Customer approval before you publish a case study: why and how

• The company name, logo, person's name and figures in the story belong to your customer. Publishing them without permission can damage a good relationship with a single post.
• A small error in the figures ("three weeks" instead of "three months") puts the customer in an awkward spot with their own team.
• Many companies require communications or legal sign-off for any external text that names them. Knowing that up front beats pulling a story after it's live.
• An approved story is also easier to use in sales: you know a prospect can talk to the reference customer if they ask.

When you ask for approval, show the customer more than the text. Make these points explicit:

• Use of the company name and logo.
• The quoted person's name, title and photo, if any. Some people prefer to be named by title only.
• Every figure and time frame in the story.
• Direct quotes: are they word for word, or shortened?
• Where the story will be used: your website, a sales PDF, a LinkedIn post.

• Send the text the way it will be published. Seeing how it will look on the site makes the decision easier than reading a Word file.
• Ask for approval or changes in a single step. Saying "approved" or leaving a short note should be enough.
• Use the channel your customer uses. Someone who ignores email may open a WhatsApp link the same day.
• If there's no reply within a week, send one polite reminder.

Hi {Name},

We've turned the answers you gave last week into a case study. You can read it here, exactly as it will appear on our site:

{Approval link}

If it looks right, you can approve it in one click; if you'd like anything changed, just leave a note. We won't publish it without your approval.

Thanks,
{Your name}

• New accounts start with "Pre-publish Approval" turned on: when an interview ends, the story isn't published automatically and stays hidden from widgets, walls and share links until you approve it in the dashboard.
• The Customer Approval Portal is on every plan. You email the approval link or copy it and send it over WhatsApp.
• Your customer reads the story as it will be published, with their name, title, logo and figures, and approves it in one click or asks for changes with a note.
• You see the reply in the dashboard and by email. A copy of the approved text is kept as a record.
• At the end of the interview, the customer can write how they'd like to be named in the story; this field is optional.

We cover when and how to reach out to customers in more detail in the guide to asking for testimonials.