Making sense of customer's service needs: A case study based analysis framework

An organization providing business-to-business services needs methods to analyze and structure customer needs. In this paper we present a preliminary framework that supports identifying, structuring and communication of customer needs and solutions. The framework has both a content and application approach. It focuses on categorization phase, where recognition of customer organizations structure and business approaches are needed. This supports preparing customer plan and communication plan that define what services and to whom should be targeted. People in different parts of the organization with different roles has also different viewpoint to organizational needs, requiring tailored approaches. In the later stages of customership framework supports joint planning and innovation. It can also be used to analyze change and dynamic nature of customer needs in relation to provider's service offering.