Trust is a critical factor in building relationships with your customers. With all the similar products or services on the market, they need to know that yours is just right for their needs.
Customer stories highlight your offering in practical, real-world scenarios that prospective buyers can relate to. They go beyond the testimonial one-liner to dive into the benefits and details of specific use cases.
In this article, we’ll explain how to use customer stories to increase your credibility. We’ll include three examples of different customer story styles and share five top tips for writing your own.
Key takeaways
Customer stories are detailed, results-focused narratives of how people use and benefit from your product.
They build credibility, reduce uncertainty, improve retention and help sales teams move deals forward faster with social proof.
The strongest customer stories come from the right timing, organic feedback, thoughtful interviews and close collaboration across teams.
Pipedrive helps you collect, organize and share customer stories in one place, so your team always has proof ready when it’s needed. Try it free.
What are customer stories?
A customer story describes someone’s experience with your company or product, focusing on the results and benefits rather than features – a core principle of value selling.
Instead of presenting dry data, customer stories humanize your brand by providing first-hand details of how your product has improved someone’s life or contributed to results. Real-life experience makes customer stories extremely relatable for people seeking similar outcomes.
They’re also ideal for capturing prospects in the consideration phase of the customer journey. These potential buyers are still assessing your offer, likely against the competition, so showcasing positive results can help influence conversions.
Free ebook: How to tell your brand story
There are three main types of customer stories:
Testimonials (can be written quotes or videos)
Case studies
Reviews
Customer stories can be a collaborative process between you and the customer, but they can also be as simple as a comment on social media you choose to highlight.
Say a customer messaged you on LinkedIn to say your healthcare software helped them reduce paperwork across multiple clinics. You could then ask if they would be happy with you sharing a screenshot of the comment on your main feed.
Note: You should always have permission from the person you’re quoting to use their words for marketing purposes.
What are the benefits of sharing customer stories?
Customer stories strengthen trust at every stage of the buyer journey, helping prospects feel confident in choosing your solution.
According to a 2025 US survey, 60% of respondents said they “always” or “often” check online reviews before buying from a business for the first time. Only 1% said they never check reviews.
When consumers face an unknown situation, they tend to base their decision on what others are doing. This type of confirmation, known as social proof, is especially important for digital experiences where there’s no physical product involved.
When potential leads land on a SaaS or agency website, they may not be quite ready to buy yet. Unlike physical products, they can’t return a service if it doesn’t suit them. Customer stories offer a way to build trust in your solution and encourage purchase.
Below are some benefits of creating and sharing customer stories.
Create a genuine customer experience and boost your credibility
Customer stories make your value feel tangible by showing prospects exactly how others use and benefit from your product or service in relatable scenarios.
They work because social proof feels genuine. People trust other consumers more than corporate messaging and often rely on the experiences of others before deciding to buy.
For example, user-generated content (UGC) is a popular form of social proof because it’s created directly by customers and feels authentic.
Research shows that 84% of customers are more likely to trust a brand that uses UGC. Around 77% also agreed they would be more inclined to purchase the brand’s products or services.
Customer stories function in a similar way. They share real experiences, in a more structured format, that help prospects picture themselves achieving the same results.
Reduce churn and encourage higher retention
Along with attracting new buyers, customer stories can help current customers get more value from your product, which leads to better adoption and lower churn.
Existing buyers may discover new use cases or learn about specific features or functionality that could improve their own experience.
For example, consider B2B messaging service provider Slack’s use of customer stories.
The company has grown increasingly popular thanks to digital transformation in the workplace as more teams work remotely or asynchronously.
Slack targets a specific niche and uses its customer stories to highlight well-known brands in its niche to speak to its trendy, tech-minded customer base.
Its customer stories page inspires buyer confidence by using highly recognizable brand logos and scannable headlines about how it helps big companies succeed.
Note: Customer stories can also improve the overall employee experience. When teams learn how your product or service improves customers’ lives, they see more value in their work, boosting job satisfaction.
Optimize sales cycles with instant resources
Customer stories act as concrete proof your sales team can share with undecided prospects, helping deals move forward quickly.
Having real use cases on hand allows team members to quickly send these experiences to leads looking for similar results.
Customer stories also improve operational efficiency. They allow sales reps to make the best use of their time by reducing repetitive explanations of credibility and speeding up sales conversations.
3 examples of customer success stories
If your product or service is complex, showcasing different use cases can help users see what the experience is like, reducing uncertainty during the decision-making process.
As mentioned, customer stories come in different forms, such as video testimonials and written case studies. The type of story you choose will depend on several company factors, like your brand voice and resourcing abilities.
Below are examples from three brands using different customer story formats effectively.
