How Case Study Buddy Uses Customer Interviews to Build Trust and Strategic Partnerships With Enterprise Clients
“Trust is the beating heart of everything we do. If we can't get a client to trust that we'll treat their customers and their customers' time with respect, and that we can get the story they're looking for, then there's no reason to work with us. Some of these enterprise accounts contribute six figures of revenue on their own, so they're important. To have the interviews in whole or in part going through Nick shows that we've put a lot of trust in him.”
Joel Klettke, Cofounder, Case Study Buddy
“Nick is an interviewer who is 100% reliable, and is able and comfortable to pivot in a way that will not only provide our team with material to tell a compelling story, but will also enable us to to come back to the client and say, ‘This is what we've gleaned and this is now what we can do with it.’ That kind of trust building... It's hard to put a price on that.”
Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager, Case Study Buddy
The Client
Case Study Buddy (acquired by Testimonial Hero) is a boutique agency that helps B2B companies strategically capture customer stories and transform them into marketing and sales assets they can use to close more deals faster.
Joel Klettke, Cofounder, and Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager, work with a team of interviewers, writers, videographers, and other experts to handle the customer story process from start to finish.
Nick Rimsa, Founder of Interview Your Customers, has collaborated with Case Study Buddy as a Customer Interviewer for over three years.
The Numbers
With Nick as a primary interviewer, Case Study Buddy saw a 102% increase in the average order value for HubSpot, their highest-ordering enterprise client, between 2022 and 2023.
In the last year alone, Nick has contributed to projects worth high six figures worth of Case Study Buddy revenue.
Nick has run successful interviews for over 100 Case Study Buddy clients and has become the primary interviewer for several multi-billion dollar enterprise clients.
The Challenge
Customer interviews are a chance to earn trust, and the stakes are high for enterprise clients.
For any customer story project, a quality customer interview is imperative. First, there’s no good story without a good interview, and second, a customer interview is an opportunity to build trust—or lose it.
Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager at Case Study Buddy, explains: “The interview is not only our opportunity to provide all of the story pieces to the rest of our production team to tell a compelling story, but almost more importantly, it's our opportunity to build trust with our clients—because it’s our chance to build trust with their customers.”
When a team agrees to let external research agencies have facetime with their customers—the livelihood of their business—they’re taking a risk. They’ve worked hard to secure those customers and must ensure that interviewees feel comfortable, respected, and heard. That’s why trust is central to everything at Case Study Buddy.
“Trust is the beating heart of everything we do,” says Case Study Buddy Cofounder, Joel Klettke.
“If we can't get a client to trust that we'll treat their customers and their customers' time with respect, and that we can get the story they're looking for, then there's no reason to work with us,” he explains.
“When you're in an interviewer seat, it's a really important position, and that is because of trust. There's trust from the client. There's trust from the production team. And in that call, there's trust from the customer that you are going to treat their story with dignity and fairness,” says Joel.
This is true for any business. However, for enterprise clients, the stakes are high, and time is limited.
“My background has been in serving enterprise, and there's a different level of expectation,” explains Joel. “Stakes are high with every customer, but with enterprise, you are becoming the ambassador for what might be a household name or an industry leader.”
A company of any size needs to protect its relationships with its customers. But executives at multi-billion dollar companies need to be extremely careful about who they let represent their brand.
And at the enterprise level, the customers being interviewed are often incredibly busy, high-level executives themselves.
“When you get into the enterprise space, trust is such an important element,” says Jules. “Enterprise clients want to know that we fully understand their value, their service, and what sets them apart. And they need to know that their customer’s time is being respected, and that we are capitalizing on every single minute we have with them.”
When customer interviews have such high stakes, Case Study Buddy must ensure their interviewers have the skills and the grace to excel under those pressures—but some skills are hard to teach.
For example, sometimes a client will want to focus on a particular aspect of their product or service—but in the interview, their customer might lead the conversation in a different direction.
“To lay the groundwork for that trust, our interviewers need to show up to those conversations having done their research and being ultra prepared not only to speak to what the client wants to explore but also to go down whatever pivot the interviewee presents,” says Jules.
And ultimately, any interviewer needs empathy and sensitivity to make interviewees feel comfortable.
“Overall, the interviewer is the caretaker of the interviewee — the caretaker of the story's hero,” says Jules.
“An interviewer needs to have the level of empathy and sensitivity to not just get the story we need, but to make sure they are caring for the person on the other end of the call and making them as comfortable as possible. Not only to enrich the end product, but to make sure that the interviewee doesn't leave the experience feeling vulnerable,” says Jules. “It's hard to train an interviewer to have that skill.”
So when it comes to their biggest enterprise clients, Joel and Jules need to assign those customer interviews to a researcher they can trust to come prepared, pivot on the fly as needed, and make all customers feel comfortable and cared for.
That’s where Nick comes in.
