How to Use Customer Success Stories To Gain New Users’ Trust

Standing out from competitors in the B2B SaaS industry can be pretty difficult. 

That’s because the industry is highly competitive—many companies offer similar products and services, so it’s hard to differentiate themselves from competitors. 

Also, the typical B2B buyer is highly educated and knowledgeable about their industry and the solutions they need for their business. Not to mention, the B2B buying process involves more than one decision-maker, and the decision-making team is growing bigger and harder to please, and everyone involved must sign off on the decision. 🤯

Yup! That’s what the landscape looks like right now, sadly. But there’s hope.

As a SaaS company, finding ways to build trust and credibility is more important than ever. That’s how you gain new users and potentially increase customer lifetime value. 

So how do you build trust and credibility with potential users, stand out from competitors, and gain new users?

Use customer success stories. 

Below, we explain why customer success stories are important for B2B SaaS and how to use them to gain new users and potentially increase customer lifetime value. 

Why You Should Add Customer Success Stories to Your B2B SaaS Strategy

Customer success stories (or case studies) are real-life examples of how your SaaS product or service helped a company solve a problem. They play an important role in the middle of the funnel—the consideration stage. 

These success stories are social proof that “show, not tell.” They demonstrate your product’s value to potential customers, showing them how it solves similar pain points for real users, so they can make a decision to buy. This helps build trust and credibility, making prospects more likely to consider using your product or service.

Beyond social proof, case studies also educate prospects. No wonder 69% of content marketers use it to help prospects understand their product’s benefits. 

For example, Salesforce has a library of over 100 customer success stories that drive over 5,000 sessions every month. These case studies serve two purposes: social proof and educating potential and existing users. 

Salesforce created a dedicated “Customer Success Stories” page on its website and made it accessible from the footer menu:

Placing a link to the page in the main navigation menu of the website would be more effective because more people would be able to find it easily. You should keep this in mind for your own page. 

Salesforce’s dedicated page features various customer success stories from different companies:

Seeing familiar brands like Ford and L’Oreal boosts Salesforce’s credibility. That’s because when prospects see that well-known brands already use the software and have achieved success with it, they are more likely to trust the product and believe that it will work for them as well. 

Each Salesforce success story includes a brief summary of the customer’s challenges and how Salesforce helped to solve those challenges. It also includes quotes from the customer and their company name and logo or headshot to add credibility to the story. Like this one:

(Don’t worry, we will share some best practices in detail in the next section.)

Customer success stories set you apart from the competition by showing how your solution has delivered specific results. This makes you more attractive to potential customers and increases the likelihood of a sale. 

They also attract new customers and generate leads and backlinks—Salesforce earned 12,000 from its customer success page. They help to build a strong and lasting relationship between you and your customers.

B2B content writer Kiran Shahid summarizes the benefit of customer success stories nicely, “Sell the experience, not the specs. Use case studies or customer stories. Give satisfied customers a chance to share their experiences. This helps potential customers understand the impact of your product in real life and increases trust.”

Now, let’s see five ways to use customer success stories to gain new users and some best practices for creating compelling B2B customer success stories. 

2 Ways to Use Customer Success Stories 

1. Display customer success stories on your website.

A dedicated library of customer success stories on your website helps build credibility, differentiate your business, and engage potential customers. It potentially drives your website’s traffic, lead generation, and freemium, trial, or paying users’ signup.

A compelling SaaS customer success story should include the following elements:

• Customer background: A brief introduction to the customer, including their industry and size.
• Problem statement: A clear and concise description of the challenge or pain point that the customer was facing before using your product.
• Solution: A description of how your product helped the customer overcome their challenge and the specific features or benefits that made the biggest impact.
• Results: Concrete, quantifiable results that demonstrate the impact of your product on the customer’s business. This could include improvements in efficiency, productivity, revenue, customer satisfaction, etc.
• Customer testimonial: A quote from the customer that provides a personal and emotional connection to the story and adds credibility to the results.
• Visual aids: Visual aids such as screenshots, diagrams, or graphs can help to bring the story to life and make it easier for the reader to understand.
• Call to action: A clear and concise call to action, inviting the reader to learn more about your product or get in touch for more information.

