Get closer to your customers

First and foremost, Closer to the Customer is a way of being. I wish I could tell you something different or make the bar somewhat lower, but it's true. Once your organization begins to be in conversation with those you serve in a meaningful, ongoing and co-creative way, it just feels wrong when you're not. It becomes a way of being.

As a consulting process, Closer to the Customer begins with Discovery. Here, we gather together to gain collective clarity on the wicked questions that need to be explored. From Discovery, we head into Immersion where a number of techniques are applied to bring your organization into conversation with those you serve around the core question. This is pure divergent thinking where we collectively open up to the possibilities. Each Closer to the Customer engagement concludes with Harvest, where we harvest the patterns and insights from the Immersions and converge on wise action that is rooted in meaningful conversation. Each engagement is custom-designed, guided by the questions we uncover together and the immersions that will lead us into the conversations we need uncovering the insight we crave.

Closer to the Customer views marketing and PR simply as elements of the larger, ongoing conversation. Yet, something pretty magical begins to happen when your marketing and PR efforts are informed by the ongoing market conversation in which you're engaged... they actually begin to resonate. And we find that marketing executions take on an entirely different meaning, recognizing that sometimes a beer coaster in the bar is far more important than a radio spot... and a lost cat poster might just be the best way to market a high-speed ferry route.

You can find lots of case story examples and more information by checking out the Colour website.

Hugh MacLeod's Porous Membrane post explained why corporate blogging works. It's also the best way I've found to explain Closer to the Customer. So thanks, Hugh. Many of the same dynamics that Hugh described are at play in the illustration above:

First off, those people in the outer circle are your market in conversation. It is far more intricate than this could possibly show.

That green circle represents your organization in conversation with itself. Your culture, your worldview, your lexicon... 'the way things are done around here'. Separated from the outside conversation by a membrane of sorts - one that seems to grow naturally thicker the larger an organization becomes.

The traditional practice of marketing and PR would often take the view that the internal conversation could say whatever it liked... it really didn't matter. Marketing was all about taking whatever was going on inside - the products, services, etc. - and throwing a 30-second TV spot onto it. No need to get the product right, just get the ad right and everything would be just fine. PR was designed to lob messages over the membrane reflecting the same thinking - be whatever you like inside, just get the external 'key messages' right and all is well. The membrane wasn't permeable in either direction. In an attempt to correct this, some started promoting 'Brand Inside' as the holy grail. Get everyone singing from the same song sheet and police it to death, that's the answer! Yeah, that didn't work either.

As with a lot of things, it just isn't that easy anymore. Two things - enhanced focus on corporate governance and the Internet - have led us to a world where the market conversation can hear the internal conversation perfectly well. Try to hide if you like, it isn't going to work. Now, the membrane is naturally permeable in one direction - the organization might not really be able to see out, but the market can see in.

This is where Closer to the Customer plays. It is a process through which organizations engage in an ongoing co-creative conversation with their market that kicks holes in the membrane. It makes products and services better, it informs your organizational gut instinct, and it raises a rather large mirror up in front of the organization against which most decisions - the thousands that occur everyday - begin to be judged.