From the course: Putting ITIL® Into Practice: Applying ITIL® 3 Foundation Concepts

Internal and external services, customers, and users - ITIL Tutorial

From the course: Putting ITIL® Into Practice: Applying ITIL® 3 Foundation Concepts

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Internal and external services, customers, and users

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- [Instructor] Services can be internal or external. For example, internal services are provided to internal customers and users belonging to the same business entity as the provider. External services are provided to external customers, individuals, and organizations outside of the provider's business entity. Making these distinctions can be key, because often internal and external services and customers have different needs, and unrecognized services in customers can be an issue. For example, for a bank the Branch Manager would be an internal customer using internal services, like checking systems, and any customer walking up to a cash machine is an external customer using an external facing service. As for unrecognized services, if your customer expects good Wi-Fi service in your lobby while they wait for the mortgage professional and you put in some kind of wonky solution a few years back as a convenience that they're trying to use and failing at it, you have a potential for a customer dissatisfaction situation. Key questions around internal and external services and customers are do we know what our internal and external services are, and who the internal and external customers of the services are respectively? Do we differentiate between internal and external services and customers, and if not, is that a problem for us? Let's look at how we can apply this concept. We'll use the second way, enlighten and empower people, as an example. Here's how, make a list of all your services and for each of your customers. Mark each one to indicate internal or external. Ask, are there any key differences for these services, between internal and external services, and internal and external customers that are unrecognized and, as a result, are causing issues for us. A clear action here is to bring what you've learned through the analysis forward in your organization.

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