By including these elements, a SaaS customer success story will be informative, engaging, and persuasive– and showcase your product’s value.

To help you create compelling customer success stories to display on your website, we’ll steal ShipBob’s case study library, so you can use it as inspiration for yours. 

What makes Shipbob’s case studies stand out from others we’ve seen so far is how it uses data-driven storytelling.

Data-driven storytelling makes B2B case studies more persuasive, credible, and memorable. It uses quantitative and qualitative data and visual aids to show prospects the results your product or service generated for past or existing users. The data helps to anchor and validate the story.

ShipBob adopts this approach by following these best practices:

Identify your customer’s problem or challenge before they used your product or service.

ShipBob helped Outlaw Soaps speed up its fulfillment process by 116.7%. To help readers see its impact, ShipBob highlights Outlaw’s challenge before using its service:

Identifying the customer’s problem or challenge before they used your product or service is a critical step in writing a customer success story because it helps to: 

• Build empathy and establish a connection between the reader and the customer.
• Show how your solution made a difference, so the reader can see your product’s impact on the customer and how they would benefit from using it.
• Establish context and make the story more coherent and understandable.
• Make the story more memorable and compelling.

To create case studies that resonate with prospects, choose a customer who has achieved notable success using your product. Then clearly define the problem or challenge that your customer faced before using your product or service. 

Highlight the solution that your customer found in your product or service. 

Highlighting the solution that your customer found in your product or service is important when writing a customer success story because it:

• Shows your product’s unique value and positions it as a solution specifically designed to address the customer’s pain points.
• Reinforces the benefits that the customer experienced as a result of using your product or service.
• Builds trust as prospects see that your product or service works and can deliver the results it promises.
• Equips the reader to make an informed decision about whether or not they should use your product or service.

You should emphasize how your solution addressed the problem and what made it unique. ShipBob does this well—highlighting the solution in its customer’s voice

Like ShipBob, writing your customer success story in their own voice can be super effective because it adds a personal touch and makes the story feel more natural and relatable to the reader. It also allows prospects to hear directly from the customer and understand their experience in their own words, which can result in trust and credibility.

Overall, writing in the customer’s voice captures unique insights you might miss if you write the story from the company’s perspective. Customer perspective adds depth and richness to the story and makes it more compelling for prospects.

However, not all customers may be comfortable sharing their stories in their own words, so writing the story from a third-party perspective may be necessary. 

Still, interview your customers to hear their stories in their own voice so you can create something insightful. Also, don’t forget to offer full disclosure and seek consent from your customers before publishing. 

Show the Results

A customer success story’s most important part is showing the results. What were the tangible outcomes for your customer? How has your solution improved their business, saved them time or money, or helped them achieve their goals? 

ShipBob does this brilliantly with its “key metrics” section.

Notice how the key metrics section specifically calls out the results Outlaw got from relying on ShipBob. It’s also great to see that this critical detail has a dedicated section at the top part of the page. Anyone reading the story can’t miss it. 

You can spice up your customer success stories with raw data by doing these:

• Asking open-ended questions during customer interviews or surveys to learn about their background, the problem or challenge they faced, and your product or service’s impact on their business.
• Combining analytics tools to gather quantitative data about the customer’s use of your product or service. You can use these insights to support the customer’s story and provide a complete picture of their experience.
• Asking the customer to provide a written statement or video testimonial highlighting the benefits they experienced and your product or service’s impact on their business.

Use visuals to help bring the story to life and make it more engaging for prospects.

Adding visuals to your case study helps to make the case study more visually appealing and engaging for prospects. They break up large blocks of text and make the information more accessible and memorable. They also help you present quantitative data in a way that’s easy for readers to understand. 

For example, we use an infographic-style illustration to present quantitative data in our case studies. Like this one: 

Visuals make the case study more impactful and memorable for the reader. You can turn numbers into charts or graphs to show progress or include relevant screenshots. These are examples of ways to use images in your customer success story.

