Creating a customer-centric culture or culture of Customer Salience in a business is a process with many moving parts. To use the metaphor of a well-oiled machine, each cog in the mechanism is interconnected and dependent on the other cogs fitted around it, and if they’re all fitted together well enough, when one moves, they all move. But because of this, it can be hard to identify where the issues are, what challenges stop the machine from moving, and you’ll have to check each cog to see if that’s the one causing the issues.
It’s a task to keep track of every moving part of a Customer Salience strategy, but understanding where you stand at any part of the process is key to better understanding your position and what still needs to be done. Thankfully, we have a handy little checklist to help you get started.
The Customer-Centric Culture Checklist
How to Use the Checklist
Of course, we know that you know how to use a checklist. What this section will advise, is how to use this new resource to keep an eye on your progress, remind you of exactly what it is you’re supposed to be paying attention to, and identify areas that require improvement. This might also help you to identify areas that aren’t currently in your Customer Salience strategy that actually need to be in your strategy.
Firstly, using a checklist such as this to measure and remeasure your progress is crucial to the lasting and sustainable success of any strategy. In this, you can:
- Check this list at the start in your strategy design phase to see where you're currently excelling
- Check this list regularly throughout strategy design and implementation to keep an accurate knowledge of where you are and where you still have to go
- Once all checked off, still keep checking this list regularly to make sure nothing is slipping and becomes an issue to fix
For the most impactful and effective use of the checklist, use this as a baseline and then add in your own criteria to your business’ specifications to get that extra bit of value out of it. Once this checking routine has been thoroughly established, be mindful of any natural evolution to the strategy, the business and thus your checklist. This evolution is to be expected and is the mark of a successful strategy, as long as it evolves in the right way.
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| This checklist is a great way to assess exactly what areas of your business aren't up to scratch or present active obstacles to Customer Salience. |
In regards to those missing check marks that will undoubtedly crop up every now and then, those are your guiding stars; they are directions to follow, gaps to fill in, and bridges to cross. These are opportunities you have missed and obstacles to achieving a culture of Customer Salience. Depending on the resources you have available, you can either tackle them one at a time (to ensure that each obstacle is tackled effectively and will not return) or you can tackle multiple at a time (the ones that might connect together or rely on other criteria). But tackling them should be your priority within your Customer Salience strategy.
It might be that you don’t quite know whether or not to check off an item on this particular list - perhaps there are some customer-first values embedded into the company mission, but not enough to influence the culture towards customer centricity; or you are currently in the process of acquiring the use of a dedicated insights platform, but there is no research able to be done on it yet. In this case, it’s always best to leave the checkbox blank. Opportunities for improvement are just as valuable as any the revealing of opportunities missed. Only tick the check box if you are certain there is no more work you are able to do to a criterion.
Resources for Building a Culture of Customer Salience
This evaluation is a great starting point for building a culture of Customer Salience. Understanding where you are and how to get to where you need to go are two crucial steps that can be ticked off through the use of this particular infographic, but there is more work to be done before you take the first step.
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| It can be hard to identify what challenges hinder Customer Salience, and we have to check each strategic element to identify the one causing issues. |
Deciding whether you want to build a ‘customer-centric’ culture, or a ‘customer salient’ culture will start you down one of two paths, for they do mean two slightly different things. For a ‘customer salient’ culture, there is more work to be done to help identify exactly how stakeholders make decisions, how they think about customers on a daily basis, and how to influence their mindsets on a large scale.
Conducting a thorough decision-making audit is the next step in this process. But even though there is more work to do, there are resources here to help you along the way. FlexMR’s Customer Salience Toolkit holds an in-depth strategic guide to the 4C Framework of Customer Salience, a decision-making audit template, visual templates for stakeholder communications, and more to aid in your Customer Salience journey.
