I was just over at Chris Lawers blog and picked up a discussion (started by Richard Anderson) about the use of the term 'user' to describe people 'on the receiving end of technology services'. There was some suggestion that 'customer' was more respectful (user had 'connotations'), but it was pointed out by Mark Kawano that the customer (the purchaser) was very often not the person who ended up 'using' whatever it was that was purchased.
I have to agree with Mark, ‘users’ don’t always see themselves as customers (and in fact reject the term as ‘window dressing’) But it depends on the context. The sort of ‘users’ I deal with are people in organisations who have been required to use technology as part of their jobs. They relate to the concept ‘user’ in the sense ‘the poor sucker who is using this defective system..”, whereas ‘customer’ doesn’t do much for them (except to provoke in some the question “you mean I have to pay for this support” ).
But it is also right that ‘user’ is a generally perjorative term. I used to do computer support for the police, and they DID NOT like to have have the term applied to them at all. We tried all sort of alternatives, the closest we got was ‘Client’ , but we always ended up with confusion between the ‘contract Client’ (eg the company) and the individuals we were supporting.
The answer in the end was to use the word properly (to go back to basics), and talk about ’system users’ . I liked that because it hooked into the concept that these people were using the system (or the facility or whatever) we had provided, and I could focus my people (on the service delivery side) on getting things right with the system AS WELL AS with the users of the system.
Interesting how we ‘contract’ (as in shrink) language, then find it unsatisfactory, then look for some substitute word that is ‘more appropriate’ , ‘less offensive’, or (in this case) ‘less tainted”. But I’ve never been a fan of contracting language, why say in one word (unclearly) what you can say in ten (clearly).
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