Everyone boasts about being "customer-centric." However, all too frequently, this entails taking better aim with tailored campaigns. Customers nowadays are more than just customers; they are also creators, creating material and ideas — and facing obstacles — with you. Marketing creativity necessitates early collaboration with customers to weave their experiences into your attempts to broaden your company's reach five nights at freddy's.

For example, Intuit's marketing staff spends time in the homes and workplaces of self-employed people to immerse themselves in the customer's reality. They discovered a problem with tracking car gas mileage through their research. Based on these marketing insights, Intuit developed a new function within its app that automatically tracks mileage and simplifies year-end tax planning by combining location data, Google maps, and the user's schedule.

Brocade, a provider of data and network solutions, developed a "customer first" initiative by identifying their top 200 clients, who account for 80% of their sales. They worked with these consumers to identify areas of strength and weakness and to understand their sources of happiness. Brocade then collaborated with sales teams to develop and distribute tailored packages detailing what Brocade heard was working or not working, and what they planned to do about it. Brocade later followed up with these customers to report on progress toward these goals. What were the outcomes? Within 18 months, Brocade's Net Promoter Score increased from 50 (already a best-in-class score) to 62 (one of the highest B2B scores on record).