Who is the ITSM Customer?

Who is the User?

The User is a person who uses the IT Service on a day-to-day basis. Users are distinct from Customers when used in IT Service and Process Management documentation.

The term “Customer” is a common place business term in line with the concept of “Customer Service”. In day-to-day business operations, IT Users are “Customers”.

Who is the Customer?

The Customer is the person or group who defines and agrees the Service and Service Level Requirements, and is sponsoring (or paying for) the IT Service.

The term “Customer” is a common place business term in line with the concept of “Customer Service”. In day-to-day business operations, IT Users are “Customers”.

To avoid confusion between terms, it is common to refer to the “Business Customer” as a distinction from the “User Customer”.

Do you ever find yourself using an app that you hate? Don’t you wonder who signed-off on it? This underscores the difference between a user and a customer and the importance of capturing relevant feedback from the end customers’ experiences.

Every ITSM organization should want to understand how value will be perceived by the customers and the users of the service. The ITSM organization should seek answers to questions such as:

Who is the customer?
Who does the ITSM organization serve?
Who are the services designed for?
Who do the services provide value for?
How do technology based services mesh with manual, human activity based service components to deliver the full value experience for the recipient?
What scope does the ITSM organization have in the full service delivery picture?
Is the ITSM organization engaged to describe how more components could be optimized and even automated to improve service delivery?
Who decides on the features of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product)?
Where does feedback come from related to the service delivery?
Does the feedback help to define where improvements are required – technology components, human activity components or other?

Let’s look at a shopping experience and try to understand if the customer is truly the customer or is the customer actually a user and someone else acts as the customer that represents and owns the service delivery experienced by the users.

Shopping Experience Description

Day 1 – Saturday – Shopping – Point of Purchase Shopper enters a warehouse store selling wine in case lots. Shopper wants to make a significant purchase. The warehouse store does not accept the shopper’s particular credit card so the shopper decides to use their debit card. The total purchase is well within any single transaction limit as well as any daily limit restrictions on the debit card. The merchant processes the sale and the transaction is successful. The shopper then realizes that the merchant did not include all of the desired items and consequently a second transaction is attempted. The total for the two transactions is still well below any transactional and daily limits. The second transaction is declined. The shopper empties their pockets and finds enough cash and completes their purchase.

Day 2 – Sunday – no activity

Day 3 – Monday – no activity

Day 4 – Tuesday – Shopper contacted related to debit card use The financial institution’s customer service department calls the shopper. First they validate the identity of the shopper and then explain that they are calling because the shopper’s debit card has been “locked” in a non functional status and they want to know if they have a situation of fraud or if they should “unlock” the debit card. Shopper expresses that they did not know that their card had been locked and confirms that the use had been legitimate.

Service Perspectives – Stakeholders Overview

This analysis will focus on three main stakeholders. There are many others that may influence the overall service delivery but these three are key to our evaluation of the service delivery.

The Debit Card Service Owner
This individual is the customer for the ITSM organization as well as other organizational groups that contribute to the Debit Card Service delivery. This individual would specify features and operational performance of the service and would agree and sign-off on how the service is delivered.

The ITSM Organization
This individual, team or organization would design, develop, deliver and operate the IT supported components of the debit card service in agreement with the the debit card service owner.

The Shopper
This individual is a customer of the financial services organization but they are a user of the debit card services as they are attempting to be a customer of the warehouse store. The important aspect here is that the shopper is the USER of the debit card services. They are not the customer of the ITSM organization. Stakeholder – yes | customer – no.

Service Perspectives – Service Performance

The overall end-to-end service delivery included IT supported and automated service components as well as human activity based service components.

ITSM Organization Performance
IT Supported service Components

Bot detected suspicious activity when second transaction attempted
Bot “declined” second transaction
Bot “locked” card in non functional status
Bot issued “alert” to designated card service entities

The ITSM organization perfectly delivered service components as agreed with Debit Card Service Owner. Human Activity Service Performance

Customer Service calls and reaches shopper 72 hrs. after alert event
Card holder ID validated verbally
Debit card “unlocked” and status updated to functional

The customer service team successfully reached the cardholder. Potential fraud card status was resolved.

Service Perspectives – Service Evaluation

How do the key stakeholders evaluate the service delivery? Was it excellent or was it an epic failure filled with incidents, errors and poor execution? It is easy to imagine that the end customer, as a user of the debit card service, would perceive the service as poorly delivered and question who and how someone signed-off on that as a deliverable service.

A valid transaction was declined
No attempt was made to resolve at Point of Purchase
No notice was issued to the card holder that their card was “locked” as unusable
Time to contact for resolution was 72 hours

How does the Debit Card Service Owner evaluate the service? Did the Service Owner choose a 72 hour window or was there some other failure in the service delivery? The user wants valid but suspicious transactions held temporarily but then resolved at the point of purchase. How does a Service Owner authorize, accept and sign-off on a service delivery that is so far off the mark from what the users want? Is it cost; is it service and application maturity or, again, was it incidents and failures in execution?

The ITSM organization can evaluate the service delivery as meeting the agreed requirements with the customer (Debit Card Service Owner) but needing improvement to meet the needs of the users of the service. Technology professionals at all levels need to be leaders in new ways of working and managing. They need to be leaders in understanding how people communicate with customers and users of the services being provided and also in the different perspectives between users and those who represent them as customers.

ITSM organizations should have input into how a service provider understands and defines the value streams and customer journeys associated with their delivery of services. I actually prefer the term customer experience to customer journey because many customers don’t want a journey – they want instant results and gratification.

About the Author
Jim Jackson is the Managing Director of Blue Sky AFC Associates LLC. Jim holds the ITIL Expert Certificate (V3) and has also completed ITIL 4 Foundations certification. Jim is a service management professional and has been an accredited instructor of ITIL Foundations since 2005. He has shared his open, non-restricted view of the ITIL framework as he has trained and assisted hundreds of candidates to prepare for and pass the ITIL Foundations examinations. Jim has also written accredited courseware for earlier versions of ITIL Foundations and he contributed to ITIL 4 accredited course materials for Thought Rock in 2019.

Acknowledgements