Playing the Home Advantage to keep things fresh at work

Last week I was running a Customer Closeness session with a dozen customers and 30 colleagues in the room. As one customer told a story about their recent poor experience, colleagues leant in enthralled at the set-up, pin-drop silence poised to hear what happened next, then were singularly appalled by the outcome (cue collective gasp). We could have been in Costa over lattes listening to a mate with a great yarn or on the sofa spellbound by a Traitors banishment in progress. We just happened to be in a corporate meeting room on the 27th floor. Stories of life being lived are captivating wherever you are. 

And that's the thing. People don't go to work and change their personality. We enjoy the same things at work as we do at home. We all know this yet despite much talk of authenticity and bringing yourself to work, I still feel we operate a kind of doublethink on this topic a lot of the time, particularly once we fire up Office 365 and let Microsoft Powerpoint get involved. 

Stories, like the one told by that customer, are a secret weapon of Customer Closeness but they're just the start. Because we tend to keep a lot of what makes life fun just for home, it's amazing how fresh approaches and content can feel when introduced into the work context. At The Customer Closeness Co, our purpose is to put the humanity back into business so we regularly repurpose tools and techniques created by the maestros of home entertainment to create customer insight impact. That's why if you've been in one of our sessions you may have found yourself donning a sleepmask or speed dating or staying right till the end to get bonus content (thanks Marvel). We call it 'playing the home advantage' and when combined with customers' voices, it makes for gripping stuff.