Who is the customer?

Within dentistry we may sometimes think about our customer, we probably always think about our patients and from time to time we may think of our customers as patients. The NHS is a bit different to most other sectors where the customer is defined by a product or that the product is differentiated for a customer.

Most companies and commercial organisations put a lot of time and effort into segmenting their customer base to find out who their customers are now or could be in the future.

They identify ways of grouping them and then following them through their business. This is not dissimilar to how most insurance companies risk-pool their subscribers and then set premiums based on those groupings. We all experience this too when we renew our indemnity each year and have to select the practising group that we belong to. This method of grouping is the same reason that different branches of the same retailer will know where to target certain products and services.