“When you're in an interviewer seat, it's a really important position, and that is because of trust. There's trust from the client. There's trust from the production team. And in that call, there's trust from the customer that you are going to treat their story with dignity and fairness.”
Joel Klettke, Cofounder, Case Study Buddy
“An interviewer needs to have the level of empathy and sensitivity to not just get the story and the information we need, but to make sure that they are caring for that person on the other end of the call and making them as comfortable as possible. Not only to enrich the end product, but to make sure that the interviewee doesn't leave the experience feeling vulnerable. It's hard to train an interviewer to have that skill.”
Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager, Case Study Buddy
The Solution
Earning enterprise clients’ buy-in early on with an always-reliable research partner.
For multi-billion dollar enterprise clients, a 100% reliable interviewer is essential. That’s why Jules and Joel started trusting Nick, Founder of Interview Your Customers, as the go-to interviewer for Case Study Buddy’s biggest accounts.
“Nick has a real talent for asking great questions and digging into a story,” says Joel, “So we started to pass him the more enterprise accounts, the most important accounts.”
“He has that strong skillset in making people comfortable and digging into the details. And his background in the research and product development side of things really plays nicely into getting a detailed story. It's that strategic approach and that not being hemmed in by a question set that makes Nick really great at what he does,” he explains.
Over their 3+ years working together, Jules and Joel have been able to depend on Nick to:
Always come prepared and well-informed, regardless of the client’s industry
Listen intently and adapt on the fly during customer conversations
Treat all customers with sensitivity and respect
Gather all the information needed to tell a compelling customer story
Add value to both external clients and Case Study Buddy’s internal team by making strategic recommendations
Joel attributes much of Nick’s interview success to his “informed but curious” approach.
Informed: “Nick comes prepared. He does his homework. He makes sure that he’s not going to embarrass himself or us or our clients on the call,” says Joel.
But curious: “He comes in knowing the goal and having a strategy for the call, but he remains open and fluid to where that call might go. Nick has what I consider to be one of the rarest and most important traits of a really great interviewer, which is the ability to adapt on the fly with context,” says Joel. “Depending on what he hears, he can change the way the call goes. He can press in. He can investigate. And he’s very efficient with the time that he’s given.”
Jules agrees. She explains that Nick’s ability to adapt on a call not only helps Case Study Buddy create compelling assets, but also helps them become strategic partners for their clients.
“There are so many services out there that can take a transcript and create a case study from it, but what we endeavor to offer is a specialized service of a team of folks that understand your brand and relationship at a level that a simple content writer doesn't,” she explains. “Nick is an interviewer who is able and comfortable to pivot in a way that will not only provide our team with so much more material to tell a compelling story, but will also enable us to to come back to the client and say, ‘This is what we've gleaned and this is now what we can do with it.’”
“It's hard to put a price on that level of trust,” says Jules.
Nick’s ability to adapt is helpful before the interviews, when he can quickly learn the basics of any subject matter, no matter how technical.
“Having an experienced and reliable interviewer who can adapt to different focuses and different specialized services that our clients offer is huge,” says Jules. “There are certain assets and certain stories we produce that are more complex that I will immediately funnel to Nick, because I know that there's a level of care, research ability, and preparedness that goes into what he does.”
Joel explains that many of those more complex stories at Case Study Buddy come from clients with technical backgrounds.
“Be it cybersecurity or data engineering or AI, our clients come from lots of different spaces with their own sets of acronyms and expectations,” he says.
“A mentality we've tried to build into the team is that we don't need to be subject-matter experts. We just need to be really good at understanding the context and transforming that interviewee into a storyteller. That's something that I talk about as a philosophy of the company, and it's something that Nick’s work contributes to.”
Joel summarizes: “It was that combination of the talent he has for running a great interview, his ability to adapt, and his high standard for what he does, that made us comfortable starting to move more of these types of interviews to Nick and eventually putting him in the prime slot for when big enterprise clients come through.”
“Nick is an interviewer who is able and comfortable to pivot in a way that will not only provide our team with so much more material to tell a compelling story, but will also enable us to to come back to the client and say, ‘This is what we've gleaned and this is now what we can do with it.’ It's hard to put a price on that level of trust”
Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager, Case Study Buddy
“It was that combination of the talent he has for running a great interview, his ability to adapt, and his high standard for what he does, that made us comfortable starting to move more of these types of interviews to Nick and eventually putting him in the prime slot for when big enterprise clients come through.”
Joel Klettke, Cofounder, Case Study Buddy
The Results
Building long-term, strategic partnerships with multi-billion dollar brands across industries.
Joel estimates that in 2023 alone, Nick worked on 75% of Case Study Buddy’s client base, contributing to and making possible at least high six figures worth of business.
“Some of these enterprise accounts contribute to six figures of revenue on their own, so they're important,” says Joel. “To have the interviews in whole or in part going through Nick shows that we've put a lot of trust in him.”
Over time, Nick helped Case Study Buddy build trust with their biggest clients.