1. Product reviews: Wandering Bear Coffee
Reviews are especially important for food and beverage products because buyers often rely on real customer feedback to judge taste and quality before trying something new.
Wandering Bear Coffee, a small business with a big brand, uses a simple carousel layout and conversational copy for their “Real emails from other humans”.
The reviews are in the voices of customers (with all caps and extra exclamation points to prove it), which helps them feel down-to-earth and genuine. Below the fold, there are many more star-rated reviews to assess.
2. Video testimonials: Marucci
Video testimonials are effective because they let prospects see and hear customer feedback straight from the source.
In fact, 78% of respondents in a survey agreed they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service.
Marucci is a sports equipment manufacturer that specializes in baseball gear. They edited a mix of video testimonials from athletes together to show their bats in action:
Not only do they use footage of the product in use, but they also piece together clips that highlight specific benefits for different players.
While this video has a lot of production value, yours don’t have to be as polished. The rise of social media platforms like TikTok has proved that authentic, self-filmed videos will likely be even more relatable.
3. Case studies: Pipedrive
Case studies are important evidence for agencies and the professional services they provide and are usually more detailed and data-driven than testimonials.
Pipedrive has a wide range of case studies available on our site. Showing that top brands trust the company and our products adds another layer of social proof and increases credibility.
One particular case study lays out how Pipedrive’s CRM and automation features helped e-commerce company Mercado Livre boost productivity by 40%.
Here’s a quote from the case study:
A quote like this builds trust because it reflects actual user experience and focuses on tangible value over feature hype.
While customer quotes can add value, they aren’t always necessary for a good case study. Not including quotes can even minimize barriers when asking for permission to use a customer story, as you may already have all of the information you need.
5 tips for creating your own customer stories
By putting the focus on your customers and their experiences, you can deliver valuable insights that will benefit your business and prospects equally.
Instead of trying to convince your reader with logic, you can persuade them by helping them resonate with an engaging story and an emotional hook.
Here are five tips that will help you create customer stories with different customer types that build a genuine desire to buy.
Tip 1: Collect customer stories organically
The most credible customer stories come from unsolicited, everyday feedback, as they tend to sound more honest and believable to future buyers.
If you’re a customer-centric company, you will likely have lots of positive feedback available to choose from. Some popular places to find customer comments organically include:
Social media. X is one of the best platforms for finding positive comments as it’s publicly available and easy to search. Others, like Facebook and Instagram, may be a little more difficult due to privacy settings.
Grateful emails. These are usually more thought-out and detailed than a social media comment.
Customer support channels. Whether you use a business messaging app, chatbot or direct messages on social media, check old support tickets that have had positive resolutions.
Any other channels you have available for feedback. This could be the comments section on your site blog, your Google Maps listing, your community forum or your “Contact Us” form.
Wherever you find feedback you’d like to use, ask permission to quote the customer for marketing purposes to avoid any potential issues down the line.
If you need to edit typos or incorrect grammar, send it back to them to double-check they’re happy with the final version and ensure it stays authentic.
If your product is new to the market, you may not have any of these options yet. In this case, you could think about offering groups of people a free trial in exchange for honest feedback.
Tip 2: Reach out at the right time
Asking for a story at the right moment, such as when the customer experience is still fresh, leads to better feedback and a more accurate picture of your product’s value.
You may already have a customer success manager who can tell you the best people to reach out to when the time comes. Otherwise, here are some tips to get the timing right:
Use your sales CRM. Track where customers are in the sales cycle in real time so you can reach out at the perfect moment – not too early or too late.
Ask after positive interactions. Follow up when support resolves an issue, a customer reaches a goal or someone contacts your team to say thank you.
Automate follow-ups. Set up flows to immediately send emails asking for feedback while the experience is still top of mind.
Ask at scheduled touchpoints. Use check-in calls or routine customer surveys to naturally ask for stories when customers are already sharing their experience.
Plant the seed of customer stories early. Mention during onboarding that you occasionally feature customer stories and note who reacts positively.
Wait until results are clear. The “attribution point” – when customers can see tangible outcomes – is often the best time to ask for a well-rounded story.
When you time your requests well, customers are more likely to respond thoughtfully and the stories you collect feel more genuine, detailed and useful.
Tip 3: Sharpen your interview tactics
A good interview format with open-ended questions helps customers share their thoughts naturally and clearly, making your stories look more detailed and less scripted.
Think about how you’ll structure your interviews before you conduct any. Will you have a set of questions that you ask everyone? Will you record a live interview or email your questions and request written responses?
For instance, take a look at the written question and answer format of this learner story from Codecademy:
The written format is a direct, effective format for sharing on your website.
