The panel discussion, ‘The art of persuasion in stakeholder engagement’, was chaired by Alison Bainbridge, founder of Kokoro, who pointed out that the business case for better customer-centricity is clear – the “financial returns are huge”, it can lead to 80% less absenteeism and customer engagement is high.

Bainbridge quizzed a panel comprising Abhishek Velani, senior propositions manager at Costa Coffee and his colleague Courtney Parker, senior insights manager; Eze Klass, insights manager at BT; Farrah Mosaheb, category and shopper strategy controller at Premier Foods; and Geraldine Shore, insight manager at TUI.

For Mosaheb, who heads up a strategy team at Premier Foods, what’s required is to “demonstrate category thought leadership and show retailers how you can drive category growth”.

She continued: “What’s really crucial is understanding what the shopper and consumer are doing and being really ingrained in understanding in what is happening across the whole of the UK.

“It’s really important we have a holistic view of everything that’s impacting shoppers and how that affects them when they get to the grocery store.

“Our retailers rely on us to speak for the shopper and to tell them what kind of strategies they need to put in place. If we’re not clear on what’s happening with the consumer then we won’t be giving them the right advice.”

For Costa’s Parker, as a marketer, customer-centricity comes naturally, it’s “at the heart of the decisions that we make and all of the insight that goes into that”.

But, she added: “It’s our role to make sure that other departments across the business are also having that mindset too.

“So recently we were on a journey with the learning team to make sure [that with] all the training material for the baristas who come into the stores, they understand the consumer journey as well –  what consumers are looking for to make we can get that message of consumer-first across the business.”

BT’s Klass agreed, echoing Parker’s sentiment, saying that in “an ideal world you’d want everybody to be on board, everybody to know the latest consumer thinking, how consumers are feeling every day”.

He compared such understanding to reading a book, “[one that] you’re really engaged in it and then we do a study and it’s just the next page of the book”.

“There might be a plot twist, a surprise ending. But you understand the narrative. That would be the ideal world.

“In reality it’s like a whole new novel. You want to get everybody up to that level."