“Customer intimacy” is not just another term for excellent customer service. So, what is it? At Consona Corporation, it is both one of our four core values and one of the three pillars of our company business strategy. We follow the principles of customer intimacy defined by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in their excellent book “The Discipline of Market Leaders.” The other two disciplines the book defines as strategy choices (of which they claim you should only pick one) are product leadership and operational excellence. According to Treacy and Wiersema, all three disciplines require good customer service; however, the focus of this week’s blog is on how customer intimacy goes beyond good service.

Customer intimate companies focus on providing the best total solution for their customers, including ALL the services and support they need to achieve the optimum value from the product. “Best total solution” does not mean best product, it means best result. Of the ten companies that Consona has acquired, how many were truly customer centric at a customer intimate level? Zero. All of these companies said their customers were important, so what was keeping them from being customer intimate companies?

Take a guess at the answer to the following question:

The most important factor by far in being a successful customer intimate company is:

a) Great products.
b) Great professional services.
c) Great customer support.
d) Great customers.

Think that I threw (d) in for amusement? Think again, because that’s the answer! It’s another way of saying that the key to success is to thoroughly define your target market and to select only customers in that target market. If you are diligent about providing an excellent match between your target market and your solution, and focus on adding customers that value the differentiated aspects of your solution, you’ll have great customers. It sounds simple, but it’s hard to do. Try to imagine walking away from a sale. It sounds ludicrous. Like you’re throwing away money! But it’s not. In fact, you may lose money in the long run on customers that are not a fit for your solution.

Some companies value low prices; others value leading edge products; and still others value the best total solution including product, services and support. To be a customer intimate company, you need to ensure that you focus on providing what the companies that value the best total solution are looking for, and also focus on only those types of companies.