Overall, keeping your customer success stories short and sweet is important. Keep them focused on the most important information, and try to keep each story under two pages in length. 

Finally, ensure your customer success story is relevant to your target audience. Consider what they care about and want to know, and tailor your story accordingly. That’s how you gain prospects’ trust and turn them into customers. 

2. Share customer success stories on social media platforms.

Sharing customer success stories on social media can increase your brand’s visibility and reach a wider audience. It also helps to build trust with your audience and establish your brand as a trusted and reliable source of information. 

Slack shares its customer success stories on social media in different ways. First, there’s the single testimonial or customer quote format like this one:

Sharing customer quotes on social media can increase trust and credibility, boost engagement, establish social proof, support sales efforts, and increase visibility. Notice that Slack shares its testimonials shamelessly but in a way that doesn’t come off as sales-y. 

So how do you share yours without pissing or chasing your audience off and away?

• Focus on the customer’s experience with your product or service rather than just the features and benefits of your offering. 
• Use their own words to highlight their problem, how your product or service solved it, and its impact on their life or business.
• Use visuals such as images, videos, and graphics to make your customer testimonials more engaging and memorable. 
• Share positive customer feedback, but be mindful of sharing only the most relevant and representative testimonials. 
• Provide context for your customer testimonials, such as the industry or market the customer operates in, to help your audience better understand the impact of your product or service.
• Avoid overselling your product or service and let the customer’s experiences speak for themselves.

Remember, the goal is to showcase the positive impact of your product or service and build trust, not to sell your audience hard. 

Another way Slack shares customer success stories is through its webinars or events.

Webinars and events are a great way to engage your audience and create a more immersive experience. By sharing customer success stories through these channels, you create a more engaging and interactive environment that builds trust and credibility with your audience.

Slack collaborates with users to demonstrate the real-world impact of its product. This can help to build confidence and trust with your audience and showcase the value of your offering more tangibly.

Doing this can help increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience. It can also build stronger relationships and encourage more engagement with your brand. Slack’s webinar post got 14 reposts and almost 100 engagements from its followers. 

Here are some tips for sharing customer success stories through webinars or events:

• Choose a customer whose story will be most relevant and impactful for your audience. Consider factors such as the size of the customer’s business, the industry they operate in, and the impact of your product or service on their life or business.
• Prepare the customer for the webinar or event by providing them with background information, key talking points, and any other relevant information. Make sure the customer is comfortable and confident in telling their story.
• Use visual aids such as slides, videos, or graphics to help tell the customer’s story in a more engaging and memorable way. This can help to bring the customer’s story to life and make it more relatable to your audience.
• Encourage interaction with your audience by asking questions, encouraging feedback, and allowing for Q&A sessions. This can help to build stronger relationships and increase engagement with your brand.
• Promote the webinar or event through your website, email marketing, and social media channels. Make sure to give your audience enough notice so they can plan to attend.
• Follow up with your audience after the webinar or event by sending a thank you email, providing additional resources, and encouraging feedback. This can help to keep the conversation going and strengthen your relationships with your audience.

Doing these can make your customer success stories more impactful and memorable and build stronger relationships with your audience.

Use Customer Success Stories to Gain User Trust

Customer success stories can be a powerful tool for SaaS businesses, especially if you want to attract new users and grow your customer base. 

You can build trust, generate interest, and inspire action by showcasing real-life examples of how your product has helped other businesses achieve their goals. 

Here’s a quick recap: 

• Use numbers and statistics to demonstrate your product’s impact on the customer’s business. 
• Include quotes from the customer to add credibility and personalize the story. 
• Use their own words to describe their experience with your product and the results they achieved. 
• Include screenshots, diagrams, or infographics to help illustrate the story.
• Use short paragraphs, headings, and subheadings to break up text and make the story easy to read.
• Share the story on your website, in email marketing campaigns, and on social media.

You can also partner with influencers who have used your product or service and have a large following on social media.

Use these tips to create compelling customer success stories to attract new users and achieve your business goals.