What do you mean by “the customer”?
As agile practitioners we wax lyrical about “the customer”. But who do we actually mean?
More often than not it is the “business”. A vendor relationship is implied, with IT supplying goods and services to the customer, who is the business. But the business is not really the customer. They are more an intermediary. An intermediary who in turn provides the product or service to the people who will consume them; the real customers. Yet if these real customers or consumers are considered at all, they are relegated to the title of “users”.
Calling the business “the customer” is an artificial construct based upon an arms length relationship between business and IT. Once this boundary is removed the real customer emerges. Moving beyond the vendor relationship between IT and business towards a partnership ensures a common customer. And ultimately it is this customer that fuels an organisation.
(In the CIM marketing glossary, there is no entry for “user”. There are two for “consumer” and six for “customer”. Not all projects will involve retail customers – think of call centre dudes. But I think the point is consistent…).
This is a HUGE question for me right now. Perhaps “the customer” is often actually the business customer’s customer?
In the company that I currently work, the company glossary defines customers and users as a single concept, “Supporter.” I’m a software engineer. As a proponent of Ubiquitous Language, I build domain concepts right into the documentation, object models and database. This is where the power of ubiquitous language comes in. When someone in marketing is discussing new requirements for an application with product development, I often have to sit in. When I hear “supporter” I know exactly how that concept relates to my world. When I reiterate technical considerations about a “supporter’s session” they know exactly what I mean. No one even mentions users or customers. If you are using the system and have not purchased anything from us, you are a supporter. If you purchase our services, you are still a supporter, but you have an account and purchased services and so on.