Assignment:
Assume you are interviewing an Acumatica customer who has agreed to participate in our customer advocacy program. The end goal is to synthesize and deliver a compelling written success story. What questions would you pose to said customer? Assume it is a 30 min – 40 min interview. Logically order and provide your questions in a Word document.
 

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Assumptions:
Without knowing everything about Acumatica’s business goals as it relates to customer success stories, I have made the following assumptions:
 

1. The customer has been using the Acumatica ERP for some time with trackable ROI.

2. Prior to the interview, I would do my due diligence. Given the 30-40 minute time limit, I like to come into an interview with a high level of understanding of the customer’s business and industry so they don’t need to spend a lot of time explaining the basics and we can get to the meat of the interview.
   Interview prep includes:

   • Interviewee background: Talk to my co-workers who interact with the interviewee on a regular basis, connect on LinkedIn.

   • Company research: Review website, current press, news, online reviews, etc.

   • Customer account review: Speak with the customer account manager to understand account history with Acumatica, status check on open support and/or professional services tickets/projects, and latest marketing outreach efforts.

   • Industry-specific trends: Understand what’s the hot news or challenges in their specific industry.

3. Pre-interview communications: I’d be in touch with the interviewee to set expectations of time and share basic questions so they can start thinking of answers in advance and feel at ease going into the interview.

4. Product messaging: I’d clearly understand our product messaging and craft the conversation to highlight our key messaging.

5. End product: The final outcome is a written narrative including pull quotes, photos, and video (if possible) with a sidebar with quick-read bullets of Challenges, Solutions and Outcomes
   
    

Interview questions:

Set the Scene: Start with the easy conversation, respect their time, ask a couple softballs to get the conversation going…interviewee’s role, how long with the company, how’d they get there, find a way to create a personal connection.
 

Illustrate the Challenge:

1. What problems were you having before Acumatica? What systems were you using and/or were you having to cobble data together with multiple sources and spreadsheets to get the information you needed?

2. How did that challenge your day-to-day work?

3. What did that do to your team’s time and resources?

4. How did those limitations affect other areas of the business? What were some of the larger company-wide issues you had with your old solution? How were you losing money or time?
    

Arriving at the Solution:

1. How many ERPs did you consider before choosing Acumatica? (Ideally, name the competitors)

2. How did you create your short list?

3. What were some of the reasons you chose Acumatica? (Product capabilities, Price, Support)

4. What combination of modules do you use? (This may be industry specific or specific to the size of the business—demonstrate scalability)

5. What are some of your most used or favorite go-to reports and dashboards?
    

Celebrating Outcomes:

1. When did you first feel like you were having success with your decision to choose Acumatica?

2. What have been some of the biggest wins you’ve had so far? (This would require some additional follow up depending on how the solutions tie to their business goals…was their data finally centralized, did they finally have  seamless integrations with other systems, did they create automated workflows that save time, did they move deadstock to improve their inventory risk, did they improve customer service?)

3. How has it impacted your day-to-day?

4. Have you had any pleasant surprises you didn’t expect?

5. I know we can’t always talk about specific revenue dollars when looking at ROI in a story, but can you quantify the amount of time your team saved with the new solution (this could also be % of inventory reduction, speed in support ticket resolution or other quantifiable statistics).
    

Big Finish:

1. Looking to the future, how do you see Acumatica helping you grow your business?
    

Calls to Action:

1. To learn more about Acumatica, book a demo.

2. Link to relevant webinar.

3. Links to other case studies.