7 Tips For Telling Powerful Customer Success Stories

Janet Dulsky
Aug 11, 2015
3 min read

You know that tingly, ecstatic feeling? The one you get when a customer starts gushing about how your company has changed their life, made them a better (you fill in the blank) and your product or service is the best they’ve ever experienced? Before the mutual love fest fades, you want to think about how to turn that feeling into a winning customer story.

Customer stories are critical pieces of content for your business. They are powerful social proof points because, let’s face it, your customers have more credibility than you do when it comes to talking about how great your product or service is. In fact, a customer story can be just the thing that pushes a prospect over the edge to become a customer.

But how do you tell a great customer success story? Here are seven tips that will help you rock your customer stories:

Seeing Is Believing When It Comes To Customer Storytelling

The brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text (3M Corporation, 2001). And, 65% of the population are visual learners according to a 1998 Mind Tools study. This means that it is very likely that your prospects would prefer to see what your customers have to say about your product or service than read about it. Wouldn’t you?

Let Your Customer Tell Their Story

The most powerful customer stories come from your customers themselves. Let them tell their story in their own words. Their words and emotions are what will engage your prospects. Here’s a wonderful example from Medallia:

Focus On One Key Message From Your Customer's Success

Don’t dilute your customer story by trying to tell everything. Choose one part of the story or one key insight on which to focus. How your customers saved money, saved time, became more efficient, etc.

Structure Your Customer Story Around The Challenge, Solution And Result

A customer testimonial is not a customer story. A customer testimonial is simply a customer quote saying how wonderful your company is. A good customer story tells about the challenge the customer faced, your solution that saved the day and the wonderful results that came about. Whenever you can, quantify the results. Numbers speak loudest when it comes to results. Hubspot’s How to Write a Case Study: The Ultimate Guide blog does a good job of outlining this structure in more detail.

Prospects Should See Themselves In The Story

Make sure your stories speak to prospects in your target market or markets. If you focus on three different industries, make sure you have customer stories for each industry. When your prospects see themselves in the story and can imagine it happening to them, it will be much more powerful.

Make The Story Interesting

Don’t bore your prospects! If you’re doing video, get out in the “wild” and film your customers doing their jobs. Forget the talking heads like in this customer story from Box: