Tips For Customer Intimacy

Picked up the term “customer intimacy” recently and have been reflecting on what it means. Intimacy is not rapport. You can build rapport by talking for 2 minutes about the customer’s wallpaper. But that doesn’t mean they open up about what matters.

I see customer intimacy as being able to have the kind of conversation that you can only have when someone trusts you. Not only do they trust you, but their trust encourages them to talk to you, to vent what they’re really thinking and to be receptive to counsel.

Beyond trust, intimacy requires a shared context. One might be thinking “In order to tell you want’s really bothering me, I have to fill you in on a situation with a coworker first, and what I’ve thought about over the last month, and the book I read, and well, that’s just too much work, so I’d rather not talk about it at all.” People have to talk around an issue enough to naturally chip away at the barrier. Once there is enough shared context, and the barrier to investing oneself is lower, people are more likely to start talking about what that’s really on their mind.

Tips for intimacy:

• Being receptive. The conversation doesn’t have to unfold as planned. It’s better if it doesn’t. You don’t want to come across as “on script”.
• Preparing well but keeping it under the hood. “Let’s start with this presentation” says “I’m not here to listen”.
• Asking open ended questions, unpacking vague words (e.g., “You said it’s not easy. What do you mean by easy? Not easy how?”)
• Acknowledging their point of view so they feel heard (“Wait, I really want to understand this. It sounds like you blah” “Yes, exactly”)
• Being vulnerable, asking at least one question just a tad out of your comfort zone (“You took that change very personally. Why?”, “Was that thing you did necessary? Why didn’t you just [alternative]?”)
• Letting others be vulnerable e.g., not filling every silence, letting people figure out what they want to say by hearing themselves say it out loud

Do you remember a moment in a professional conversation when something flipped, and you realized “now they are actually being honest with me”? What caused that?

#conversation #empathy #customerresearch #communicationskills #sales