ITSM literacy program: Users and Customers - who is behind these names?
Translation of an article explaining a couple of basic concepts for ITSM. If you can not clearly in a couple of words to formulate the difference between the customer and the user, the article is worth reading, it is not big.
Author: Dena Wieder-Freiden
Publication October 18, 2016
in the section Service Desk of the gods on sysaid
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A rose smells like a rose, even if you call it a rose, though not.
(W. Shakespeare)
I do not often start my blog entries about IT Services Management with quotes from William Shakespeare, but in his Romeo and Juliet there is an ideal phrase for the current topic: “A rose smells like a rose, even if you call it a rose, though not”. Unfortunately, like the heroes of Shakespeare, who find tragic demise, the human community and in reality is fixated on the names, labels and words that it uses. So, because ITIL authors have replaced some common words with ITIL-specific words (for example, “incident” and “problem”), many are confused in the sense of what has been said. The situation is so similar to the play of Shakespeare, when the whole accumulated by generations of problems in relations between the families of Montecchi and Capuleti, is destroyed by the meaning of love for the young man and girl to each other.
Let's focus now on one important idea, which, in my opinion, causes many problems due to the specific terminology. In ITIL, the terms “user” and “customer” have very different meanings.
The customer has a financial basis, i.e. This is the one who pays for the service. But this can mean not only payment with real money. Sometimes it can be responsibility for the budget, i.e. the person who distributes it, or simply the responsibility for acceptance of works with the signing of acts of work, without direct payment. But each time the Customer is the position of the person responsible for obtaining a greater result in the ratio of the price of the service to the benefits that it provides.
The user is the one who uses the service. Users deal with the inputs and outputs of the service, and not with its price and benefits (value). Users are carriers of opinion, the main point is that the service does and nothing else.
In fact, we are all already familiar with this concept, because she is part of our daily life. Let's show it by example.
And so, imagine that your car was stolen, the insurance company sends a check with compensation and you go to buy a replacement. You go around car dealers in the area and you see a beautiful, sparkling red car with a pretty horse jumping on the emblem. “Oh, yes,” you think: “I want to get it”. Then they say how much this Ferrari costs and you go home on a second-hand Ford bought on credit to feed your children.
You have just been a Customer, balancing your wishes and benefits from owning a car with its value and what you can afford. The customer can find a compromise, because he sees both aspects. The user (for example, your child, whom you give to use this car too) only drives the car and is never satisfied that it is he who drives and always wants more, because this is not his money.
Perhaps you have already participated on both sides in this example, both as an adult and as a child. You go to the toy store with your son, daughter, niece or nephew (imagine such a picture) and allow him or her to look around at all the displayed toys and choose the one you like, promising to buy it. Children will not look at the price tags, they will focus on what the toy can do and how much they like it or how much they want to have it. Adults have other ideas. First and foremost, they are concerned that each toy has a price for which you can either receive it or receive a different benefit from this money. They can go further and appreciate the educational or entertainment value of the toy.
In this example, adults act as customers and children act as users.
In IT scenarios and in everyday life, it is important to understand that customers and users are roles not necessarily performed by different people. You can choose a profitable option, acting as a customer, and feel dissatisfaction later due to insufficient functionality, reliability or support (or lack of), speaking already in the role of the user.
This one appears in situations where the customer signs, for example, a service level agreement with support from 8 am to 8 pm on weekdays. Despite the fact that it gives a feeling of good savings when buying, the user will not be satisfied when on Saturday he cannot use the service because of its refusal and no one will be available to help him until the next working day.
Or for home, you can have an offer from an energy company for an additional $ 400 a month for the guarantee of a stable and uninterrupted power supply. It can be so much for your internal customer and you will reject this offer. Then when six months later, when the electricity “runs out”, your user will be distressed, not by the energy company, or by himself.
Of course, just because ITIL uses these two names: users and customers, you are not required to use them. But understanding the meaning of these concepts allows you to see and use these two roles. Customers, of course, must make decisions for which they are authorized, and users must use the services if they match their skills, work style, preferences and common culture. If this is not done, the services will not be used to their full potential and are unlikely to be valuable for making money.
And all this does not end when the service is launched, current support and requests for improvement are born in the form of a dialogue with both groups. ITIL offers discussion channels with both of them: customers and users. Conclusion and evaluation of the implementation of service level agreements (SLA), procedures for improving services, change management, etc. interact with customers. With users, the main channel was told by the Support Desk (Service Desk), which, in addition to receiving calls about problems with the work of something, can also collect complaints and wishes of users and pass them on to procedures for improving services.
Leading organizations have already taken steps to establish and maintain contact with both types of service stakeholders. Do you do that too?
