Carman Pirie's Blog

Being the first to serve

During a training session with the folks from Play (lookatmorestuff.com) they introduced a little technique they call Thief and Doctor. Essentially, it is a process of stealing insights from one industry and doctoring them to fit your current situation.

During some design work this week, I thought I'd give that a try in an attempt to ground our Closer to the Customer work coming up on Thursday. An earlier post made mention of a quote from life learning magazine.... here is my attempt at doctoring that wonderful insight to fit what this coming week holds:

Since it is impossible to anticipate the future needs of customers from the confines of your office, it is senseless to try.

The world is moving far too fast and preferences are shifting too quickly for that.

Instead, we must strive to love customers so much, and co-create with them so well, that we will be the first to serve them in the ways they seek.

Just curious

A fair bit of design work on the go today. What are the building blocks of thick insight through customer intimacy? Curiousity comes to mind..... could it be plain and simple curiousity about people and situations that is the key to authentically engaging in intimate conversation with customers?

Seems all too basic. Then again, most of this does I find.

Customer intimacy and my favorite pub

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that this is my first blog post via my blackberry. Cool stuff if it works.

So.... I'm sitting at my favorite bar in the world - the Henry House located at 1222 Barrington Street. Why is it my favorite? Well.... they know me here. Always nice. They know what I like to drink (the best bitter special). The atmosphere is perfect. And, to top it off, the people here are always interesting - a great blend of students, professionals, etc. So, despite the familiarity, there is always something new.

Customer intimacy at its best perhaps......

Co-creation and the responsibility to lead

Seems the Closer to the Customer work back at the agency is really ramping up. At its core, this work is seeking to answer a very basic question: What could business also be if it co-created itself with customers by getting closer to them? Thick insight through customer intimacy is what we’re working with.

I’ve been trying to square this concept with the idea of being market-driven vs customer-led as detailed by Slater and Narver (1998 I think...). They spoke of the customer-led enterprise as being a recipe for mediocrity. I tend to agree to some extent. As an agency customer, I was always disappointed when the agency didn’t lead. I always felt that part of their job was getting me out of a comfort zone to push my thinking beyond where it had been. I suppose we all want that to varying degrees – we want the companies that we choose to have a relationship with to help lead us in new directions, be it Apple with their iPhone or your bank with innovative financial services.

As we seek to co-create our businesses with customers, how do we continue to fulfill our responsibility to lead? I think it is all in the harvest. It is in the act of how we harvest the insights that are gathered by getting closer, use them to inform the creativity that sparks innovation, and then evolve our learning, intimate relationship with customers moving forward.

Typepad

Just redesigned the blog a bit to fix whatever gremlin attacked my last typepad design. All in all, I think I like it alright enough. Enjoy.

What the ?

Just to be clear... I have no idea what is going on with the design of the blog. Stay tuned - I'll dive into Typepad a bit and see what's what.