Define a customer as your sales person and what do you get?

I have been around long enough to remember the progression in management movements over the last 2 decades: it went something like this - initial quality programs, the movement to satisfaction, then on to loyalty, throwing in relationship and experience management into the mix.

Each movement brought with it a new jargon . Each was, and still is, a powerful management principle added into the mix. Each of these movements kicked up a social dialogue. One on-going social and business dialogue centers on the word "customer." On the periphery  of this dialogue, the chatter headed down a path that included discussion of the fact that there are internal and external "customers" . 

Under no conditions though should that mean that the salespeople are the customer and not the end-user.

In retail banking, at least at jpmorgan chase, the platform bankers were "the customer".

The natural outcome of this was less than ideal end-user experience (the true customer) and clear rips in the fabric of fiduciary and lending tapestry.

And, to some extent this wrong definition helped lead to the lending crisis in equity products