--- title: The Link Between Customer Service, Customer Salience and Market Research description: Discover the critical link between customer service, customer salience, and market research for a truly customer-led business transformation. image: https://blog.flexmr.net/hubfs/Marketing_Files/Blogs/Headers/customer_service_salience_market_research.png --- close ## Ready to level up your insights? Get ready to streamline, scale and supercharge your research. Fill out this form to request a demo of the InsightHub platform and discover the difference insights empowerment can make. A member of our team will reach out within two working days. close ## Cost effective insights that scale Quality insight doesn't need to cost the earth. Our flexible approach helps you make the most of research budgets and build an agile solution that works for you. Fill out this form to request a call back from our team to explore our pricing options. 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[Read more](https://blog.flexmr.net/workshops-beacons-customer-salience) 9 MIN READ #### Ed Hill - [Events (1)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/events) - [Insights Empowerment (38)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/insights-empowerment) - [Practical Application (178)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/practical-application) - [Research Methods (285)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/research-methods) - [Strategic Thinking (232)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/strategic-thinking) - [Survey Templates (7)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/survey-templates) - [Tech & Trends (397)](https://blog.flexmr.net/topic/tech-trends) The Link Between Customer Service, Customer Salience and Market Research 7:28 The first week of October 2025 marks National Customer Service Week: a week dedicated to celebrating the vital role customer service plays in businesses and communities. It’s a chance for businesses to come together and recognise achievements, share best practices and inspiration, and continue to work to raise the standard of excellent customer service. And whilst the week is a chance to celebrate the good work that many put in to deliver excellent customer service, it should also act as a reminder of the importance of customer service when it comes to measuring business performance. Improving customer experience is crucial to improving business performance. And the link between customer service, research, and customer salience is clear and becoming increasingly more important. ## Great Customer Service Starts with Understanding Customer service is the crucial touchpoint between brands and their customers. It allows us to see first-hand how customers interact with brands, which helps us to shape their experiences and is often the first step in understanding who our customers are and what needs brands need to meet. However, there are many reports detailing the decline of, and dissatisfaction with, customer service; from the rise of self-checkouts and AI, to the newly-dubbed ‘[Gen-Z stare](https://startups.co.uk/news/gen-z-stare/)’. For instance, only [15%](https://retailtimes.co.uk/two-fifths-say-ai-making-customer-service-worse-bsi-research-finds/) believe AI has enhanced customer service experiences, whereas 41% say AI has made it worse. Furthermore, [more than a quarter](https://business.yougov.com/content/48324-empty-shelves-long-queues-and-self-checkouts-grievances-that-most-bother-british-in-store-shoppers?utm_source=chatgpt.com) (27%) cite self-checkouts as a source of annoyance when it comes to their shopping experiences. As such, it’s no wonder that [78%](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/apr/17/the-death-of-customer-service-why-has-it-become-so-so-bad#:~:text=A%20report%20by%20the%20thinktank,with%20them%20in%20lengthy%20battles) say they regularly face frustration when it comes to customer service experiences. And when it’s done wrong, it’s hard to come back from; one bad experience for a customer will far outweigh the previous nine positive experiences they had. Continued negative experiences can turn customers away and damage a brand’s reputation. Instead, great customer service is about connection. It’s about support, understanding, and reliability. Embracing and nurturing these interactions is key. Because customer service is crucial for business success, it influences customer experience and satisfaction, fosters loyalty, and ultimately drives profitability. With this, frontline staff are an integral connection between a brand and its customers. They have the opportunity and responsibility to turn everyday interactions into meaningful moments, to build trust, loyalty and satisfaction. But further still, the insights that frontline staff capture should be shared as powerful contributions to strategy and decision-making. ## Connecting Frontline Experience with Boardroom Strategy But what about the employees who aren’t on the front line, interacting and learning about customers in their day-to-day work? What happens when decision-makers aren’t in tune with customers, the ones who will ultimately be impacted by the decisions being made? Bridging that gap is crucial if a brand truly wants to foster a customer-centric culture. And this is why Customer Salience is vital. Customer salience is the propensity to bring customers to mind at the point of decision-making. It’s about ensuring there is a cultural shift within organisations so that customer-centricity is the norm, at all levels of the business. But changing the culture of a company is no mean feat. And this is where research, data and insight play a vital role. One of the most powerful things market research can do is bring stakeholders closer to the people they serve.  For example, online research communities and panels create ongoing dialogues between brands and their customers. They allow companies to engage customers in real time, such as by testing new ideas, gathering feedback, and exploring pain points directly with the customers. They’re able to create a system of continuous engagement, enabling stakeholders to witness first-hand how customers feel, think and react. CX research is a fundamental starting point to understanding what customers are thinking and feeling, using it to identify key pain points. But then we need to go further, diving deeper into what the findings really mean so that data isn’t just gathered and then not used. Customer closeness, immersive qual, and customer collaboration sessions can all be used to truly begin to understand the customer, allowing stakeholders to understand the why behind any pain points and how they can be improved. Closeness work like this allows brands to uncover unmet needs and emotional triggers that traditional metrics might miss. It helps to bring the customers to life, meaning the insight becomes harder to ignore. ## Active Customer Listening Means Better-Positioned Brands Connecting and collaborating with customers is a key way for stakeholders to improve customer salience. They’ll understand customers not just as data points, but as people with stories, frustrations, and goals, meaning they make better, more human decisions. And in turn, better decisions for customers lead to better customer service and improved customer experience. It’s a cycle. [McKinsey & Company](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/achieving-growth-putting-leadership-mindsets-and-behaviors-into-action) has found that companies that invest in delivering excellent customer experience and those that integrate customer feedback into decision-making processes significantly outperform competitors by boosting revenue, customer loyalty, profitability, and shareholder value. However, they found that 15% of leaders feel they consistently incorporate customer input into business decisions, and only 10% feel strongly that they have sufficient data and insights to support their growth decisions. To illustrate the importance of taking customer feedback into decision-making, a financial services brand wanted to boost customer journey completion by making the customer experience clearer and more straightforward. Using InsightHub, there was an opportunity to include customer feedback into the journey redesign process. By speaking with target customers, who rated the new proposed journeys on factors such as ease, efficiency and overall impression, as well as giving live in-the-moment feedback, we were able to develop a clear picture of what was and wasn’t working well. From this, we could confidently identify painpoints and understand what customers really cared about. As a result, the journey redesign was shaped around what customers actually needed and valued, and our client saw a real lift in conversion rate, overall journey success, and customer experience. ## So What? This National Customer Service Week is, quite rightly, a time to celebrate the work that many are doing for customer service. But it should also serve as a reminder that excellent customer service is a strategic business need. Organisations need to truly listen to their customers and embed those insights into decision-making at every level. Failing to prioritise this risks falling behind in the market, one in which customers expect to be heard and valued. It’s important for brands to remember that customer service, customer experience, and customer salience are not isolated concepts, but instead are deeply interconnected drivers of business success. [![CUstomer Salience Framework & Toolkit](https://blog.flexmr.net/hs-fs/hubfs/Marketing_Files/CTAs/customer%20salience%20cta_general.png?width=1000&name=customer%20salience%20cta_general.png)](https://resources.flexmr.net/customer-salience-toolkit) #### About FlexMR We are The Insights Empowerment Company. We help research, product and marketing teams drive informed decisions with efficient, scalable & impactful insight. #### About Danielle Wilkinson Danielle cultivates integral research partnerships with clients, provides crucial account support and ensures wide impact from activated insights. #### Stay up to date ## You might also like... ![Blog Featured Image Header](https://blog.flexmr.net/hubfs/Marketing_Files/Blogs/Headers/Workshops.png) ### [Workshops and Beacons: A Guide to B...](https://blog.flexmr.net/workshops-beacons-customer-salience) Most organisations are not short of data, insight or decks.Their biggest challenge is not whether customer understanding exists since most teams have access to more customer insight than ever before. ... [Continue reading](https://blog.flexmr.net/workshops-beacons-customer-salience) 9 MIN READ ![Blog Featured Image Header](https://blog.flexmr.net/hubfs/Marketing_Files/Blogs/Headers/ZeroParty.png) ### [Communities and the Post-Cookie Fut...](https://blog.flexmr.net/communities-post-cookie-future) The abundance of data available at our fingertips is not an uncommon topic in the industry these days. Neither is the question: how do we use it effectively? [Continue reading](https://blog.flexmr.net/communities-post-cookie-future) 6 MIN READ ![Blog Featured Image Header](https://blog.flexmr.net/hubfs/Thea%20Closeness%20Blog.png) ### [Empathy, Emotion and Compassion in ...](https://blog.flexmr.net/empathy-customer-closeness) Empathy, compassion, and emotional understanding are increasingly recognised as essential components in building a culture of customer closeness, yet many organisations still struggle to move beyond a... 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