Evolving Case Studies: From Product-Centric to Customer Hero Stories

Introduction: The Traditional Case Study Paradigm

In the B2B SaaS and technology business, the traditional approach to case studies has often been a straightforward, product-centric narrative. These narratives typically place the company and its product as the hero, solving the customer's problems while pulling a couple of quotes from the customer for social proof. While these stories do their part in showcasing product capabilities, they are often impenetrable and miss a crucial aspect of storytelling: emotional engagement and relatability.

The Traditional Approach: Product as the Protagonist

The customer, while present, often plays a secondary role - a beneficiary of the product's capabilities. These narratives, rich in data and factual accuracy, offer a clear view of the product's potential. However, they tend to lack emotional resonance and personal connection.

The story is told from the company's perspective, focusing on how the product solves the problem, often neglecting the customer's journey and emotional experience, from the “struggling moment” that sparks the first thought that triggers passive looking, the transition to begin actively looking, and then making trade-offs to reach a decision.

Engagement Metrics: The Missing Emotional Connection

Studies and marketing trends have shown that while product-focused case studies are informative, they fail to create a lasting impression. In traditional case studies, focusing primarily on data and statistics, retention rates will likely vary between 5-10%.

The Harvard Business Review notes that character-driven stories can significantly increase oxytocin production, a hormone associated with empathy and trust.

When information is presented through storytelling, retention rates soar from a mere 5% to 10% to an impressive 65% to 70%. According to psychologist Jerome Bruner, information presented as a story is 20 times more likely to be remembered than if presented as facts.

Shifting the Focus: The Customer Hero Story

The narrative shift to customer hero stories significantly changes how businesses approach case studies. This approach places the customer at the centre of the narrative, focusing on their struggling moments and business challenges, decision-making processes, and the outcomes they achieve using the product. Here, the product still plays a crucial role as a supporting character that enables the hero - the customer - to overcome obstacles and reach their goals.

Relatability and Emotional Resonance

Readers of customer hero stories are introduced to the customer by name, their role in the organisation, and the incident that caused them to seek better outcomes.

Readers embark on a journey with the customer hero, feeling their pain, understanding their dilemmas, and following their decision-making process.

This narrative style allows the audience to see themselves in the hero's place, creating a deeper connection with the story. When the hero successfully overcomes their challenges using the product or service, the audience can more easily envision themselves achieving similar success, increasing the likelihood of them considering the product for their needs.

This is a powerful way of creating buyer vision without resorting to slideware.

The Story Arc: A Journey of Transformation

Customer hero stories follow a classic story arc, described in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces: once the journey has begun, the customer faces internal resistance to change and external pressure; they explore different approaches and solutions, discover the product, experience a lightbulb moment of realisation, begin their transformation and make progress toward their desired outcome.

This transformation is not just about the successful implementation of a product but also includes the learning, growth, and value realisation experienced by the customer.

By highlighting the customer's thought process, the trade-offs they consider, and how they arrived at their decision, these stories provide a comprehensive view of the customer's buying journey, making the narrative more relatable and impactful.

In the illustration, the coloured boxes are excerpted from Mike Bosworth’s Storyseekers workshop.? I have added the Jobs to be Done steps in black text above the transitions in the hero's journey story.

The Outcome: Achieving Promised Value

A critical element of the customer hero story is showcasing how the customer achieved the product's promised value. This is where the narrative combines emotional engagement with practical results.

The story outlines the product's functional impact and how it contributes to the customer's overall success through improved efficiency, cost savings, enhanced productivity, or other tangible outcomes.

Why It Works: The Power of Emotional Storytelling

The effectiveness of customer hero stories lies in their ability to engage audiences on an emotional level. Emotional storytelling is powerful because it transcends mere facts and figures. It creates a narrative that audiences can connect with, remember, and act upon.

By aligning with natural human tendencies to respond to stories, these narratives make the case study more than just a product feature and benefit dump – they turn it into a source of inspiration and a guide for potential customers.

An Example of a Customer Hero Story I created this story after a job-to-interviewing Abi Mawhirt from Dundee and Angus College.

The Dundee and Angus College Story?

How to Create Customer Hero Stories with Customer “Switch” Interviews

The Jobs-to-Be-Done “Switch” interview technique is ideal for capturing B2B SaaS customer hero stories.

In a Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) context, a?customer switch interview?is a powerful technique for uncovering why customers switch from one product or service to another.

• A switch interview aims to explore the?struggling moments and triggering events that lead customers to switch from their current solution to an alternative.
• It helps uncover the?unmet needs?and?desired outcomes?that drive the decision-making process.
• The interview technique creates tangible value for an organisation beyond the customer hero story. It produces a wealth of information that can be used for sales and marketing messaging.?
• In addition, the outputs of these “switch” interviews have a long shelf-life as jobs tend to change slowly over time.
• This rich, detailed understanding of the customer's journey provides the foundational narrative elements essential for crafting compelling hero's journey stories.
• These stories illustrate the product's impact and celebrate the customer's journey, making them the true heroes of the tale.
• Companies can create deeply resonant and authentic narratives by aligning the customer's 'job' with the story arc of overcoming challenges, discovering solutions, and achieving goals.

This alignment transforms case studies from mere endorsements of a product's features into powerful narratives that reflect the customer's success, embodying the essence of their experience and the transformative role of the product in their journey.

Summary: Harnessing the Hero's Journey and JTBD to Create Engaging Case Studies

B2B SaaS and tech marketers should shift their focus from product-centric case studies to customer hero stories, creating a deeper emotional connection and increased relatability that will generate empathy and trust.

The Jobs-to-Be-Done "Switch" interview technique is ideal for capturing customer hero stories, highlighting the buyer's initial struggling moments, capturing the organisational resistance to change, the impact of the new way, and celebrating customer success. Using this method will elevate case studies from product endorsements to inspirational customer journeys, emphasising the value and impact of the solutions provided.

This approach will create valuable, persistent content, reflecting the enduring nature of customers' jobs to be done. Sales and marketing can repurpose this content in dozens of ways for lead generation and conversational support. The shift towards customer hero stories, supported by JTBD interviews, will offer a transformative way for businesses to communicate value, engage audiences emotionally, and illustrate the profound impact of their solutions through the lens of their successful customers.