Who's The Customer?

Sounds like an obvious question with an obvious answer.

The customer is whoever buys it and uses it.

That works in Tesco.

No, wait. You got that shopping list from your partner. You're the errand boy, and you're paying, but it's your partner who will be using that stuff and expressing disappointment if you forgot the radishes and got the wrong brand of pasta. (You didn't know there was a wrong brand of pasta?) You are Tesco's customer, and your partner is your customer.

How about the NHS? You don't pay for NHS treatment, so you can't be the customer. Patients are just raw material for the process. Who pays? The Government does. Whose complaints get attention? Um. The staff, especially the consultants and surgeons. Maybe the managers listen to the politicians, but mostly not. The NHS does not have a customer. Which is why it is a self-contained, unaccountable, uncontrollable organisation. They are all going to get paid no matter how long the queues.

By contrast, Harley Street has customers. They're called "clients" because Harley Street is posh.

Who are the customers for universities? Foreign students actually pay with their (parents') own money. UK students "borrow" money from the Government to pay, but the debt is not distrainable and does not count against the credit score. UK students also borrow money from the bank, and get some from their parents. Sounds to me like they are just the means by which that money gets to the Bursar. Like NHS patients, undergraduates are raw material for the process. The Government is paying for the universities to provide an illusion of employability and education. The parents are paying in the hope that it's not all an illusion. The one group we have overlooked are the academics: they are expected to bring in research grants. Those are handed out by the Government. So that makes the State the customer, and it dictates what gets researched. (Yes, all that junk soft science is actually commissioned by people who know it is junk. You wouldn't want the money spent on real research would you?)

Who are the customers for airports? Not passengers. Airlines.

Who are the customers for airlines? Some of the customers are the actual passengers. But then Ryanair gets a chunk of money from provinces for flying into their regional airport. So that's Government again.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out who is the customer for Social Services? And who is just raw material for the process.

It's a wonderfully clarifying question.