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Treacy and Wiersema defined customer intimacy as “segmenting and targeting markets precisely and then tailoring offerings to match exactly the demands of those niches.”43 Such companies have intimate knowledge of their customers' needs and use that knowledge to flexibly meet those needs. Importantly, such companies focus on relationships and lifetime customer value rather than individual transactions, and thus often segment their customers to provide the best service to their most profitable customers.

Treacy and Wiersema highlighted The Home Depot, Nordstrom, and Four Seasons as exemplifying customer intimacy. Home Depot will provide a personal consultant – a sales clerk wearing an orange apron – for hours, even for the purchase of a 15-cent screw, helping to recommend wood or metal, aluminum or steel, galvanized or not, and so on.

Or consider Nordstrom's legendary return policy: you can return anything. At any time. For any reason. With or without a receipt. Perhaps even if you bought the item somewhere else: one urban legend concerning Nordstrom is that a customer successfully returned tires there, even though Nordstrom doesn't sell tires.44 Whether the story is true or not doesn't really matter; the legend underscores the brand's value proposition around customer service.

Customer-intimate companies, according to Treacy and Wiersema, are not focused on meeting the needs of the “market,” but rather of individual customers. They provide the best customer value, based on best meeting the needs of each customer through greater in-depth knowledge of that customer's needs. Such an approach is clear for, say, a custom home builder or architect, who sits down with the family to better understand their lifestyle and preferences. Does the family want the family room open to the kitchen, encouraging togetherness? Or would Mom or Dad prefer to cook in peace while the kids play video games? A military contractor might use the same approach, better understanding the Army's objective for a new weapons system before designing it or bidding on it. But customer intimacy is not restricted to high-value goods, as the Home Depot example shows.