Customer

A customer is a stakeholder who directly uses the products or service of Org. Different schools have diverse opinions on this. In orgtology we hold that customers are the people or entities for whom the organisation exists. Often customers do not directly sponsor Org. E.g., Coca Cola gets no money directly from the users thereof. They get their money from retailers. Yet, they direct all their marketing at those who drink it. Therefore, the users, and not the retailers, are the customers of Coca Cola. Other stakeholders have an interest in the continuation of the business, but they do not use the products or service of Org. In orgamatics it gets more complex because the systems within Org will have different customers. E.g., within the resource system employees will be customers to Org, but in the core business system they will be stakeholders. It is thus difficult to classify the customers of Org. In so, Orgtologists are reluctant to separate internal from external customers, since all customers are external to a process or project.

General Definition...

In sales, commerce and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.