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Three months before Highline (our annual customer event, this year in Jackson Hole), our team made a decision that’s saving me from a scramble right now: they started planning our customer story capture before a single ticket was booked.
Amid the pre-event chaos (bless you, event marketing folks, I see you), story capture is usually an afterthought. Grab someone in the hallway, hope they say something usable on camera, and call it a day. 👍
Yeah, that’s more of a “coin flip” than a “strategy”.
If you want real stories (not just soundbites), the work should start months out. So I wanted to share our team’s playbook on how to capture these customer stories without cannibalizing the event experience.
Know before you go
We decided, first and foremost, how we’d be capturing customer stories. We knew we didn’t want a traditional sit-down-on-a-set testimonial situation. We wanted these to feel more like thought leadership conversations than testimonial grabs. And, we wanted to make sure that these customers weren’t pulled away from the experience that we were creating at Highline (more on that below). So, we decided on 4 main video capture points that felt naturally woven into the Highline experience:
- All of our sessions and programming take place at the top of Snow King Mountain, which requires everybody to take a 15 minute gondola ride. 15 minutes in an enclosed space with panoramic views? Sold! We asked 8 customers to film quick interviews with us while they ride.
- We’ve got a handful of banner customers attending Highline who have important use cases, stories, and strategic partnerships we really want to dig into. So we chose 3 customers to take out to a VIP lunch, then hang out in Jackson while our film crew follows us around. Kinda like our Long Game interviews, but a bit shorter. We wanted to keep it fun, casual, value-additive, and unique.
- 4 customers are presenting short use cases at our customer-only session. We’ve primed our video crew, and they’ll capture those live to turn into customer story content post-event.
- Lastly, what’s an event without a few off-the-cuff questions? So we’ll be pulling a few customers aside throughout for a few man-on-the-street style interviews.
4 capture points that are woven into the experience with each serving a distinct purpose after the event.
Mine before you meet
Before reaching out to a single customer, I went to our CSMs first. I wanted the wins and moments of impact worth drawing out, plus any language they’d already heard the customer use about the value. That context shapes every conversation that follows.
I also pulled our recent customer census survey data to pulse check their recent feedback as well as see who’s already using our strategic partners in their tech stack. That way, I could go into prep calls with relevant questions instead of a generic “how are you using UserEvidence.”
Prep the ask, don’t cold-open it
Every long-form interview ask started with a warm intro from the CSM who had an established personal relationship. From there, all that groundwork above turned into a well-informed email: here are the 3-5 things I’m hoping to dig into, would love your thoughts. The goal is no one getting surprised on camera.
This matters even more with customers in security or compliance-heavy roles where there are things they simply can’t touch on. A heads-up is what turns a guarded answer into a real one.
Protect the experience
My event crew is tired of hearing about this one from me. But it’s the hill I’ll always die on.
Look, customers didn’t sign up to be pulled into interviews. They signed up to take full part of the event (in our case, things like white water rafting and wildlife safaris). So before we locked anyone in, we checked what they’d actually opted into.
If someone was more interested in an activity over an interview, fine by me, and no guilt trip here. And for the people who did say yes to camera time, we tried to make it feel like a mutual exchange rather than an extraction. They get exclusive exec facetime, an additional VIP lunch, things that say thank you for the extra ask.
What we’re walking away with:
- 8 quick, casual interviews
- 3 longer-form customer conversations
- 4 use-case videos
- A handful of unscripted soundbites we’ll grab just by asking good questions over lunch
15+ stories, and none of it will feel accidental when it shows up in your feed later this year.
I’d tell any CMA person planning something similar that the event is where the work you already did finally gets to show up on camera.
More on how these stories get used once we’re back from Jackson Hole.
— Brayden