Author: Dena Wieder-Freiden
Publication October 18, 2016
in the section Service Desk of the gods on sysaid
')
A rose smells like a rose, even if you call it a rose, though not.
(W. Shakespeare)
I do not often start my blog entries about IT Services Management with quotes from William Shakespeare, but in his Romeo and Juliet there is an ideal phrase for the current topic: “A rose smells like a rose, even if you call it a rose, though not”. Unfortunately, like the heroes of Shakespeare, who find tragic demise, the human community and in reality is fixated on the names, labels and words that it uses. So, because ITIL authors have replaced some common words with ITIL-specific words (for example, “incident” and “problem”), many are confused in the sense of what has been said. The situation is so similar to the play of Shakespeare, when the whole accumulated by generations of problems in relations between the families of Montecchi and Capuleti, is destroyed by the meaning of love for the young man and girl to each other.
So ... Users and Customers in IT Service Management.
Let's focus now on one important idea, which, in my opinion, causes many problems due to the specific terminology. In ITIL, the terms “user” and “customer” have very different meanings.
The customer has a financial basis, i.e. This is the one who pays for the service. But this can mean not only payment with real money. Sometimes it can be responsibility for the budget, i.e. the person who distributes it, or simply the responsibility for acceptance of works with the signing of acts of work, without direct payment. But each time the Customer is the position of the person responsible for obtaining a greater result in the ratio of the price of the service to the benefits that it provides.
The user is the one who uses the service. Users deal with the inputs and outputs of the service, and not with its price and benefits (value). Users are carriers of opinion, the main point is that the service does and nothing else.
In fact, we are all already familiar with this concept, because she is part of our daily life. Let's show it by example.
Car selection
And so, imagine that your car was stolen, the insurance company sends a check with compensation and you go to buy a replacement. You go around car dealers in the area and you see a beautiful, sparkling red car with a pretty horse jumping on the emblem. “Oh, yes,” you think: “I want to get it”. Then they say how much this Ferrari costs and you go home on a second-hand Ford bought on credit to feed your children.
You have just been a Customer, balancing your wishes and benefits from owning a car with its value and what you can afford. The customer can find a compromise, because he sees both aspects. The user (for example, your child, whom you give to use this car too) only drives the car and is never satisfied that it is he who drives and always wants more, because this is not his money.
Story with a toy
Perhaps you have already participated on both sides in this example, both as an adult and as a child. You go to the toy store with your son, daughter, niece or nephew (imagine such a picture) and allow him or her to look around at all the displayed toys and choose the one you like, promising to buy it. Children will not look at the price tags, they will focus on what the toy can do and how much they like it or how much they want to have it. Adults have other ideas. First and foremost, they are concerned that each toy has a price for which you can either receive it or receive a different benefit from this money. They can go further and appreciate the educational or entertainment value of the toy.
In this example, adults act as customers and children act as users.
The difference in roles means not only that they are different people.
In IT scenarios and in everyday life, it is important to understand that customers and users are roles not necessarily performed by different people. You can choose a profitable option, acting as a customer, and feel dissatisfaction later due to insufficient functionality, reliability or support (or lack of), speaking already in the role of the user.
This one appears in situations where the customer signs, for example, a service level agreement with support from 8 am to 8 pm on weekdays. Despite the fact that it gives a feeling of good savings when buying, the user will not be satisfied when on Saturday he cannot use the service because of its refusal and no one will be available to help him until the next working day.
Or for home, you can have an offer from an energy company for an additional $ 400 a month for the guarantee of a stable and uninterrupted power supply. It can be so much for your internal customer and you will reject this offer. Then when six months later, when the electricity “runs out”, your user will be distressed, not by the energy company, or by himself.
How can you not call them, but they will be all the same two roles
Of course, just because ITIL uses these two names: users and customers, you are not required to use them. But understanding the meaning of these concepts allows you to see and use these two roles. Customers, of course, must make decisions for which they are authorized, and users must use the services if they match their skills, work style, preferences and common culture. If this is not done, the services will not be used to their full potential and are unlikely to be valuable for making money.
And all this does not end when the service is launched, current support and requests for improvement are born in the form of a dialogue with both groups. ITIL offers discussion channels with both of them: customers and users. Conclusion and evaluation of the implementation of service level agreements (SLA), procedures for improving services, change management, etc. interact with customers. With users, the main channel was told by the Support Desk (Service Desk), which, in addition to receiving calls about problems with the work of something, can also collect complaints and wishes of users and pass them on to procedures for improving services.
Leading organizations have already taken steps to establish and maintain contact with both types of service stakeholders. Do you do that too?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349254/
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