Our approach to building lean and impactful customer closeness programmes

1. C R E A T I N G A C U S T O M E R C L O S E N E S S
P R O G R A M M E T H A T D R I V E S C H A N G E
Customer
Connect

2. You rely on your customers, but they don’t
necessarily rely on you
You probably live and breathe your brand. You may well spend eight
hours or more a day thinking about it. But your customers don’t. To
connect with them effectively, it’s critical to understand the broader
context of their lives
People have a lot on their plates right now. Heading into a
recession, amid a cost-of-living crisis, they’re busy battling to
adapt
Needs are changing and sacrifices are being made to balance
the household books. If consumers decide to give up your
brand, you might feel it more than they do
Building genuine empathy with your customers and staying
relevant to their needs has never been so important for brand
survival

3. Closeness is about putting the customer
in the room, to drive better decision
making, and ultimately growth
87% of overperforming businesses take
the voice of the customer into account in
every business decision (compared to only
22% of underperforming businesses)*
* Driving Customer Centric Growth – Insights (ESOMAR)
Increasingly, it’s not enough just to land insight through
reports and presentations. Colleagues need to experience it.
When customer truths are absorbed in this way, they tend to
stay front of mind and translate into action
An effective customer closeness programme can help to:
- Embed a culture of customer-centricity throughout
the organisation
- Ensure decision making is informed by insight
- Drive audience and revenue growth

4. We’ve found that three things are necessary to avoid customer
closeness being put in the ‘nice to do’ column. Your programme
needs to…
And yet customer closeness activities can be difficult
to justify when budgets are under pressure
1
2
3
CHANGE MINDS
DRIVE ACTION
MAXIMISE ROI
At every stage stakeholders need to believe that
Customer Closeness is both necessary and
value for money

5. Customer Connect is our approach to
helping you build a lean and impactful
customer closeness programme

6. CHANGING MINDS means using creative
techniques to bring customer truths to life
WE START WITH CUSTOMER TRUTHS
Our programmes help you to fully leverage your existing insight
and align everyone to the organization’s customer goals, using
research and data as our starting point
WE WORK WITH YOU TO BUILD A COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
To challenge beliefs, you need to think like a marketeer:
understand your audience, identify the best ways to reach them,
and focus single-mindedly on your key messages
WE GO BIG ON HUMAN STORIES
To drive reappraisal, we connect stakeholders with emotive,
human stories linked with live business issues. Charities have
been getting this right for decades.
C A S E S T U D Y
Our client wanted to understand their ageing customer base. We conducted
thorough research, mined purchasing data, arranged face time with customers
and made clear, strong recommendations. They seemed to understand the
messages and yet action was oddly lacking.
In a follow up workshop, we asked stakeholders to wear glasses that simulate
eye problems and gloves that simulate arthritis while they chose, purchased
and ate their lunch.
That single hour was what was needed to disrupt their accepted ways of
thinking by allowing them to experience what their customers experience
every day. We could then use the data we already had to size the market and
together devise actions to implement.

7. C A S E S T U D Y
A grocery retailer was struggling to move forward on a number of crucial
business issues. The issues were complex, and a wealth of existing customer
research wasn’t providing the confidence for decision makers to act.
Together with the insight team we structured a programme around the 4 key
business issues. For each one we assigned a senior stakeholder sponsor,
invited a cross-functional working group (fusing skills and info from across
the organisation), and held a series of sessions combining an engaging
closeness activity with an action generation workshop.
At the end of the final sessions we had together agreed a way forward, as well
as a set of actions and names which would form the basis of an action log.
Dates were agreed for intermittent follow up meetings, making it easier for
the insight team to hold stakeholders to account and collect evidence of the
impact of their customer closeness programme.
DRIVING ACTION means building a
programme that informs decision-making
WE BELIEVE IN BEING A LITTLE BIT DISRUPTIVE
Creative methodologies which take people out of their day job are
important if closeness is to disrupt received assumptions and
prompt stakeholders to think and act differently
WE USE DATA TO PROVIDE THE CONFIDENCE TO ACT
In our experience human stories build motivation, but it is data
and insight which give stakeholders the permission to act,
removing the ‘it’s just one customer’ barrier
WE WORK WITH YOU TO TRANSLATE INSIGHT INTO ACTION
At Insight Sherpas we’ve all previously been client-side insight
leads, so we know how hard it can be to drive real change. That’s
why we build senior stakeholder sponsorship, cross-functional
working, and decision-making techniques into all our closeness
programmes

