I wish the idea for this post was original.  My Scottish brethren (Stuart Corrigan-Vanguard Scotland) came up with the impetus for this blog.  Something that I hadn’t thought about in a while, but often comes up when working with service organizations.  So, just who is the customer?

  • The customer for government student loans is not the government (even though they will tell you they are).
  • Sales is not the customer of operations or vice versa.
  • Management is not the customer of the front-line worker (even though it is implied that they are).
  • The downstream unit is not the customer of the upstream unit.

There are no “internal” customers.  Only a command and control thinker would split the work out and think this way.  Spending time serving the wrong customer will only increase costs and waste.

For the systems thinking organization, there can only be one question to define the identity of the customer: “On the day we started the system who was it defined to benefit?”  As Mr. Corrigan points out, “answering this question and ensuring that every policy, process and measure is aligned to helping the customer get what they want is the only way to improve service and cut costs.”  Amen, brother Corrigan.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  He is focused on exposing the problems of command and control management and the termination of bad service through application of new thinking . . . systems thinking.  Download free Understanding Your Organization as a System and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt.