Why Participating in a Customer Success Story Can Make You (And Your Company) a Hero

Learn why spending 45 minutes with us to develop a customer case study is a good investment for your own company and can serve as effective marketing collateral.

You’re a customer of Progress, so we already know you have good taste and that your brand has used our technology to deliver better experiences for your organization and/or your clients.

Maybe you've overcome obstacles to monitoring your virtual environment or created a more compelling website experience that has allowed you to increase conversion. It’s obvious why we would want to tell the world your story, but why should you?

Simply put, a customer success story can be one of the most valuable pieces of content for showcasing knowledge and thought leadership for a company and serves as effective marketing collateral for your company to promote its triumphs.

Here are the reasons why spending 30-45 minutes with us to put together a customer case study is well worth the time investment:

• We create a success story to make the customer (you!) the hero. We want to share your success, innovative use of technology to solve pain points and the ways it has driven your business to better outcomes for yourselves and your clients.
• Your own customer success story can be used by your sales and marketing teams as collateral for prospects, or to spread awareness of what the company can do by showcasing your industry-focused accomplishments. Instead of sending a prospect a technical whitepaper, our case studies can give a quick yet detailed explanation of how your company operates, and how they are using technology in an innovative way.
• This is the chance to discuss your technology roadmap with us. As we learn how you are using the technology currently, as well as your plans for the future, we can suggest innovative ways our technology can help you get there and you can share your product feedback with us.
• You will be invited to join our exclusive All Stars Program, an elite group of senior managers from all kinds of industries. There is no cost or obligation. You can become a reference for others, speak on panels or webinars, get invited to exclusive events with senior management at Progress, participate in analyst reviews, or speak with Progress product management on new product developments.
• For some customer stories, we also engage our communications team to do a press release and we amplify the story across our social channels (you could do the same on your companies' channels!).

How does the process work?

First, a company must select someone to be interviewed. Generally, you would want someone working directly with the Progress product and/or was the head of the project. An employee in this position will give the most context and specific details on how they used Progress's software.

The next step is to block off some time for a 30 to 45-minute interview. That conversation is where we get to the heart of the story. We will send you the questions prior to the interview so you can be prepared.

On the day of the interview, you will have key members of your team, a product marketing manager from Progress as well as an account manager and a customer advocacy manager on the call with you. We will record the call so we can refer back to it when drafting.

What is the customer case study outcome?

We will compare our notes internally and our writer will prepare a draft. After we review it, we will share it with you so you can provide edits as necessary. This 650-word story highlights the challenge you experienced, presents the solution you chose and showcases the results you’ve achieved. We talk about your company and pull out some key soundbites for pull quotes to feature in the sidebar of the text.

When you email it back to us, we will edit it accordingly and when finalized, our design team creates a PDF that we post on our website.

You have considerable input into what gets published. In fact, a primary goal of each success story is to make sure that you are the hero of the story, standing tall over whatever obstacle was in your way. During composition, you can make corrections, add context or statistics, or suggest a different direction in telling the story. We also won’t publish anything without your permission.

Interested in knowing more about case studies?

We are always excited to work with you in telling your success stories. If you’d like to participate in a case study with Progress, please contact Hope Mascott at hope.mascott@progress.com to learn more.