Case: PLS Consult-Evaluating customers
Published: 1997Most customers are sources of value, in forms other than hard cash.
Customers provide training for employees, they can be used as references, they talk to each other and so spread the word and the image, and their demands encourage the development of competence. The importance of customers is specially evident in knowledge organizations. The big auditing firms, for example, use their large customers to train new recruits, by assigning them the routine parts of the audit.