Looking at Customer Service in Varied Fields – A visual to help you answer this question: “If students aren't the customers of the university, who are?” (More)

With color coding marked row by row to help you avoid “‘similarity matching,’[A]  that is, a tendency to respond to similarities more than to differences.

 

Customers (Users, Clients, Stakeholders) and Issues

Storefront

Retail

Attorney in Private Practice

Local Political Campaigns

Product Development-Custom

Corporate Training

Higher

Education

Hardware

Software

1. Customer as user?

Shopper

Varied clients

Client: Candidate

Operators, plant

User/operator

Employee

Student

a. Commitment by the user?

a. Almost always

a. Almost always

a. Almost always

a. Always

a. Almost always

a. Almost always

a. Varies

b. Preparation of the user?

b. Almost always

b. Occasionally

b. If incumbent

b. Always

b. Almost always

b. Almost always

b. Varies

c. User as part of product?

c. If focus groups

c. Always

c. Always

c. Often

c. Almost always

c. Almost always

c. Almost always

2. Customer as who pays?

Shopper

Client

Client: Candidate

Company

Company

Corporation

Student, parents

3. Customer who may help to pay the bill?

Varies

Taxpayers if type of case/relatives

Donors

Taxpayers if
gov. contract

Taxpayers if
gov. contract

Rarely

Almost always taxpayers

4. Customer as creator of the product/service

Business owner; vendors

Rarely

Consultant

Manufacturer/ consultant

Programmers - patents[B]

In-house or vendor

Almost always faculty[C]

5. Customer as the field of knowledge behind the product/service?

Never

For attorneys, the law—our first allegiance

Rarely

Rarely[D]

Rarely

Rarely

For professors, almost always their disciplines

6. Customer as the regulator (such as a certifier, accreditor, or standards organization)?

Regulators - If BBB member

Texas Bar Association

Regulators –Texas Ethics Commission

Manufacturer; regulators

Technical or industry standards

Never

Accreditors; some regulators/industry standards as well

7. Customer as the region?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

a. Need for qualified workers?

a. Never

a. Occasionally

a. If client issue

a. Never

a. Never

a. Never

a. Often1 to Always2

b. Need for good jobs?

b. Never

b. Occasionally

b. If client issue

b. Never

b. Never

b. Never

b. Often1 to Always2

c. Need for safe communities?

c .Never

c. Occasionally

c. If client issue

c. Never

c. Never

c. Never

c. Often1 to Always2

d. Need for a solid tax base?

d. Never

d. Occasionally

d. If client issue

d. Never

d. Never

d. Never

d. Always

8. Customer as the nation’s economic competitiveness?

Occasionally (Walmart effect)

Occasionally

Almost always

Never

Never

Never

All customers above

9. Customer as the nation’s decision-making in a republic?

Never

Occasionally

Almost always

Never

Never

Never

All customers above

10.The product/service is

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a. For short-term use?

a. Almost always

a. Always

a. Almost always

a. Occasionally

a. Rarely

a. Almost always

a. Occasionally

b. For long-term use?

b. Rarely

b. Always

b. Occasionally

b. Always

b. Almost always

b. Rarely

b. Almost always

c. On-going but changing?

c. Almost always

c. On-going only

c. If an incumbent

c. Rarely

c. Almost always

c. Rarely

c. Almost always

11. Measurement of the user as part of the product and of the product/service is?

Transparent, and the shoppers got what they wanted

Transparent, and it has public records

Transparent, and it has constant media

Transparent, and it has constant metrics

Intransparent, but it has metrics and an outage system

Intransparent, but the company got what it wanted

Intransparent and in transition

12. Rewards of success go to?

Business owner

Both client and attorney

Both client and consultant

Company

Client, but varies with the founder

Corporation

All customers above

13. Risks from failure go to?

Depends on contract, liability

Attorney: 20%

Client: 80%

Consultant: 20%;

Client: 80%

Depends on contract, liability

Depends on contract, liability

Corporation

All customers above

1 With colleges and universities often serving this purpose    2 With community colleges focusing on teaching, rather than research, and serving this purpose from their beginning

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2011 - Column data  provided by P. Batres (Custom Hardware), L. Clark (Attorney in Private Practice), and E. McLane (Storefront Retail, Local Political Campaigns, and Corporate Training)


 

 

 

Definitions

Term

Use of the Term in The Logic of Failure

Intransparency

Planners and decision makers … must make decisions affecting a system whose momentary features they can see only partially, unclearly, in blurred and shadowy outline¾or possibly not at all. (p. 40)

Retain

How can we avoid this pitfall? Simply by keeping in mind, whenever we undertake the solution of a problem, the features of the current situation that we want to retain. Simple? Apparently not.

 

As Brecht observed late in life, advocates of progress often have too low an opinion of what already exists. When we set out to change things, in other words, we do not pay enough attention to what we want to leave unchanged. But an analysis of what should be retained:

§         gives us our only opportunity to make implicit goals explicit

§         and to prevent the solution of each problem from generating new problems like heads of the Hydra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Contact Information:

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Last Updated:

2012 – 06/04

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[A] The term “similarity matching” is James T. Reason’s. The quotation itself is from page 95 of Dietrich Dörner’s The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right.

[B] With some programmers and engineers retaining patents

[C] With faculty in universities expected to add to the discipline’s body of knowledge and faculty in community colleges expected to maintain knowledge in the discipline and to find or create ways to help diverse learners of their disciplines

[D] Engineers, especially in fields where safety is involved, do adhere to the discipline and its standards.