Stakeholder Mapping: Know Your Customer Before You Chase Value

Stakeholder Mapping: Why You Cannot Focus on Value Until You Know Your Stakeholders

Focus on value. It is the first guiding principle of service management, and on the face of it, the most obvious. Why would any service provider not focus on value? Yet in The Journey to Service Excellence, John Sansbury shows that the principle, which he subtitles ‘Know your Customer’, is honoured far more in word than in deed. In essence it means two things: understand who your stakeholder is for each service, and understand what constitutes value for each of those parties in respect of each service. Many providers, he observes, unconsciously attempt to be all things to all people because they have never done either.