8. Stakeholder promises
C A S E S T U D Y
Our client knew that inaccurate views of their customers were deeply
entrenched throughout their organisation. They needed us to deliver
closeness activity at many levels of seniority but within a modest budget.
Insight Sherpas collaborated with the client team to develop a lean
programme, designed to deliver impact as cost-efficiently as possible.
The solution in a nutshell:
1) Online briefing sessions run by the Sherpas with key customer truths
produced and presented by the internal insight team
2) Stakeholder self-service retail safaris supported by a Sherpa-designed
toolkit
3) Sherpa run round-up workshops linking attendee experiences with
customer truths and linking through to clear actions
Customer closeness delivered at scale and within budget.
MAXIMISING ROI means focusing on
outcomes and cost efficiency
WE’RE LEAN AND EFFICIENT
We’re used to helping clients get the most out of limited budgets,
using creativity to deliver maximum impact without breaking the
bank
WE EMBRACE COLLABORATION
To drive efficiency and optimise return on investment, we
typically partner closely with client teams, leveraging internal
assets where appropriate
WE’LL HELP YOU BUILD EVIDENCE OF IMPACT
We’ll help you collect the evidence you need to show the rest of
the business just how much positive change your programme is
driving, and to demonstrate the impact on the bottom line

9. Because we want to respect your budget. Whether you have 5K or 150K to
play with, we want to focus that spend where it will have the biggest impact
Because the starting point will depend on how engaged, motivated & open
your stakeholders are. What barriers exist and how disruptive do you feel you
can be?
Because it will also depend on how much clarity you have regarding those key
messages. Are your customer truths already pinned down or will we need to
get insight mining?
Because we need to factor in how much time your team can devote to the
programme. Are you able to help host, moderate, prepare materials, crunch
research & insight or do you need us to tackle that while you concentrate on
the day job?
Our customer closeness solutions are always
bespoke, never off the peg

10. Creative methodologies to meet your needs
THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
What better way to understand the
role your brand plays (or doesn’t play)
in people’s lives than by having a
nosey in their kitchen cupboards,
wardrobes, bathrooms…
VAN RUMMAGE
Trade customers showed
stakeholders inside the back of their
van and chatted about shopping
habits and preferences over bacon
sandwiches.
QUESTION TIME
We turned the tables and had a group
of customers put challenging
questions to a panel of senior
stakeholders.
WAKE UP WITH A
CUSTOMER
Every morning for a month staff opened
their inboxes to find a one-minute film
clip of a customer which they had been
told (by the CEO) to watch before they
started their day.
CUSTOMER POINTS
Employees were awarded points each
time they completed a customer
closeness activity and points targets
were included in their annual
objectives.
SPEED DATING
We recruited target segment
customers to match the number of
stakeholders for an event where they
each had 5 minutes to get to know
each other before moving onto their
next date.
RETAIL SAFARI
From shopping together online at head
office to ordering fast food, there’s no
better way to find out how your
customers really do it.
COOK-ALONG
We hired a cooking school facility and
recruited customers to cook a typical
family meal at their station.
Stakeholders rotated around the
stations,chatting informally to
customers as they cooked..
IT TAKES TWO
We put customers and stakeholders
into pairs and set tasks for them to
complete together.Organising a
holiday on a set budget, family meal
planning for the week ahead…
DRAGON’S DEN
A co-creationsession where the
project team presented a series of
ideas to customers who had to decide
on whether to ‘invest’. The customers
then helped the team fine tune their
ideas.
TURN UP OR TUNE IN
Wannabe attendees were dotted
around the country, so we broadcast
focus groups to a head office audience
on a giant screen and allowed others
to dial in remotely (150+ in total).
8 OUT OF 10 CATS
We set up an online quiz for
employees at all levels to complete.
Questionswere set and answers given
by customers in brief video clips.

11. We’d love to hear from you
hello@insightsherpas.com
www.insightsherpas.com
Done right, closeness is not fluffy, it’s not just a chance to have fun.
It should be challenging and thought provoking for stakeholders. It
should drive better decisions at all levels of an organisation and
ultimately, promote growth. Businesses who do it well will have a
clear commercial advantage over those who don’t.