Everyone-Around-You Customer Model
Map every stakeholder and serve each with integrity
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
This model expands customer thinking beyond the person buying or using the end product. Map everyone around the business who receives its work or enables it to operate: consumers, frontline professionals, employees, regulators, investors, and vendors. For each group, define what a best-in-class experience and useful service look like. Then deliver that service with the same high level of integrity, even when the groups have different needs. In a mortgage company, for example, the consumer receives the loan experience, loan officers and employees rely on the operating system, regulators oversee conduct, investors buy the produced loans, and vendors support delivery. The framework focuses leadership on service behaviours it can control rather than trying to control whether a particular transaction makes or loses money.
Origin
Extracted from Coffeez for Closers
Core principles
- 01Customers include more than the end consumer
- 02Employees, regulators, investors, and vendors all receive service
- 03Integrity applies across every stakeholder relationship
- 04Service quality is controllable even when financial outcomes are not
How to run it
- 1
Map the stakeholder circle
List every group that uses, delivers, oversees, buys, or supplies the product. Include internal and external groups rather than stopping at the end consumer.
Pro tip Trace one transaction from first contact through delivery, oversight, sale, and vendor support.
Watch out Do not omit a group simply because it does not directly pay the company.
- 2
Define service for each group
Describe the experience, information, reliability, or support each stakeholder should receive from the business.
Pro tip Use stakeholder-specific expectations instead of one generic service promise.
Watch out Calling everyone a customer does not mean every group has identical needs.
- 3
Set the integrity floor
Specify the honest and consistent conduct that applies across all stakeholder interactions, including those with regulators and vendors.
Pro tip Make the standard observable through response times, accuracy, transparency, or fulfilment.
Watch out Do not improve one group's experience through deception or unfair treatment of another.
- 4
Deliver and review
Serve each group against its defined standard and review where the experience falls short. Improve the controllable service rather than judging success only by profit on one transaction.
Pro tip Collect evidence from every stakeholder group, not just consumer satisfaction.
Watch out Revenue alone cannot show whether regulators, employees, investors, or vendors are being served well.
In the wild
Pavan identifies the consumer, loan officer, employees, regulators, investors, and vendors as customers around a mortgage business. The company aims to give each group a best-in-class experience and high-integrity service, while recognising that the investor ultimately buys the loan the company manufactures.
→ Leadership evaluates service across the full system rather than only at the borrower interface.
Common mistakes
Stopping at the end buyer
The business can still fail if it neglects the people who deliver, regulate, purchase, or supply the product.
Giving every group the same service
Stakeholders have different needs, so each group requires a specific definition of a good experience.
Using profit as the only result
A single financial outcome does not measure whether the business acted with service and integrity toward everyone around it.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for regulated or multi-sided businesses that depend on consumers, staff, partners, vendors, investors, and oversight bodies.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when the customer label would obscure legal duties or conflicts that still require explicit prioritisation.
From the transcript
“there's multiple customers there's your there's your consumer right um there's your loan officer there's your your employees and there's your Regulators”
“the biggest customer is the investor because they're buying the product that we produce”
“everyone around you is your customer so deliver the the best possible highest level of service uh and and at the highest level Integrity”
From the episode
A.I. in Finances and Mortgages ft. Pavan Agarwal
Pavan Agarwal