I was quite excited to come across Casey Hibbard and her Compelling Cases approach to telling customer stories — as well as her excellent book, Stories That Sell, and am delighted to bring you this Q&A with her, which will run in five parts this week:

Bio: The following is from one of Casey’s Web sites:

Casey Hibbard, founder and president of Compelling Cases, Inc., has helped dozens of companies create more than 450 customer stories over the past decade. She has produced and managed success stories for companies such as Macrovision, Jobfox, USA.NET, IHS, and Vocus. Casey is featured in numerous books, articles, and teleclasses. She consults with organizations one-on-one and conducts online customer-story classes. She is also author of Stories that Sell and the blog of the same name.

Q: In the introduction of your amazingly comprehensive and information-rich book, Stories That Sell, you note: “If it seems as though you’re seeing more customer stories than ever, you are.” To what do you attribute the growth in customer stories?

A: The use of customer stories has grown considerably in the past 10 years. Technology companies are the original pioneers of customer stories because they were extra compelled to educate and validate potential customers about their complex and expensive products.

Now that has spread to all types of organizations for a few reasons: We’ve suffered from a credibility crisis. Surveys show that the public’s trust in companies is at its lowest ever. Along with that, trusted sources information have changed as well. A company is now way down on the list of trusted sources compared to 10 years ago. Now “strangers with experience” is a close second behind someone a person already knows. You see that in how much we rely on Amazon and eBay reviews and feedback.

We also no longer do business face-to-face as much. It’s much easier to establish trust and feel confidence in what you’re buying if you can talk face-to-face with another human being.

Finally, there’s more of a need to validate purchases. Companies have never been so pressed to make decisions that will bring a return on investment.

In the absence of trust and in-person connections, customer success stories and case studies help foster credibility and validate products and services. A potential customer can read a true account of another organization just like them that solved a problem successfully — increasing their confidence. If the story has measurable results, then it also provides the validation that buyers need.