If you want a more dynamic medium, consider doing an interview on camera. Here are some quick tips for successful video testimonials:
Choose confident and charismatic customers who will come across as genuine
Create and send questions in advance to ensure there’s time for both sides to prepare
Warm up with light conversation to make the customer feel comfortable
Keep the interview short and sweet to maximize engagement for those watching
Make sure you and your interviewee have the right equipment to record good-quality video and audio
Now, what if you encounter someone who isn’t a confident writer and doesn’t want to be filmed either?
In those cases, you could offer to write a case study for them based on verbal answers that they’ll check and approve before you post publicly.
Whatever style you go for, the result should feel genuine rather than scripted.
Tip 4: Highlight the benefits to customers of being involved
Asking someone to take time out of their busy day to share their story can be a big request, which is why it helps to explain what they’ll get out of the experience.
For instance, if your site has a high domain rating (which means you’re more likely to rank highly in search engines), linking back to the customer’s site could also boost their rating.
You may also have a large social media following that will help boost your customer’s exposure and brand awareness.
Most people will likely be happy to participate, but keep these tips in mind to ensure a good experience and quality story as a result.
Try not to put people on the spot or in a position where they feel they have to agree
Whether it’s face-to-face or over email, it’s good practice to keep your pitch short and sweet
Covering important details about what you’re asking for upfront so customers won’t have to ask (e.g., how long it’ll take or what the end product will be like)
Give them the questions ahead of time so they can prepare answers to more in-depth questions in advance
It shouldn’t be difficult (or costly) to get people to participate.
You can offer discounted pricing or other perks to get people involved, but the beauty of customer stories is that they stem from positive experiences. Mostly, people will be happy to share these as long as you make the process of collecting them seamless.
Tip 5: Encourage different departments to collaborate for deeper insights
Aligning sales and marketing, also known as “smarketing”, can help team members create more relatable customer stories grounded in data.
Our 2022 State of Sales and Marketing report found that companies where these two departments were well-integrated exceeded growth forecasts nearly twice as often as companies with poorly integrated departments.
Creating streamlined workflows and business processes between teams makes it much easier to gather relevant data for customer stories.
Whether you’re in healthcare, financial services or telecommunications, encourage collaboration across your sales, marketing, customer care, human resources and other departments for deeper insights.
How Pipedrive helps you collect, organize and use customer stories
Customer stories only drive impact when your sales team can actually find and use them.
Pipedrive gives you a structured way to capture feedback, tag it by use case and surface the right examples during sales conversations – all in your CRM ecosystem.
Here’s how teams use Pipedrive to streamline their customer story process.
Identify story candidates directly inside your CRM
Using deal data, activity history and AI-powered insights in Pipedrive, teams can spot customers showing obvious signs of success, such as consistent usage or smooth onboarding.
Additionally, every time a customer reaches a milestone, leaves positive feedback or expresses gratitude, you can flag them as a potential story source.
For example, reps can:
Add a deal or contact to a “Customer Story Candidate” stage
Tag them by industry, product use case or outcome
Attach emails, call notes or support transcripts with relevant quotes
Instead of hunting through old conversations or inbox threads, you will always have an updated list of customers worth following up with.
Automate story requests at the right moment
Workflow automation in Pipedrive makes it easy to send feedback or testimonial requests exactly when customer satisfaction peaks.
For example, you can trigger an email:
When a deal closes
After onboarding is completed
After a key feature is adopted or a success milestone is reached
Automating feedback emails helps you consistently collect high-quality stories without wasting time on manual reminders, which can lead to cost savings over time. It also supports scalability, making it easier to gather stories as your customer base grows.
Keep stories organized and easy for teams to use
Once you start collecting assets for your customer stories, Pipedrive becomes the central place to store and categorize them.
Teams can attach files, notes and custom fields to specific contacts and deals, including:
PDF case studies
Video testimonials
Customer quotes
Review screenshots
Depending on the custom fields used, reps can quickly filter by industry, persona, feature or pain point to find the perfect proof to send a prospect.
It also keeps sales and marketing aligned. Both teams can see which stories resonate, which gaps exist and where new stories are needed. Marketing gets clearer direction and sales gets story assets they can confidently share during calls or follow-ups.
Final thoughts
Customer stories are a powerful form of social proof that helps build confidence in your business.
Seeing that someone else has achieved the outcomes they’re looking for and perhaps enjoyed the experience too, is often the nudge some customers need to make a purchase decision.
Crafting the perfect pitch will give you the best chance of acquiring the best stories – making them a valuable and flexible asset for your sales and marketing teams.
With a CRM like Pipedrive, teams can track story-ready customers, organize proof by use case and share the right story at the right time. Try it free.
