Customers are increasingly skeptical of vendor claims.

While sales pitches promise the world, the reality often falls short:

• Experiences become cookie-cutter.
• Nobody follows up to make sure you're set up.
• You have no content to help you get started fast.
• You don't get connected to other customers like you.
• Every single thing you need help with is charged separately.

Customer Success Managers (CSMs) face the critical task of transforming these initial promises into genuine results. And ultimately gain the customer's trust.

How?

1. By helping customers unlock results by implementing the right strategy.
2. By telling compelling stories of how your product delivers value. 

But a ton of CSMs struggle to use data to tell stories that drive action (if that's your team, you might enjoy this webinar on how to enable GTM teams to use data) 

If you want to build trust with your customers, this edition of the newsletter is for you. I will share some best practices and killer resources that will help you level up your data storytelling game. 

The Need For Data-Driven Storytelling

Most CS teams I talk to see data presentation as simply showing metrics going up and to the right and highlighting positive results.

Spoiler Alert: It's so much more!

Customer journeys aren't perfect. They're messy, complex, and full of surprises. So when you present this "perfect" story, it feels fake and complacent (want to learn how to map one?). 

Want to build real trust with customers? 

You'll need to lean into radical honesty (and really good data).

• True insights around performance gap
• Benchmarks to understand where things can be done better
• Trends that other customers are leveraging and seeing success with

If you or your team struggles with this data piece, I have two resource recommendations for you.

1. This on-demand webinar on How to Use Data to Build Customer Trust can help you nail the data you need in each stage of the customer journey. 
2. This e-book on How to Use Data to Build Customer Trust with some incredible tips from CX leaders in companies like Asana, Autodesk, Greenhouse and Okta shared their perspectives there. 

But you can't just put this info in front of the customers without a story.

So let's talk about how to talk about how to build a great story.

The 5 Pillars of Great Storytelling

A strategic data storytelling approach builds trust by connecting your customers' goals to their actual journey through data. 

Think about documentary filmmaking.

The facts and footage are crucial. But it's the narrative arc, emotional connection, and clear cause-and-effect that make the story memorable.

You want your stories to connect emotionally and not just logically.

How?

When building your data storytelling approach, focus on these five elements:

1. Context Matters: Start with their goals. Not your metrics.
2. Map the Journey: Show how every action connects to results.
3. Real-World Impact: Transform numbers into meaningful stories.
4. Challenges & Opportunities: Challenges build credibility. Own them.
5. Future Vision: Don't just report the past. Illuminate the path forward. 

If you need an idea of how this fits on a deck, here's a free deck template from Matik you should check out. There's some gold in there. 

But there's a problem with this highly personalised approach...

How do you scale this to hundreds of customers?

Scaling Data-Driven Storytelling

Many CS teams are moving toward automated reporting dashboards.

But with the move to automation, we have to be careful not to lose the human touch.

We can't just send a dashboard to a customer and think the job of communicating value and addressing gaps and opportunities is done.

As we just discussed, narratives are really important. 

Especially when you think about building trust with senior stakeholders.

If you want to scale this approach, the goal should be to:

1. Make gathering data easy and fast for CSMs (nobody wants to spend 47 minutes trying to find the right pieces of information...)
2. Surfacing insights for CSMs to interpret (that's where GenAI can be so powerful)
3. Empowering the CSM (or the reader) with benchmarks that can contextualise the results.

Ultimately you want to scale not just the creation of data, you want to scale the entire content creation piece.

And you're going to need some tech to help you, this is a great resource on the power of scaling data-driven content that can help you articulate this to your business so you can secure the right resources to execute on this.

The future of this stuff is exciting!

I can see a world where data mixes with conversation intelligence, and you could add quotes and proof points easily into presentations, emails, pitches etc. Making them feel unique and authentic everytime. 

But you have to start somewhere. 

Here's how data storytelling often matures:

1. Basic Metrics → Monthly reports with key numbers
2. Enhanced Visuals → Better charts and graphs
3. Context Addition → Industry benchmarks and goals
4. Narrative Design → Story arc and journey mapping
5. Strategic Insights → Predictive trends and recommendations

TL;DR

Want to build trust with customers? Start crafting data-driven narratives that connect metrics to your customer's success.

Two key things to remember:

5 pillars of great data stories:

1. Context 
2. Journey
3. Real-World Impact
4. Challenges & Opportunities
5. Future Vision

Build your approach in stages:

• Start with clean, accurate data presentation
• Add context and customer-specific benchmarks
• Develop clear narrative structures
• Include voice-of-customer and human elements
• Graduate to predictive insights and recommendations

Worth the investment? My experience says yes!

See you next Friday!

Want 93% retention and a $50M upsell pipeline? 

This episode is for you!

Catch the latest episode of the podcast, featuring SVP of CS Lara Barnes.