The cult of the customer keeps popping up to annoy me. Yesterday I posted about how being customer-centric doesn't mean spending all our time with the customer, about how it's important to spend most of our time inside the factory, delivering. Today I want to talk about "customer value" and how it isn't the Holy Grail of IT. We as organisations don't exist for our customers. We exist for the continuance of the organisation, Click to tweet We exist to maximise value for the organisation, whether it be commercial, public or non-profit. It's not anti-customer to realise they are not the be-all and end-all of our existence.
The goal of our activities should be to maximise value for our organisation. That value is defined by the owners and governors of the organisation not the customers.
The measurement of value is of course different for every organisation. Customer value is not one such metric. Stop foaming: let me explain.