Just take the stark difference between these two data points in recent CMO Council research as an example: 73% of senior executives believe customer centricity is crucial to success. But only 14% believe it’s a hallmark of their brand.
Customer Salience is a direct response to this challenge. The theory suggests that the more frequently business leaders think about customers in the decision-making process, the better the outcomes will be for those informed decisions.
And it all starts with insight.
By translating customer insights into customer awareness, that data has a positive influence on stakeholder behaviour, and ultimately delivers transformative value by affecting company culture at a macro scale. Of course, there are many ways to achieve this – from focussing on connected Voice of the Customer programmes to narrowing in on curiosity, for example – but even after so many successful public cases of customer-centric decision making, the customer gap challenge remains prevalent across all industries and requires a phenomenal effort from all effected to destabilise and close this detrimental, persistent roadblock to success.
The 2024 Customer Salience Summit hosted by FlexMR brought these different perspectives together to inspire and connect 200+ marketers and researchers. Here are a selection of the top, actionable takeaways our from speakers if you want to achieve Customer Salience:
Paul Hudson, CEO of FlexMR
“We need to re-focus our roles on building a culture of customer, ensuring decision-makers are connected (in many ways) with the customer and their needs. Our aim must to be to increase their likelihood to include customer thinking and data into their decisions.
Also, there is a real gap between the actions we take in Customer Insight and Marketing and the actions that other teams take in building an organisations Culture. That gap risks leaving the customer ‘on the sidelines’ when it comes to our day-to-day decisions. Closing that gap is where the thirst for knowledge lies.”
Susannah Spencer, Insight Solutions Lead at KPMG Nunwood
"If you want your customer programme to deliver business impact, start by designing it around your organisation’s goals and desired outcomes, not research metrics, KPIs, or even the tech.
Secondly, AI is going to fundamentally change the way insight is generated and visualised bringing massive efficiencies and increased speed to insight, but only if the right data structures and processes are in place from the outset. This is the foundation of effective AI deployment."
Liz Lamb, Head of Insight and Data at cardfactory
"Brutally prioritise, and cut your cloth according to what you’re working with. Know the key drivers of your organisation and market’s performance, then leverage that knowledge in order to turn the dial. Also, understand your insight-cycle. Do you how well you’re embedded into strategic planning, and key meetings, or how well you gain traction, i.e. bring insight to life, talk with finance, input into comms plans? And finally, consider formalising how you report on impact itself."
Iain Stanfield, Consumer Insights at Specsavers
“Understand the decision-making process within your organisation (Who, How, Where and When) so that you can try to influence the key decisions that are being made – and ensure you keep track of any changes to that.
Understand how your key stakeholders operate and how they like to receive information so that you can surface insights in the right way for them to act upon.”
Olubunmi Stüber, Head of Global Consumer Insights at M&G plc.
“Give stakeholders first-hand experience of receiving feedback from customers/clients wherever possible as they are more likely to act on what they have heard.
It is simple when it comes to de-briefing. All the usual detail can be in a presentation for prosperity (so if you want to look back on what you did and what all the findings were). However, have one slide that details the top things to action. This also makes it easy to go back and review the actions taken a few months down the line.”
Debra Walmsley, Insight Management Academy
“Link, as far as possible, your insight recommendations/customer outcomes to commercial outcomes e.g ‘doing X should increase NPS by Y resulting in Z additional revenue'.
Start with the business strategy and prioritise the teams time according to the big business challenges/questions that Insight can help inform in order to pivot more towards being a strategic function”
Lucy Davidson, Founder and CEO of Keen as Mustard
“Firstly, don’t be boring! Data and Insight teams are guardians of the most interesting and exciting content a company has – so we must use creative ways to spread fame. In my session I focused on how Hollywood communicates using campaigns – they would never launch a movie without a communication budget. How does your insights budget stack up against that?
Secondly, stop relying on PowerPoint as the only way to get your message across – our work has proven that the right content format (newsletters, infographics, interviews, videos and more) are much more effective than just emailing a PowerPoint.”
Charlotte Vicary, Founding Director of the Customer Closeness Company
“Firstly, Get purposeful about being customer curious – define how it will make you a better professional and what you're going to focus on. Then, make it a habit – small doses of curiosity 10-15 minutes at a time; note valuable thoughts and share, share, share. Lastly, notice when you use it – What was the value? How did it make you feel?”
Hannah Fisher, Marketing Director (Cruises) at Saga
“Firstly, as marketeers, try to use customer insight to continually improve. Secondly, marketeers must deliver a customer-first approach and be the customer champion. Thirdly, normalise using insight and build it into your day today through panels and surveys, rather than the big project approach. Fourth, identify areas where using insight can improve your outputs for your brand and for your customer – win/win. Lastly, measure the progress and go back and check if it’s worked, set up your KPIs to track progress.”
Danny Russell, Non-Executive Director at FlexMR
“We all need to understand that the ‘say-do’ gap is alive and well within companies – 73% of executives believe customer centricity is crucial to their success; but only 14% believe their company is delivery on that. Customer Salience is about closing that HUGE gap.
In the same way as Ritson reminds us that consumers don’t care about your brand, we should be fully aware that not everyone amongst our stakeholders cares about customers – so what are you doing to ensure that they do? Not simply by paying lip service to it or repeating the mantra, but actually taking action to change the state of affairs.
For many insight teams, the project ends at the debrief; but for stakeholders, this is when the project actually starts – so we need to ask how much effort and budget is allocated to follow through post debrief? And how much effort and budgets are spent communicating insights better as Lucy presented in her ‘make your insights famous’ session?”
More Customer Salience Insights
There is no doubt that there is immense value to be gained from learning about others’ experiences. Just as necessity is the mother of all invention, close connection to likeminded individuals with a diverse array of experience is the key to wider innovation. Even though every situation is unique, and thus will require a personalised solution, learning from similar events experienced by colleagues provides valuable starting and solutions not thought of before – even if these solutions are a case of what not to do, the failures are just as valuable as successes if not more.
Customer Salience is a versatile strategy, able to be moulded and adapted to suit everyone’s needs, which is exactly what the summit displayed through the insights showcased in the variety of speakers, case studies and interactive workshops.
For those who didn’t manage to attend the Summit, there is still a chance to catch the content on-demand through the official recording of the Customer Salience Summit 2024. Additionally, after the success of the summit, FlexMR have announced that they will be hosting a second Customer Salience Summit in 2025 – this second summit promises to be even bigger, with a series of new speakers, new case studies and new opportunities to learn from insight and business professionals who have successfully achieved Customer Salience.
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