Who is your customer? – Understanding the different roles of customers

Delivering differentiated services that lead to remarkable experiences requires a thorough understanding of your customers. While this is a highly complex task that requires an analysis from different perspectives some patterns can help to identify these potential areas. The following is such a pattern that can be used to better understand the roles of your customers.

The initial question is: Who is your customer?. This is not always obvious since there are many actors involved in the purchase and use of a certain product or service. Yet five main roles can be identified that exist in many purchasing situations. Often several, sometimes all of these roles might be conducted by the same individual but recognizing the needs and requirements of each separately leads to potential areas for service design.

The following figure shows the most common roles that customers represent.

Here is a short description of the single roles:

• Initiator: The individual who initiates the search for a solution to the customer’s problem.
• Influencer: Individuals who have some influence on the purchase decision.
• Decider: Taking into consideration the views of the initiator and influencer some individual will make the decision as to which product or service should be purchased.
• Purchaser: The individual who is actually paying for the product or service
• User: The individual who finally consumes the product or service

It is important to understand that in any buying situation various actors can and will influence the buying decision and they will also be – either active or passive – experiencing a product and service and should therefore be considered when designing the overall “brand experience”. If different individuals undertake these roles, it is necessary to develop individual and differentiated services to satisfy the different needs and requirements.

The standard example for this is a visit to a theme park with children. The initiator might be the child that saw an advertising on TV, while the decider and purchaser are the parents. While it is important to design a great experience for children at a theme park, it might be even more important to focus on the experience of parents because ultimately they will decide and pay for the next trip to Disneyland.

The different roles become even more apparent in a business-to-business context. One classic example is the Hilti Fleet Management. Hilti offers differentiated services for the purchaser of the drilling machines and does not focus solely on the user of the drilling machines.

We’ll manage your tools so you can manage your business.
For a fixed monthly fee, Hilti provides you with a new fleet of tools.
During the usage time, there is only one monthly invoice for all your tools that covers absolutely all costs (including repair). Plus — at the end of the usage period — your fleet will be renewed with the latest generation of Hilti tools. Based on your needs, you select the type and quantity of tools.

Your benefits from Hilti Tool Fleet Management:
Full transparency & reliability

• Instant access to your complete tool inventory
• Easy accounting and cost allocation
• All tools labeled with your company logo plus inventory code / job reference possible.
• Exclusive Internet portal to track your tool fleet, order tools and consumables and arrange tool repair pick-ups

Applying this simple pattern can help identify areas for innovative products and services which in the end contribute to a remarkable customer experience.