give me the complication that made this customer different. Give me enough context that I can think, That sounds a lot like us.
Just don’t give me their name.
That is a use case.
By Anya Ciecierski, Co-Founder, ERP/CRM Software Blog
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