Turn approved customer quotes into a case-study outline
Marketing wants a case study from last month's customer interview, and the first AI draft already says the customer “halved review time”. Nobody measured that; a pleased customer said the overview was easier to read.
What you'll make
a case-study outline that uses the customer’s exact words, separates what they reported from anything measured, and lists the gaps to close before publication.
What you'll need
the interview quotes with who said them and when, a note of what the customer has agreed you can use them for, and any real measurements. Use ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini in the work account your organisation uses for customer material. Allow 20 minutes.
Example result.
Headline: Northgate’s team leads stop chasing the weekly rota Situation: 40-person maintenance team, rota kept in a shared spreadsheet What they said: “I found the weekly overview much easier to review than our old spreadsheet.” (Q1) What was harder: “Setting up the job categories took longer than we expected — about two weeks.” (Q3) Not claimed yet: any time saving (none measured); public use (internal only so far)
1. Give AI the quotes with their context
Paste each quote with an ID, the speaker’s role, the date and what it was about, plus the permission note. A quote reports an experience or opinion; it doesn’t establish a measured result. Keep any criticism in the record: a case study with one honest difficulty is more believable than one without.
Create a case-study outline from the customer record below. Sections:
headline, customer and situation, what they tried, what they said, what
was harder, and what we can't claim yet. Use quotations exactly as written,
each with its ID. Separate what the customer reported from anything
measured. Don't invent figures, dates, time savings or customers. Leave
missing information as a gap and list the questions to ask before an
external draft.
[customer record][customer record] is your quotes, IDs, context and permission note, pasted as plain text.
Why this works: named sections give the model somewhere honest to put a criticism and a gap, so it doesn’t smooth them away to make the story flow.
What you should see: an outline like the example result, with quote IDs in place and a short list of gaps and questions.
2. Map every claim to a quote
Ask which quote supports each line of the outline. A preference for an overview doesn’t prove it saved time, and two separate quotes shouldn’t be joined into a sequence the customer never described.
For every claim in this outline, quote the exact passage from the record
that supports it, with its ID. Mark any claim that has no passage, any
changed wording and any sequence or cause the record doesn't state. For
each one, suggest narrower wording the record does support. Show quotations
and paraphrases differently.Why this works: asking for the passage, not a yes or no, makes an unsupported line visible: it has nothing to quote.
What you should see: a short table or list with each claim, its quote ID, and a few lines marked “no passage” with a narrower alternative.
3. Keep permission separate from the wording
Permission to use quotes in an internal outline and permission to publish them in marketing are often different things. Keep the permission note in the gaps section exactly as recorded. AI can keep track of what the record says; it can’t decide what the customer has agreed to.
Why this works: a tidy outline looks finished. A visible “public use: not yet agreed” line stops it travelling further than it should.
What you should see: the permission status stated once, in the “what we can’t claim yet” section.
Check the result
- Every quotation matches the record word for word, including qualifications.
- Every figure in the outline appears in the record.
- The criticism or difficulty is still there.
- Permission is stated exactly as recorded, not upgraded.
The usual failure: a positive quote turns into a measured outcome in the headline, such as “halved review time”. Spot it by looking for any number or comparison word (halved, faster, saved) and asking which quote ID it came from.
The outline turns quote [ID] into [unsupported claim]. The quote only
says [what the customer said]. Restore the exact quote, rewrite the
headline using what it does say, and add the evidence we'd need for the
stronger claim to the gaps list. Don't add a figure.[ID] is the quote’s label. [unsupported claim] is the line that went too far; [what the customer said] is the quote in your own words.
Worked example: an easier overview, not a measured saving
Fictional example. Northgate Housing’s maintenance team uses a rota tool. The interview record:
Q1 Dana Okafor, operations lead, 3 Sept 2026: "I found the weekly overview
much easier to review than our old spreadsheet."
Q2 Dana Okafor: "We now use the checklist before anyone asks me for a summary."
Q3 Sam Reid, team lead: "Setting up the job categories took longer than we
expected — about two weeks."
Q4 Sam Reid: "I've stopped emailing Dana for the rota every Monday."
Permission: quotes may be used in an internal draft. Public use not yet agreed.
Measurements: none.The first outline’s headline read “Northgate halved review time with the new rota tool”, and it had dropped Q3. The claim map in step 2 found no passage for “halved” and no passage for “review time” at all. The repair prompt went in as “The outline turns quote Q1 into ‘halved review time’”. The new headline used Q4 instead: “Northgate’s team leads stop chasing the weekly rota”, which is what the customer actually said.
- The fault sounded reasonable. “Easier to review” and “halved review time” feel close; one is an opinion and the other is a measurement nobody took.
- Q2 shows an order, not a benefit. Using the checklist before asking for a summary says how they work now, not that it saves time.
- The criticism stayed. Q3 went back in under “What was harder”, and the gaps list now asks whether Northgate would share setup and before-and-after times.
Try it
Check what each quote really says
Keep exact quotations and distinguish reported experience from invented outcomes.
A quote reports what someone experienced. A figure needs a measurement behind it.
The example in text
- Q1 Overview easier to review
- Q2 Checklist used before a summary
- No measurement recorded
Task kit for this job: Download (ZIP) · Reusable instructions
Go deeper
Keep qualifications inside quotes
Don’t remove a condition or criticism to make a quotation cleaner. “It’s much easier, once you’ve set it up” and “It’s much easier” are different quotes. If you shorten one, mark the cut with an ellipsis and check with the customer that the shorter version still says what they meant.
If you do have a measurement
A real figure needs its method beside it: what was measured, over what period, for how many people, and compared with what. “Rota questions to the operations lead fell from about 12 a week to 2 over six weeks (Northgate’s own count)” is usable; “saved hours every week” is not. Keep it as one account’s result, not a general benchmark.
Keep a searchable evidence trail
For a longer case study, store each claim with its exact passage and where it came from. The evidence register guide shows how to set one up and check whether a passage really supports the wording before publication.