Jules recalls one client in particular, the CEO of a multi-million dollar IT company, who was initially very protective of the story they were telling about their brand.
“But after the interview, not only did he flag how impressed he was with it, but he printed off the transcript, posted it in the lunchroom in his office building, and shared it via email to every single person that works in his company, saying, ‘Read this. This is our value.’ To me, that is the clearest and highest praise indication of what Nick brings to that company,” Jules explains.
Once that initial trust is built, true strategic partnerships can form—like Case Study Buddy's relationship with HubSpot.
Case Study Buddy has grown from initially working with just one HubSpot team to now having worked with over ten different teams.
“They have a full product suite—some are sales hubs, some are marketing hubs, some are CRM—and a lackadaisical interviewer is not going to catch that nuance,” says Joel. “Nick has been able to navigate the diversity in those interviews.”
Of course, Joel also credits the production team, the project managers, and everyone else at Case Study Buddy who’s delivered excellent work for HubSpot. However, for a client with such high stakes, initial buy-in during the interview stage was essential.
“We deal with many of their premier, Lighthouse accounts—big enterprise clients for a big enterprise client. Nick’s ability to show up and come prepared and help us navigate those interviews got us the buy-in and the ability to continue to grow our partnership with HubSpot. That's a key account for us that he has played a big role in.”
Nick’s ability to problem solve, listen, and follow up strategically has helped the team always provide value back to HubSpot, even if interviews sometimes go in unplanned directions.
“Sometimes we get set up with an interviewee who perhaps doesn't have the experience that HubSpot wants to be able to access,” explains Jules. “Nick’s ability in those situations to roll with what that person can offer us and focus on the things that we can capture, not only provides us with something to present back to our client that they weren't anticipating, but also leans into our core values of trust-building and respecting the interviewee's time and energy.”
“That level of input and feedback on an enterprise-level project is imperative, and it really does set us up to be able to be successful and deliver what the client is expecting,” says Jules.
Jules ran the numbers and explained that all this trust-building over time has led to Case Study Buddy being able to pitch different assets to HubSpot, ultimately leading to their average order price more than doubling.
“Between 2022 and 2023, the average order value for HubSpot, our highest ordering enterprise client, has increased by 102%. And that is in large part because of the work that Nick has done,” says Jules.
“Nick made a really valuable contribution pitching audiograms. He recognizes when an interview is strong, and has a good ear for good quotes. That’s given us the opportunity to go back to the client and say, ‘This could be a great asset for you. It fits with your goals and the story you're looking for.’ Nick’s ability to recognize those instances has created opportunities for us and for our clients,” says Joel.
Joel says Nick has helped the team build confidence in their ability to serve multi-billion dollar enterprises across industries.
“There's a calmness and a trust that comes from knowing that Nick is going to be on those calls,” explains Joel.
“That gives the Account Managers confidence to sell to enterprise accounts. That gives the video team confidence that the material they capture is going to be what the client is looking for. And it’s enabled us to more confidently quote against some of these projects with the technical component,” he says.
Ultimately, Nick’s ability to think strategically adds value to Case Study Buddy and their clients in a way that goes beyond the role of an interviewer.
“Having an interviewer who thinks strategically and who approaches every interview with a 180 degree perspective — of what the possibilities are and what potential lies in a story or a relationship — really does bolster us as strategic partners, which is something that we are endeavoring to become for our clients,” says Jules.
“Nick is 100% reliable. He’s 100% responsive. I can rely on him for problem solving. And he is always looking at the customer experience in a way that transcends what his job title is,” says Jules.
Similarly, Joel says that if someone asked him what Nick does with Case Study Buddy, he wouldn’t just say, “Nick’s an interviewer.”
“I wouldn't hesitate to say that Nick's one of our very best interviewers, and that he works on our toughest accounts. But Nick’s value to us has been beyond the interviewing side of things. So I would also say that in the same way he can adapt on a call, he’s been able to adapt with us to different tasks and things we've needed. He’s been excited to share ideas and point out opportunities. That's made a big difference for us,” says Joel.
“And his energy for things is infectious,” Joel adds. “He’s always there celebrating when we have a win. He has a genuine excitement about the work we're doing. So, I can't say enough good things.”
“Being able to build trust to the point where we're able to now pitch different assets and deepen the amount of offering that we can present HubSpot, has resulted in the average order price from them more than doubling. Between 2022 and 2023, the average order price for our highest ordering enterprise client, has increased by 102%. And that is in large part because of the work that Nick has done.”
Jules Orton, Senior Project Manager, Case Study Buddy
“We deal with a lot of HubSpot’s premier accounts, their lighthouse accounts — big enterprise clients for a big enterprise client. Nick’s ability to show up and come prepared and help us navigate those interviews got us the buy-in and the ability to continue to grow our partnership with HubSpot. That's a key account for us that he has played a big role in.”
Joel Klettke, Cofounder, Case Study Buddy
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