If you’re anything like me, then you love learning from case studies. There’s something about hearing another company’s success that just gets my brain ticking. Here’s a list of essential questions for case study analysis.

Whether you’re looking to learn from other companies’ successes or get insights into their failures, these questions for case study will help guide your thinking.

How to Plan Your Questions for Case Study

Before we get into the interview, let’s talk about how to structure your questions.

This post will focus on specific questions you should ask about certain topics. For example, the client’s brand, their solutions, and their results.

Because it will provide you with the basic information you need at each stage of the case study interview, it is best to follow the progression described here. Asking what solution they have already tried before is pointless if you don’t even understand their brand’s needs.

Remember that if you ask users to provide information about a topic upfront, they will often refer to it later, strengthening your overall case study and sometimes encouraging users to share information they might not otherwise have.

Case studies are a great way to show potential leads that you’re serious about their business. These case studies are valuable content forms that can be used as lead magnets if you have the right conditions. They serve one purpose: To show how clients achieved specific, significant results using your product or service.

While writing a case study is an essential part of success, there’s another part to the process: Knowing what questions to ask. This will be helpful when you prepare for a case interview.

Asking the right questions can make the difference between a case report that feels like it was churned out by an AI machine and one that feels actionable, interesting, and high-stakes for your readers.

Essential Case Study Questions to Ask In The Interview

Questions can make or break your case study. The questions you ask will depend on your industry and the angle of the case study, but here are some basic ones to get started:

• How did you get to know us?
• When did you first work with us?
• How was the engagement with our company initiated?
• What problems are you trying to solve?
• Did your team evaluate other solutions or competitors to your problem?
• Why did you choose us?
• How did our product/solution help you?
• What help did you need to use our product/solution?
• What are the main benefits of our product/solutions?
• What are the three most important things you love about our company?
• What would you tell people who are considering us?

Ask your customer to send you a headshot, company logo, and any other branding elements to enhance your case study. This will make it feel more personal and authentic to your audience.

You know what you want and how to structure your study. If you ask someone to give feedback on a purchase, you will get unstructured praise that lacks credibility. Structured responses will save respondents time and give you something more valuable.

Your best customers will value your partnership and want you to succeed. They will be more than happy to participate in a case study. All you have to do is ask.

Questions on Pain Points

A great case study will outline the challenges a client faced before they found your product as their solution to their problem.

It’s essential to explain why challenges were actual obstacles in the case studies. If you leave these out, it can seem like the challenges were insignificant.

That can make the solution sound too simple.

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These are some of the best questions you can ask during this stage of the interview.

Background Questions

1. Give us a brief background on who you are and what you do.

2. How many people are on your team or in your department?

3. Who are you targeting? What do they care about most?

4. What are some issues unique to the business you operate?

You should always look for opportunities to follow up on a question.

When following up, always listen for any questions the prospect may have.

When doing case studies for consumer markets, it’s important to ask questions that elicit more information from customers. This will provide you with a solid foundation on which to build your study.

As you write your case study, keep an eye out for questions that can help to add detail and depth to your story. These follow-up questions can give you more material to work with and make your case study more interesting and engaging.

Questions on How They Found You

1. How did you discover our company?

2. What made you decide to work with us?

Problem Questions for B2B Brands

1. What motivated you to reach out to us?

2. What specific problems were you having that made you seek out a solution to this problem?

3. How were you previously handling these issues?

4. How did those attempts turn out?

5. How did the issues affect your team’s morale and efficiency? Did it have an impact on your customers’ satisfaction?

Your problem questions are designed to help you understand the conflict and what was at stake.

Instead of asking B2B companies about employee satisfaction or customer loyalty, ask about the challenges they’re facing and any related pain points.

A mortgage company might ask questions about some of the concerns a home buyer had going in, and how they had been handling them.

The purpose of your problem-solving questions is to completely understand their business problems or issues and what is at stake.

Questions on How They Used Your Product

This will probably be the meatiest part of the interview because this is where some of the action items come into play.

1. Which products or services did you purchase?

2. How did our product help meet your needs?

3. How was your experience?

Solution Questions

1. How did our product resolve the issues you were experiencing?

2. Did you look at other vendors? If you’ve tried other solutions, what made them fall short? What features did our product bring to the table that the competition didn’t?

4. Talk to us about the implementation. How long did it take you, and who advocated for it?

Find out what problems they experienced before they found you, and which of your features were most helpful in solving those problems.

This is the problem-solving part of the interview.

Your goal is to understand why they selected you, what features of your products were most helpful, how easy or difficult it was to implement and use, how helpful your customer service was and who the key decision makers were.

Benefits Questions

1. What metrics or KPIs were you tracking during implementation? Examples might include productivity, cost, and employee morale.

2. What improvements did you notice after using our product or service?

3. What did you do with the extra time, money, and energy you saved?

4.  What were some of the benefits that you didn’t anticipate?

5. What kind of feedback did you receive from other stakeholders and team members?

6. What was your favorite thing about our products or services?

Take note of intangible benefits such as reduced stress, higher employee retention, or improved confidence.

Your goal is to understand how your client measures the value of your product. Ask them to elaborate with specific numbers.

The more numbers, statistics, and data you can gather, the better off you’ll be. Don’t be afraid to ask for any documents or reports that they have, as well as any relevant images.

Results Questions

Last but not least … the results. Many case study interviews skip the data portion, but you definitely want to make sure you’re including as much quantitative information as you can.

1. What results did you get after implementing our product?

2. How did these results impact your business?

Prepare Your Case Study Questions in Advance

Be sure to prepare well for the interview with the customer. You’ll only have 20 or 30 minutes with them, so you’ll need to make the most of it.

• Who they are
• What are their pain points
• How did they implement your service
• What results did they get

The order of your questions should be structured chronologically. Create a story that flows naturally, with a definite beginning (background and pain points), middle (solution implementation), and end (results).

Case studies and testimonials are critical parts of most marketing strategies.

Getting the juiciest details out of your customers for case studies, though, can be tricky. Asking the right questions and knowing what to ask is half the battle.

The most valuable way to gain insight, color, and data is through careful and thoughtful interview questions to ask your customers. These interviews need to be respectful of their time, and they may not have a lot of it to spare.

Conclusion

Asking questions for case study is a critical part of any marketing campaign. If you take the time to conduct and write up case studies, you want to make sure you do it right.

Having a strong list of effective questions to ask during a case study interview can ensure that you create a piece of content that will generate a ton of new, qualified leads for your business.