A seat at the table?

Valeria Maltoni posted yet another insightful commentary titled, "The People Formerly Known As Your Customers."

It got me thinking. What if marketers had a full-time position inside their company for a Customer? Or Customers?

Literally, hire a customer to represent their brethren, inside the walls of the corporation. Of course, the person chosen for this role would have to be quite amazing. But then, aren't there thousands of amazing brand-bloggers out there already?

I recall Legos employed some fanatic customer/fans to help redesign one line of their product offering several years ago. They flew these customers to HQ and said, "How would you do it?" Aside from Legos, what other brands have literally hired their customers?

I wonder if the role of corporate blogger, people like Richard At Dell, starts to get to this idea. Or, imagine a real-time "wall of conversation" inside your company that aggregates Google Alerts, Tweets and feeds related to your brand in the employee cafeteria. In essence, "Here's what they're saying about us, right now."

Would it work?