Case study approval process flowchart (customer consent to sales enablement)
Case study approval process flowchart template: customer selection and consent, interview, draft, internal review, customer approval with decline and expiry paths, quote verification, publishing and sales enablement.
What the case study approval process flowchart (customer consent to sales enablement) process is
A customer case study is unusual among marketing content because the person who must approve it does not work for you. Your legal team can pass the draft and your marketer can love it, and the customer's own legal or communications team can still change it, delay it or say no. The chart therefore places the Customer (external) lane in the middle of the process and treats their answer as the decisive one, with no assumption that a story will be told.
Three features distinguish this process. First, consent is gathered before work starts: 'Is the customer a good candidate and free to be named?' checks the contract and relationship, and 'Does the customer agree to take part?' and the release step come before the interview. Second, the customer's decision, 'Does the customer approve the draft?', has three outcomes: Approved, Edits requested, which loops back to a resend, and Declined, which goes to an exception path that stops the work and removes assets. Third, approval is not permanent: 'Is the approval still valid at publish time?' sends an expired approval to a re-approval request. For the internal side of review, see /templates/content-approval-process; for contract terms that govern naming a customer, see /templates/contract-approval-process.
The chart is a starting point, not legal advice. Whether a contract allows you to name a customer, how long an approval lasts, and how to handle a withdrawal after publication depend on the agreement and on the law that applies, so check your jurisdiction and counsel. Any validity window shown is a placeholder. The final steps hand sellers only the approved quotes and numbers, with rules for where the story may and may not be used.
What this flowchart covers
In this template
- Five swimlanes (Customer marketing, Customer success, Customer (external), Legal and Sales enablement) across five phases: select and consent, interview and draft, internal review, customer approval, and publish and enable
- Consent first: "Is the customer a good candidate and free to be named?" and "Does the customer agree to take part?" both have a no exit to "Story stopped and reason recorded"
- Internal review by customer success and legal, with "Do internal reviewers require changes?" looping the draft back before the customer sees it
- Customer approval, where "Does the customer approve the draft?" has three outcomes and a decline leads to "Stop: log the decline or withdrawal and remove draft assets"
- Quote and figure verification, then "Is the approval still valid at publish time?" with an expiry path to "Request re-approval of the unchanged or updated text"
- Publication and a sales briefing that ends in "Story live and in the sales kit"
When to use this template
- Customers approve a story and then their legal team rewrites it, and your team has no record of what was agreed
- A published case study is challenged and you cannot show who approved which version and when
- Sales uses quotes or numbers that were never approved, or a story is used after the customer asked for it to be removed
- Case studies stall for weeks in the customer's review and nobody owns the follow-up or the deadline
- You want a consistent process across customer marketing, customer success and legal for every story
How it works
Rename the lanes to your teams
Replace Customer marketing, Customer success, Customer (external), Legal and Sales enablement with your own. Keep the Customer (external) lane even if you cannot assign a person to it, because it makes the dependency visible.
Write the candidate checks
List what makes a customer eligible: no open escalation, no renewal in negotiation, no contract restriction on naming. Use the list to answer the first decision.
Agree the release
Work with counsel on what the customer signs to take part, what rights it grants, and what happens if they withdraw. The chart shows the step but does not provide the wording.
Set the customer's response window
Choose a realistic response date and a reminder point. Customers often route the draft through their own legal and communications teams, so account for that.
Define quote and figure verification
Say who compares the final text with the approved version and with the customer's sources, and what happens if a number cannot be sourced.
Set the approval's validity
Choose a validity window and the events that void it, such as a rebrand, a contract change or a leadership change. Treat any number in the chart as a placeholder.
Document withdrawal and takedown
Decide who removes a story from the website, decks, ads and the sales kit when a customer withdraws, and how quickly. Add the step to your own process map.
Frequently asked questions
What is a case study approval process?
It is the sequence of steps for getting a customer story approved by both your company and the customer. It covers choosing and asking the customer, getting consent, interviewing, drafting, internal review, sending the text to the customer, verifying quotes and figures, publishing and briefing sales. The distinguishing part is that the customer has final say and can decline or withdraw.
What if the customer declines or does not reply?
A decline is a normal outcome and the chart sends it to 'Stop: log the decline or withdrawal and remove draft assets'. For no reply, the chart sends the draft with a response date; what you do after the date, such as a reminder or closing the request, is a policy for you to add. Silence should never be treated as approval.
Does a customer's approval expire?
The chart assumes it can. Before publishing it asks 'Is the approval still valid at publish time?' and sends an expired approval to a re-approval request. The window and the events that void approval are placeholders to agree with your counsel and, where relevant, the contract.
How does this differ from the content approval process?
The content approval process, see /templates/content-approval-process, is an internal flow in which the content owner decides. In a case study the decisive approver is the customer, so this chart adds consent before work begins, a decline and withdrawal exit, and an expiry and re-approval path. Check your jurisdiction and counsel before relying on any rule.