Who Is Your Customer? Whose Customer Are You?

For most people and especially for a sales and marketing professional, the word that stays at the top of one’s mind is the word CUSTOMER, for there is no organization without customers. A customer is not necessarily someone that buys goods and services as the dictionaries say. Organizations spend a huge amount of human and financial resources in addition to time to understand the psyche and satisfy their customers’ wants and needs at every step of the sales process right from the point of designing a product to its after-sales service. But if they stop at the point where one thinks that a customer is only outside the organization, it would do no good in the progress of that company.

For an organization or an individual to be highly successful what is required is to understand the word customer in its informal sense and that is “an individual with whom one has dealings”. If we literally look into this meaning, it translates into positive results for the individual as an isolated entity and also for an organization that is a composite body because whether it is personal or professional life, there are expectations by others about every other individual be it social, economic, psychological or physiological. I would call this relationship as CUSTOMERISM.

Family as a unit: Let us try and understand what this means in the next few lines wherein we will learn the concept ‘each person is a customer to the other’. We will start with the family as a unit. In a family of four where there is a husband, wife and two children, the husband is a customer to the wife in the sense that he expects his wife to take care of his home and children (even if his wife was working). Likewise, the wife is a customer to the husband as she expects him to protect her, earn and give enough to be able to manage the home. The children are customers to both the parents as the children expect to receive care, attention and proper facilities for their upkeep and growth. The parents are the customers to the children as they are expected to study and conduct themselves well at home and school to the satisfaction of the parents. The family would be great place when all individual expectations are met by each other to the satisfaction of others. There could be disturbances if majority of the expectations are not met and it leads to unrest and infighting. 

Society as a unit: In the same manner as above, each family unit is a customer of another in the neighborhood. Unless each respect and meet the expectations of the others, there would not be peace and harmony in their surroundings.

Organization as a unit: Take the case of an organization where different departments work with common objective of selling a product or service to an outside customer. Within the organization, each department is a customer of the other. For instance the PPC (Production, Planning and Control) department is a customer of Sales and Marketing department and also vice versa. Unless S & M gives the production plan in time based on sales projection, the production department may not be able to deliver as expected. In the same way, the S & M department is a customer to the Finance and Accounts department as they need to drive sales and make collections in time to ensure F & A does their job. Each department is a customer to the other department/s as they are all interdependent and each has certain expectations from the other. Their collective customer is the buyer of their product/service. Any disappointment in the fulfillment of each other’s demands and expectations will lead to loss of business and also ruptured relationships. Government as a unit:  A similar analogy as detailed above applies to each and every government body within themselves and externally with the citizens. The government is a customer to the citizens as they need to follow the rules as laid down by the government. The citizens individually and collectively are the customers to the government, whether at a local level or national level. Progress and growth is possible only when each other’s expectations are met, else there would be riots, agitations, unrest and curfews.

We can apply such analogies at every level starting with the individual at the bottom of the pyramid to various nations or groups of nations at the top of the pyramid.  

Every individual has his own customers whom he is expected to attend to as per the roles that are played. If in a business environment a customer is supposed to be treated like a king for the continuity and sustenance of the business, the same applies in individual or group dealings for a relationship to have happy encounters in the daily grind of life.

Be a cool customer and have cool customers. Let CUSTOMERISM become our conscious daily practice either in business or personal life.