8
What
makes a Person or an Organization a..
•Customer?
•Client?
•Member?
•Contact?
| •The questions we ask, from different
perspectives, e.g. the Marketing perspective, from the manufacturing
perspective, from the sales perspective, from the R&D perspective – are
very different – yet they’re about the same Party? |
|
| •Sales may ask when is a Customer no longer a
Customer? |
|
| •When does a Client stop being a Client? |
|
| •Same for member and contact. |
|
| •Frequently what we see, are ‘Active’ and
‘Inactive’. That is, an ‘Inactive Customer’ which can be viewed by Sales as
“No longer a Customer”. But from Marketing, they may still care about the
Parties that are no longer a Customer. Yet, there may be difficulty about the
definition according to Marketing and may skip the opportunity to Poll an
Inactive Customer. |
|
| •Bottom line – flags indicate there’s something
wrong. This is where technology has caused a mutation of semantics. That is,
from a performance standpoint, the flag is a quick and dirty way of answering
certain questions – however that answer is usually from a very narrow
perspective, e.g. Sales. Of course, over time, Marketing may have slipped in
their own Flag to deal with whether or not they should Poll the Customer. |