Understanding customers, what drives their decision making and what they want from businesses is the key principle of market research, and as market researchers it is something we are well-versed in.
But, how do you make sure that that knowledge is used by decision makers. For years the answer to this problem, has been getting insight professionals into the board room or C-suite to affect the top level decisions, however, recently the conversation has shifted towards encouraging Customer Salience. Customer Salience is the propensity for all stakeholder teams and departments to think about customers when making their decisions. It places the emphasis on everyone prioritising the customer and actively engaging with insight as a result of this.
There are various ways in which Customer Salience can be embedded into a business, but for me, as an agency-side researcher, I find the most effective way to encourage Customer Salience is to work as collaboratively as possible. Personally, I place a huge premium on collaborating initially with my client-side counterparts and then extending through to their stakeholders. This ensures that we are all working together towards a common goal and means that the questions I ask and the insights we ultimately share answer the questions that decision makers really need answered, and as a result are more memorable and more likely to be utilised.
In this post, I'm going to trace the lifecycle of a hypothetical research project, a series of moderated interviews to explore the user experience of some new webpages. Using this hypothetical project will allow me to identify and explore three places where collaboration can improve research outcomes, and is best placed to encourage a culture of Customer Salience.
Collaboration Upfront
I find the initial project brief is the first point of contact where collaboration is key, as it sets the precedent for the rest of the project. Stakeholder involvement in particular is important here as it allows me, the researcher, to gain a deeper understanding of what inspired the project and what ultimately, the client wants to get out of it.
This added depth is crucial in understanding the right questions to ask, as sometimes it is not necessarily the questions asked in the brief which are the most pertinent, but rather the questions that sparked the stakeholder’s initial curiosity. For example, although this brief asks us to test the user experience of some webpages, once I know that this question was sparked by a number of email enquiries, and a drop in business despite high click-in rates I then understand that I need to tailor my questions towards problems encountered, signposting towards contact channels and what would encourage the participants to engage further with the business.
Collaborating with stakeholders at the beginning of the project also allows the design to be tailored to their current needs and in particular when dealing with a project like this it is important to explore the pages with the stakeholder themselves, this works as a checkpoint that the questions initially mentioned in the brief are in fact those that are still relevant and required, whilst also identifying any tool limitations, or design features which the team has struggled with. This allows questions to be tailored towards any key areas, but also informs guidelines for the moderator so they know where to explore further or where to limit time spent during any interview conversations.
Collaboration in Fieldwork
Continuing this collaboration throughout the fieldwork means that the research is able to flex and move in line with the findings as they start to appear and emerging trends can be explored in greater detail. For this particular type of research project, where the processes behind the design of the pages can be quite agile and are particularly time sensitive.
A stakeholder who is actively collaborating in the research and analysis discussions has access to the insight ahead of the deliverable allowing them to make decisions as and when needed. For example, if the visual design of the webpage is clearly not working, steps can be taken by stakeholders ahead of the final deliverable, to start looking at redesigning the product visuals.
Also, as these stakeholders may often involve the design team who built the pages, having them watching lets them see in real time how their design does or doesn’t work, making any potentially hard-to-swallow findings difficult to dispute. This allows the final deliverable to focus on the what a successful visual might look like, rather than having to convince the stakeholders of why the previous design did not work. Ensuring that the research remains relevant and useful although the initial design it was based upon has since been scrapped.
Collaboration at the debrief
Having the right insights as part of the final deliverable is important, but when I want to encourage stakeholders to bring customers to mind in decision-making contexts, personally I also try to focus on how the insights are delivered, to ensure they are as impactful and as memorable as possible. Fieldwork’s article describing a good research event as a good party, really highlights how important the preparation, guest list and atmosphere is to create a successful and memorable event. The same can be said of a debrief, all of the involved parties; researchers, insight teams and stakeholders collaborating to ensure that not only is the deliverable useful but also that the perfect guest list of decision makers turn up and the atmosphere is set to encourage discussion and problem solving.
For example, when building the guest list, consider inviting not only the immediate stockholders, such as the webpage owners, but also the design team, the customer service team and the brand/marketing team. Bringing all of these teams together to experience the same debrief, instead of just letting them read about it in a knowledge bank unifies the experience across the company and ensures that the most pertinent insights are remembered and taken forward to develop the webpages further. Combining the right guest list with an atmosphere of collaboration really sets the scene for a useful and ultimately memorable debrief.
Conclusion
Ensuring the whole research project is a collaborative affair can involve a good bit of people management, however its ability to improve the robustness of the data collected and the accuracy and usefulness of the insights shared really does mean that this is one of the key ways to encourage Customer Salience throughout an organisation.
With an increased stakeholder familiarity encouraging greater ownership and understanding of the research. This in turn makes the insights more memorable, more salient, and most importantly more likely to be top of mind when decisions need to be made.
