Updated: June 27, 2024

"I'm sure he's stealing," said the manager. "But I can't fire him."

I was visiting with the parking manager at a busy hospital location. We watched as the cashier served a steady stream of cars.

The manager suspected the cashier was stealing a small amount of cash each shift. He needed to investigate to get proof.

Our client, the hospital's facility manager, said no.

The cashier was was popular. People would line up at his gate, even when the line was shorter at another exit. He had even been featured on the local news.

The client felt the cashier was good for public relations. He was willing to overlook a small revenue shortfall.

The parking manager respected the client's wishes. After all, the hospital was his primary customer.

I want to help you identify your primary customer. Knowing your primary customer can lead to unexpected decisions such as letting a suspected thief keep on stealing.

A person uses a magnifying glass to examine wooden blocks cut out to look like people.

Who is a customer?

A customer is anyone you serve. It could be someone who buys your products or services, but there are many other groups who could be considered a customer as well.

Here are just a few examples from the hospital parking operation:

Hospital leaders (the client)
Employees who work at the hospital
Delivery drivers
Patients
Visitors

Think about the people you serve. The list might include groups that aren't traditionally considered to be customers, but fall under the definition of someone you serve:

Vendors
Contractors
Coworkers

In some businesses, like hotels or nonprofits, identifying your customers is even more complicated.

The parking company served hospitals, office buildings, hotels, stadiums, airports, and other venues with paid parking. Here's an example of their customer list:

A table listing various parking company customers

The parking manager at this specific hospital knew the client prioritized service over revenue.

It was located next to a large university. The hospital’s parking lots and garages would become full of students if it didn’t charge a nominal fee. That would make parking more difficult for patients, visitors, and employees.

The client hired the parking company to control access.

Most employees had monthly passes. Patients and visitors could get validated or reduced-rate parking. The average fee collected was just $2.

That’s why the long line of happy customers was far more important to our client than the $10 or so that might be missing from the cashier’s till each day.

Proving theft was difficult anyway.

The client insisted the parking lot’s exit gate be kept in the raised position during busy times. This allowed cars to exit much more quickly, but it prevented the parking manager from getting an accurate count of cars that exited.

The normal procedure was to note the number of times the gate was raised and lowered and compare that to the amount of fees collected at the end of the day. This was impossible to do when the gate stayed in the up position.

Create your own customer list to better understand the different groups you serve. This short training video walks you through the steps.

Identifying your customers from Customer Service Foundations by Madecraft and Jeff Toister

Who is your primary customer?

The primary customer ultimately pays the bills and drives your business. This is a type of customer, not to be confused with target customers or customer segments.

For example, let's say you manage a museum. Your primary customer is a visitor. You might have several target customer segments that you try to attract:

General public
School groups
Tour groups

Each segment might include several sub-segments with different needs. For instance, the general public could be further divided into different groups:

Members
Locals who visit occasionally
Vacationers from out of town

You could probably slice and dice these groups even more, but you get the idea. Overall, visitors are the museum's primary customer because that's who the museum exists to serve.

There are other customers the museum has to care for. Here are just a few:

Referral partners such as hotels, tour organizers, and schools.
Donors who help fund the museum.
Members of the press who write stories about new exhibits.

All of these groups are important, but it's critical for museum employees to know that visitors are the primary customer.

There are two reasons why.

Focus

Your customer experience vision should focus on your primary customer. This is a shared definition of an outstanding experience that gets everyone on the same page.

At a museum, the vision influences all sorts of decisions including the layout, the curation of exhibits, the way exhibits are displayed, the recruitment of volunteers, and the way employees and volunteers interact with visitors.

A museum that creates an amazing experience for visitors will likely keep referral partners, donors, and the press quite happy as well. On the other hand, a poor experience will make it more difficult to attract partners, donors, or good press.

Prioritization

You sometimes need to prioritize the needs of one customer group over another.

Imagine a generous donor wants to fund a new museum exhibit. The exhibit is of personal interest to the donor, but would have limited appeal to the museum's visitors. Building the exhibit would also require another exhibit to be removed, potentially one that visitors really liked.

Taking a donation could be tempting, but in this case it would hurt the primary customer.

How can you identify your primary customer?

The best way to identify your primary customer is to think about the person or group of people who is most essential to your business. Without them, your business would not exist.

This is easy in some businesses. In a retail clothing store, that would be the people who buy your clothes. At a bank, it would be customers who deposit and borrow money.

It can be trickier in other industries.

A florist might take orders through a national service and deliver the floral arrangements to local recipients. Who is the primary customer, the national service or the local recipients?

The answer depends on which group is the ultimate economic driver.

It might be the national service if the vast majority of the florist's business comes through this partnership. Perhaps it's an exclusive relationship.

On the other hand, the primary customer would be the recipients if the florist also has its own local customers that it serves directly. The florist might supply local restaurants, hotels, and other businesses in addition to serving walk-in customers and taking delivery orders direct from the consumer.

Try to identify the group of customers who are most essential to your business. These are the people your business is naturally built around, and without whom your business would not exist.