Unclassified

64 — Case Study Templates

Status: CANONICAL · Commercial OS
Owner: PMM hat + CS
Last verified: 2026-07-21

Purpose

The evidence factory: templates, the sourcing pipeline that feeds them, and the rules that keep our proof unimpeachable. Until named case studies exist, this system also governs how design-partner proof is used honestly (20 §5).

Target audience: PMM (production), CS (sourcing), sales (usage).

1. The Evidence Pipeline (case studies are harvested, not written)

Case studies fail when they're a marketing ask; ours are the by-product of the CS system: baselines at kickoff (45 Day 0) → documented catches with evidence chains (28) → day-90 realized-value reviews → renewal evidence files (47 §1). A case study is a realized-value review with quotes and permission. Design partners pre-consent contractually (32 §4); others are asked at their happiest moment — right after a documented catch or a strong day-90 review.

2. Template A — The Flagship Case Study (web + PDF, ~800 words)

TITLE:      How [Company] cut QBR prep from [X] hours to [Y] minutes
            — and caught a churn risk [Z] weeks before the score moved
STRAP:      [Company], [industry], [N]-person CS team on [stack: HubSpot + Zendesk + Stripe…]

THE NUMBERS (box, top — the whole story for skimmers):
  [X→Y] QBR prep · [N] hrs/week reclaimed/CSM · [1+] documented catches ·
  [%] seat activation · [quote-length ROI line in their words]

BEFORE (the wound, in their words — 150w):
  The eight-tab morning as *they* tell it. Their surprise-churn story. Their AI demotion.
  Rule: their vocabulary, not ours. If they say "swivel-chairing," print "swivel-chairing."

THE DECISION (100w):
  Why now ([33] signal), what they evaluated, why the approval gate mattered.
  One honest line about their skepticism. (Skepticism-then-evidence is the arc that converts.)

THE FIRST MORNING (150w):
  Day-1 hydration; the moment the workbench knew their accounts. Direct quote.

THE WORK (200w):
  One real catch, told with its evidence chain (usage + ticket + renewal + email).
  One approval moment (what the Twin drafted; what the human changed; the receipt).
  TruthLayer habit: what their org's memory now holds.

THE RESULTS (the box, expanded, with measurement notes — 100w):
  Numbers with baselines and dates. Methodology sentence (how measured — [28 §4]).

THE CONTINUITY LINE (50w):
  What compounds: handovers, ramp, the Spine's accumulated knowledge.
  Their renewal/expansion decision, stated plainly.

PULL QUOTES (3): the skeptic-converted quote · the number quote · the trust quote
  (best trust quotes are about what the AI *didn't* do: "It's never once acted without us.")

3. Template B — The Catch Story (single-outcome mini, ~250 words)

For one documented catch: SITUATION (account, stakes) → THE SIGNAL (what composed it, which systems — the evidence chain is the story) → THE ACTION (Twin prepared, human approved, what executed) → THE OUTCOME (saved/expanded, $ where permitted) → the one-liner quote. Uses: sales follow-ups, LinkedIn (59 F4), proof band rotation (53).

4. Template C — The Internal Champion Deck (8 slides, per-customer)

Built by CS for the champion to present inside their org (the expansion weapon 46 Play V3): 1 their baseline · 2 what changed (numbers) · 3 a catch walkthrough · 4 the governance receipt · 5 team adoption · 6 what other departments would see · 7 cost/value math (29 realized) · 8 proposed next step. Their logo, their numbers, our template.

5. Rules of Evidence

Every number traces to an instrumented baseline — no baseline, no case study (28 §4) · attribution tiers used honestly: named > industry-described ("a 40-CSM fintech") > "design partner" — never fake precision upward · customer approval on the exact text, changes accepted gracefully (their comfort outranks our adjectives) · the $8M story stays founder-origin, never customer-cased (14 §4) · refresh annually or at churn (a churned logo comes down within 30 days).

Production targets: 2 flagship + 6 catch stories by launch+90 · 1 flagship/quarter thereafter · every named customer has a champion deck by day 120.

KPIs: evidence-pipeline conversion (day-90 reviews → case studies ≥ 30%) · sales usage rate (case studies in ≥ 80% of Commit-stage deals) · win-rate delta in deals where a catch story was sent (track it — it will justify the whole system).

Related: 28 Outcomes · 44 CS Playbook · 20 PMM Guide · 46 Expansion