1 Introduction

Before you decide how to care for your customers, you need to establish who they are. This may not be as obvious as it seems. A customer is not just someone who buys something from you; both commercial and non-commercial organizations have customers.

The message of this session will be that:

• every organization needs to identify its external customers;

• every organization should ensure that it is in the business of meeting customer needs.

In addition, everyone working inside an organization also has internal customers, whose needs also have to be met.

2 What is a Customer?

We have established that there are more of them than you might at first think. But who are they exactly?

A manager of a menswear shop would probably say that customers are the individuals who come into the shop to look at the goods, and perhaps to buy.

In the commercial sector, a customer is someone who buys our goods and services.

Someone working in the sales team of a manufacturing company probably thinks of customers as:

• the organizations that buy from the company; and

• the individuals within them who make the purchasing decisions.

It is obvious that all of the following organizations have customers (though the solicitors and architects probably call them clients):