With the recent launch of FlexMR's Customer Salience Toolkit, and the success of the AURA masterclass on Customer Salience presented by Danny Russel, FlexMR's Non-Executive Advisor, Research Live published an article written by FlexMR's Paul Hudson, introducing the concept in detail.

The article, entitled Unlocking the Power of Customer Driven Decisions, explores in-depth exactly what the issue is with current decision-making processes in many stakeholder organisations using data backed by studies from accredited organisations such as McKinsey and Gartner, and then introduces customer salience as the solution for successful decision-making.

Introducing Customer Salience

Paul remarks that, as a sector, we are ideally placed to capitalise on this shift to customer centricity and yet the broad indication – and risk – is that we are not taking that opportunity. So, how do we address that and put ourselves at the centre of customer-centred decision making?

Our role should be central to improving the way decisions get made in stakeholder organisations. It should not be a role sidelined to solely understanding consumer actions and decisions, but strategically placed at the centre of driving informed decision making. The opportunity is threefold:

• To own a strategically important aspect of organisational culture
• To affect many small decisions rather just a few large ones
• To have a greater financial and business impact

To aid this shift, FlexMR have been working with industry experts to develop a simple framework for building Customer Salience. By following these 4Cs, researchers can help organisations inform every decision, injecting the customer into every decision.

Challenge

We need to break through our existing patterns of thinking and re-consider the role we play in organisations. We should challenge rituals and processes, which to this point have been instrumental to us, but in this new role might hold us back. We must ask questions that, until now, have seemed unquestionable.

Create

Following our review of how we work, we need to design-in a new strategy and tactics for delivering programmes of Customer Salience. We must ‘make decisions about decision making’, actively deciding how we create new processes that help put us – and the customer – at the table of very decision.

Connect

To design-in Customer Saliency requires us to ensure teams have easy connection and access to customer understanding, closing the customer gap, increasing the number of informed decisions. A key metric of success is the proportion of decisions that are informed with customer data and insight. 

Collaborate

Throughout, we must build internal bridges and tools that contribute to the ongoing culture of customer insight, collaborating at all levels. It is no longer our role to report and impact, but ours to collaborate and guide, following through the whole lifecycle of a decision to ensure that informed decisions are taken.

Find out more about Customer Salience and the 4C's now in the full article on Research Live. 

About Research Live

Research Live is the world's leading source of industry news, opinion, special reports and feature articles for market and social researchers, data analysts and consumer insight professionals. Covering the latest trends and techniques from behavioural economics to big data analytics, as well as hot topics like polling and privacy. The publication is operated by the Market Research Society.