Most case studies are forgettable. 

“Client X had a problem. We applied our solution. Here are the results.”

No texture. No tension. No human moments.

Just a sanitized (and boring) success story.

What’s missing?

• The real stakes of the problem

• The messy middle—where doubt, conflict, and discovery happen

• The emotional arc that makes the outcome meaningful

• The human details that help future clients see themselves in the story

And that’s a problem—because when a case study lacks tension and transformation, it doesn’t build trust. It doesn’t inspire action.

I’ve been working with clients to fix that—helping them turn vague summaries into stories that actually resonate. Stories that connect, that sell, and that make prospects think, “I want that too.”

I built a guide to help my clients capture the stories. It’s a 7-step process you can use to capture richer customer stories—whether you’re interviewing your client directly or collecting insights from your internal team.

The prompts will help you:

• Start with tension – Lead with what was at stake

• Show the messy middle – Reveal the turning points and struggles

• Spot the breakthroughs – Highlight those “aha” moments

• Connect emotionally – Make the story relatable and real

Even if you can’t name the client, this guide will help you tell a compelling, trust-building case studies, blind customer stories and even imaginary use cases.

If you offer consulting, training, coaching, fractional services or ERP implementations, this guide will help you tell richer, more detailed, and more compelling client stories. The goal is to go beyond surface-level summaries and pull out the real tension, transformation, and impact.

You can use this for 3 different approaches: 

1. Named Case Studies: Here the client has agreed to be interviewed and allow you to use their company name and names of the team in the published case study. This is the most powerful type of case study. 
2. Blind Customer Stories: In this case, you have a really compelling client story, but for whatever reason (compliance, legal or other), they can't give you permission to name them. But they might be willing to tell the story, provided that you obfuscate their identity. 
3. Customer Use Cases: If your company is new, your product is new, or you're trying to promote a different use case, you might need to create some imaginary use cases. In this situation, you can create an imaginary client. But try to add as much detail as possible to your customer avatar to make the use case resonate with similar real clients.

How to Use This Guide to Developing Richer Case Studies

Step 1: Choose a customer story that you want to document.

Step 2: Use the prompts in each section to talk through the story aloud. Record yourself using a transcription app like Otter, Fathom (affiliate link), or another tool of your choice.

Step 3: As you talk, answer the prompts as if you were telling the story to someone who knows nothing about the client, the industry, or the program. Be specific and concrete. Use names, dates, real conversations, and actual turning points wherever you can.

Step 4: Don’t worry about getting the order perfect while recording—focus on getting all the key details out. The transcript will become the raw material you use to craft the final case study.

Step 5: After recording, you can use the transcript with an AI tool to organize your thoughts, refine the angles and enhance the storytelling into a written case study. Need help with this? Reach out to us! 

Case Study Storytelling Outline & Interview Prompts

Below are the prompts or questions you can answer to dig out the details about the customer story. 

Note: If you're interviewing a client, choose just ONE question from each section. Clients don't have all day, so you'll need to keep your interview brief. I recommend 30 minutes. If you're capturing the story from your team, you can go a bit longer and into more depth. I highly recommend having at least 2 team members who were involved with the client tell the story separately (or even record this as a team to capture more nuance. 

1. Set the Stage (Set the Scene for Your Story)

Goal: Frame the context so the audience immediately understands the pressure, urgency, and challenge.

Client or team interview prompts:

• What was the key challenge or problem the client was facing?
• What was happening at the company when they reached out to you?
• What was at stake if they didn’t address this issue?
• What specific challenges were they facing (operational / cultural / market pressures)? What was happening inside the company that made leadership realize they needed outside help?
• Why did they engage your firm specifically—what did they believe your team could offer that they couldn’t achieve internally?
• Did the leadership team already know how big the problem was, or did they need convincing?

Bonus:
If they hadn’t taken action, what do you think would have happened in 12-24 months?

2. Introduce the Solution (Your Offering & Why It Fit)

Goal: Don’t just explain what you did—explain why this specific approach was the right fit for this client.

Client or team interview prompts:

• What was the approach or program you implemented to help the client?
• What made your approach different from a typical or similar offering, program or consulting engagement?
• How did you design the solution specifically for this client’s culture, industry, infrastructure or challenge?
• Who was involved from the client side? What was their role?
• How did you set expectations at the beginning?
• What were you hoping the client would experience or realize as a result of using your product/service?

Bonus:
Why couldn’t they solve this on their own? What was missing internally? 

What concerns did you have about potential blockers—either cultural, political, or structural—that could make it hard to design the right solution or for them to fully take advantage of it?

3. The Transformation Journey (What Happened During the Implementation or Engagement or Program)

Goal: Pull out the human moments—disagreements, discoveries, unexpected breakthroughs—and show the evolution.

Client or team interview prompts:

• How did the client's mindset, behaviors, or processes start to shift through the engagement?
• What were some specific examples of how individual leaders or the organization changed?
• Walk me through the first session, module or steps in implementation—what were the immediate reactions?
• Where did the client team members struggle the most? What threw them off balance?
• Were there any surprising moments when someone completely changed their mind?
• What cultural dynamics (national, departmental, personal) showed up during the work?
• How did participants’ communication and collaboration evolve across the program?
• What tools or frameworks did you give them? How did those help unlock insights?

Bonus:
What moment made you think: "okay, this is working"?

4. The ‘Aha’ Moments (Big Breakthroughs & Realizations)

Goal: Highlight when the lightbulb went on—and what caused it.

Client or team interview prompts:

• When did you see the first real shift in mindset or outcomes?
• Was there a particular step in your process, challenge, or conversation that unlocked something big?
• Did anyone have a public ‘aha moment’—where they admitted they were wrong or saw the problem in a new way?
• Did the client's team members have any lightbulb moments for how they can get even more value from your offering?
• What feedback did you get immediately after those moments?

Bonus:
If you could freeze one moment and show it to a future client, what would it be?

5. Tangible Outcomes (What Changed & How It Showed Up)

Goal: Connect the dots between the experience and real-world outcomes.

Client or team interview prompts:

• What were the most tangible, measurable business outcomes the client achieved?
• How did this translate to things like cost savings, new revenue streams, improved efficiency, etc.?
• What specific behaviors or habits changed immediately after the program?
• How did relationships between team members, departments or with their customers shift?
• What decisions or strategies came directly from the work they did with you?
• What results did the team see in the following 6-12 months?
• What’s the best compliment or feedback you got from leadership?

Bonus:
If you ran into one of the client team members today, what would they say was the biggest thing they took away?

What do you wish they would have taken away that they didn't?

6. Key Lessons (What This Case Teaches Future Clients)

Goal: Extract a universal takeaway that applies to any executive team within your target niche.

Client or team interview prompts:

• What were the most important takeaways or insights from working with this client?
• How can these lessons be applied to help other similar clients?
• What does this story prove about the tangible outcomes from your offering?
• What’s the biggest mistake you see other companies make in similar situations?
• If a future client was skeptical about investing in a solution like this, what would you tell them based on this case?
• What’s the #1 reason you believe this worked so well?

Bonus:
If you could give the CEO a one-sentence piece of advice based on this story, what would it be?

7. Optional: Personal Reflections (Your Team's Perspective)

Goal: Add some personal flavor—what did you learn?

Team interview prompts:

• What surprised you most about working with this client?
• What’s one thing you would do differently if you did this again?
• What part of this experience are you proudest of?

Next Steps

Once you have all the recordings, use your favorite AI tool to start and extract the learnings. You can use this guide to prompt it to find the story. The headings can serve as your outline.

Want help crafting compelling stories? Reach out to me. This is one of my favorite things to do. 😊