6.1 Understanding Your Customers Requirements

6.1 Understanding Your Customers' Requirements

Before you can begin to develop the service model you need to understand who your customers are. When speaking of customers, one of the first visions that come to mind is a person purchasing a product or service from a retail store. Although these are indeed customers, broaden the scope of customers to any person that benefits from a service the ISD organization provides. If you're a database administrator, your customers could range from the developer requesting a new database table to the factory worker who uses the database to track inventories. There are customers that you may never see and meet, but still require you to perform your job to the best of your ability. A customer is a person that will request a service or receive a benefit from a service you provide. Approach the development of the service model from your customer's perspective.

Identify who your customers are. Start by writing down a list of your current customers that you provide services to. Next, add to the list customers that you will be seeking in the future. Setting a vision of the type of customers you want to service within your organization can help determine new customers. You will find yourself referring to this list often during the development of the service model. Once you have determined who your customers are or will be, set up the service model to meet their requirements. Keep the customer as the focal point. Without customers, there is no need to provide services.