When is a customer not a customer?

The “I am not a statistic” TV campaign by AVIVA ignores the main issue, which to my mind is the way that corporations and institutions herd all the public together under the one word customers.

I don’t know which misguided management consultant decided that citizens, taxpayers, passengers and patients should all be reclassified ‘customers.’ I doubt whether anyone will own up and argue the case because they’ve bought into management jargon (perhaps at great consultancy cost) and they’re now convinced that ‘customer’ is the correct terminology. It’s a bit like lavatories, cloakrooms, toilets, bathrooms and loos. You say a lot about yourself by the word that you use. Companies, corporations, institutions and sole traders all pride themselves in calling everyone else – ‘customers.’

But customer is a strange word and one which, for me, devalues the nature of the complex levels of a commercial or institutional relationship. For my money, a customer at a consumer level is a potential party to a business transaction that involves the purchase of goods or the prospective purchase of services. Once the transaction is completed, purchasers of goods remain customers but purchasers of services move into a new category because there is a participative relationship. The appropriate terminology may be client, but it could more appropriately be investor, passenger or diner. What’s important is to realise that the customer stage is over, and the relationship is now specific – and that’s the critical element.

Take the example of hairdressers. Suppose you book an appointment, get your hair done and then buy shampoo and conditioner as you leave. My thinking is that you make the booking as a potential customer and a prospective client. When you later pay and depart with your smart new coiffure, you leave as a client for future appointments and as a customer for hair-care products. The key point is that any client relationship demands a degree of involvement and participation which is not present in the customer relationship. When you are investigating and researching professional services, you are in customer mode, but once you’ve signed up to the service you become a client for that service provider, whether it’s an airline, a solicitor or a hotel, and whatever term is relevant to that activity.

It is this definite change in the relationship that is being overlooked by many CRM policies (the abbreviation conveniently applies to both categories.) For example, you are a ‘customer’ of British Airways until you buy your ticket. From that moment, you are in a participative relationship and to my way of thinking, you become a passenger. They’re not an airline without the involvement of passengers, and it is this inter-dependence that builds a different relationship from a retail product sale. I like being a passenger; I much prefer to be a passenger rather than a customer because passenger specifies my expectation and the supplier’s role and activity. If I were a mere customer the relationship would be very different. In fact, I can feel something of that ‘customer’ sensation if I fly with a budget airline like Ryanair. Can you see what I’m getting at?

It’s the same for all those other services that have jumped on the customer band-wagon, and nowhere more so than in Government. I don’t want to be a ‘customer’ of HM Revenue and Customs. They’re not selling me anything. I am collecting tax on their behalf; it’s a participative relationship. And I’m certainly not a ‘customer’ of the NHS, and totally reject their preferred new jargon of ‘service user.’ I am a patient; I am in a participative relationship in which my ‘patient’ category relates to their role and specialist services.

Services have reputations and expertise that stretch way beyond the brand identity of a product for which I am a mere customer. I want different transactional relationships to relate to me in different ways. I am an audience for entertainment, a holiday-maker for a tour operator, a citizen and subject for my municipality and government and I’m a customer for Sainsbury’s.

I’m also a potential customer for a funeral plan and I suppose that in time my corpse would, logically, become a somewhat passive client for the undertaker... but not yet.