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Hi Reader,

Case studies are one of the hardest content formats to REALLY get right, and most of the advice out there is about writing them, not about everything that happens before you write a single word.

So I am starting Filed, a series for writers, in-house and freelance, who regularly interview real people about real work and then have to turn that into something worth reading.

Here's a sneek peek onto the 6-part series:Each edition will cover one part of the process, and each one will stand on its own.
​Part 1: The Work Before the Interview. Pre-work, desk research, and how to write a brief that gets reluctant SMEs to actually engage. The argument: most bad case study interviews are lost before the call starts.
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The Work Before the Work

The call is scheduled with the SME. All you have in front of you is a name, a designation, and a project title.

No scope document, no brief, no context beyond what you could piece together in the hour before the call.

You open your question doc and start from the top: "Can you give me a bit of background on your role and what the project involved?"

She sighs, but not rudely.

It's just the sigh of someone who has explained this 17 times to 17 different people and was hoping, this time, that she wouldn't have to.

What happens next is not her fault and not entirely yours either. The conditions were thin from the start.

But here is the difference between a writer who leaves that call with usable material and one who doesn't: the first one walked in understanding the industry/product/capability well enough to know what questions to ask as the conversation unfolded. They could hear a gap in the narrative and fill it in real time.

They did not need the SME to hand them a story. They knew enough to find one.

That is the work before the work.
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The Interview Starts Before the Call

Don't treat the case study interview as the starting point. By the time you click the Zoom/Teams/GMeet link, the quality of what you are about to get is largely determined by what you did in the 48 hours before it.

You will rarely get a detailed brief. Your SME will almost certainly be too busy to review pre-submitted questions, and if they do open that document at all, it will be a few minutes before the call starts.

That is just the reality of interviewing people who run operations for a living. Or even senior leadership.

Three things will make a difference:

1. Desk research
2. Pre-call message
3. Thinking prompts

Desk Research: Know Enough to Ask the Right Question

You're not expected to become an expert in your SME's industry/product. But you should know enough to be able to tell when something they say doesn't add up, or when they mention something offhand that is actually interesting for your case study.

Say you're writing a case study about a mortagage servicing company that reduced loan processing times, spend at least an hour to study the fundamentals (if you don't know).
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• How does mortgage servicing actually work in that geography?
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• What are the regulatory touchpoints, the handoff stages, and the points where delays typically accumulate?
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• What do standard processing timelines look like?
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• What does it cost a lender, in penalties, in borrower attrition, in competitive positioning, when those timelines slip?

Then move one layer up:

• How is technology being used to compress those timelines, and which vendors or approaches are winning in that space right now?
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• If competitors are winning RFPs for the same service, what are they leading with?

Only once you have that foundation does the company-level research become useful.

• Look at what they have said publicly about their priorities.
• Read any analyst coverage or awards they have cited.
• Check LinkedIn posts from their leadership.

Once you're armed with all this information, you should be able to spot a gap in the SME's answer and follow up to get to the details.

When an SME realizes that the writer across the call actually gets it, everything changes.

The answers get longer, the detail gets richer. They stop summarizing and start explaining.

You cannot manufacture that moment with a good question list. It comes from having done the reading.
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Also look up your subject specifically.

Their LinkedIn profile should tell you how long they have been in the role, what they were doing before, and sometimes what they are proud of.

Pre-call Message: Set Expectations, Not a Questionnaire

I have a contrary take here: DON'T send a list of questions to the SME or senior leader.

They don't have the time to read it, nor are they obligated to carve out time for your request.

Instead, send them a brief message explaining why their participation matters. Tell them you're building a record of work for them.
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Make it clear that you're not auditing their decisions or writing a performance review. You want to understand what they solved and how.

This sets a clear expectation that you will follow their lead and you don't need them to be formally prepared to answer assessment-style questions.

Maybe you could send an email like this:

This framing matters more than most writers realise, but not for the reason you might think.

Most SMEs have been through this before. They know what a case study is.

The problem is that they consider it one more item on an already overcrowded calendar, something to get through rather than contribute to.

Others show up genuinely wanting to help but overwhelmed by the open-endedness of it: they don't know what material is relevant, what level of detail you need, or whether the thing they are about to say is even what you are looking for.

Thinking Prompts: Ask them to Remember, not Rehearse

If your subject is the kind of person who will actually read something you send in advance, a good thinking prompt will unlock the door faster than 10 questions.

The prompts you send will depend on who you are speaking with and what industry you are writing for.

If you are speaking with a BPO operations manager:

"Think about a point in the engagement where the client was unhappy or at risk of escalating. What was the issue, and what did your team do in the first 48 hours?"

Most ops managers have lived through at least one near-miss with a client. That moment of pressure is where the real decisions happened, and real decisions make real stories.

"Think about something your team was doing manually six months into the engagement that you are no longer doing manually today. What changed, and who pushed for it?"

This anchors process improvement in a concrete before-and-after that an ops person can visualise immediately.

If you are speaking with a BPO product or solutioning person:

"Think back to the first conversation you had with this client. What were they asking for, and what did you understand the real problem to be? Were those two things the same?"

The gap between what the client said they wanted and what they actually needed is almost always where the most interesting part of the story lives.

If you are speaking with a SaaS or tech implementation lead:

"Think about the moment between signing the contract and going live where something threatened the timeline or the scope. What was it, and how did your team handle it?"

Implementation stories in SaaS are about the messy middle between purchase and value realization, which is exactly what a prospective buyer needs to understand.

"Think about the first time the client saw the product working in their environment. What was their reaction, and what did that tell you about what they had been dealing with before?"

This question surfaces the contrast between before and after without ever using the words "before and after," and it often produces the most quotable moment in the entire interview.

If you are speaking with a tech or SaaS customer success or account manager:

"Think about a moment when the client nearly churned or seriously considered not renewing. What was underneath that, and what changed?"

Customer success people are protective of client relationships and will sometimes deflect this question. But when they answer it, the response is almost always the emotional core of the case study.

Keep it to one or two prompts regardless of who you are speaking with. You want them reflective, not prepared.

What You Should Know Before You Get on the Call

By the time you join the call, you should be able to answer at least three of these five questions from your own research:

1) What kind of problem does this industry typically face in this area?

2) What is usually at stake when that problem goes unsolved?

3) What does your company claim to be good at, and does this project seem to support that?

4) What does the SME's role actually involve day to day?

5) Is there anything in the public record that creates an interesting tension with what you are about to hear?

If you cannot answer three of these, you are not ready. You have more reading to do.

The Payoff

When you walk into an interview having done this work, the conversation is different from the first question.

Your subject can tell you understand their world. The questions you ask in response to what they say are specific enough to prove it.

They open up, go deeper, and give you the detail that a cold interview rarely surfaces.

The sigh at the beginning of this piece happens when a writer shows up empty-handed and expects the SME to fill the silence.

It does not happen when you walk in having already done the reading, set the right expectations, and signalled that their time will not be wasted.

The case study interview is where the story gets told.

The work before the work is where you earn the right to hear it.
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That's it for today!
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All my best,
Satabdi

Next in Filed: Priming Non-Storytellers. Interview techniques for drawing out better stories from operations managers and business analysts who live in data, not narrative.