«Return to Blog List The Art of the Anonymous Case Study

A logistics leader …

A top-10 bank …

A major retailer …

… all had powerful success stories to share, but couldn’t get permission to be named publicly.

In the past year, I’ve created about a dozen anonymous customer stories for clients.

Sometimes, the story starts named, but circumstances demand we resignedly remove the name.

Maybe the customer contact left the company, the customer churned (no longer uses the vendor), or the customer’s legal team is uncomfortable sharing publicly.

At times, such stories can’t be resuscitated, despite the best efforts.

Other times, we pursue the story without a name from the start, knowing that’s the only way the customer will share their story. It’s particularly common in industries like cybersecurity, where getting permission to name a customer can feel like running a Ninja Warrior gauntlet — and you still fall in the water at the end.

No one really wants to publish a case study without a name. But a strong story can still be influential with audiences.

When the call comes to write an anonymous customer story (or remove names from an already written story), here are my steps:

Decide what to call the customer

They can’t be easily identified but should still sound credible. Identifiers help, such as “top,” “leader,” “innovator,” or “major.”

The right adjective + the type of company equals your substitute for a name, like “health innovator” or “Fortune 100 bank.”

Quote customers by title

Customer quotes are critical, even in unnamed stories. In this case, quote customers just by their titles, as in:

… said the CTO.

Leave out identifying details

You can’t risk the customer being obvious to the audience, so remove anything too revealing such as location, number of employees, or revenue.

But add rich metrics and story details

Make up for what you can’t say with what you CAN say. Often, an anonymous story frees you to include details that you might not have been able to share in a named story.

Maybe they saved millions or recovered from a ransomware attack faster.

Ideally, you secure customer interviews even if the story starts unnamed – enabling you to gather those rich details that will influence readers despite the lack of a name.

Many leading companies use anonymous customer stories at times and find value in the content they can squeeze out of them like quotes or metrics for social media.

Here’s one example.

The takeaway: If a customer story is high value, don’t let it die because the customer can’t be named.