Who is a customer versus a consumer versus a user?

[Michael Searle]

I'm trying to understand the differences between customers, consumers, and users, and when each of these entities is the correct to use within a given situation.

We are community college and we have CSM implemented in our environment. The third-party service provider that implemented CSM for us told us that students should be treated as customers or consumers, not users. Accordingly, he set up the system such that all of our users, both employees and students, require a consumer record to submit a case.

In our situation I believe this construct of customers and consumers is confusing and complicating. 

In all of our employee and student facing systems users with system accounts are treated as users. Their permissions within the system differ, but they are all users. So this customer/consumer paradigm seems comparably strange and out-of-place. Especially because all of our employees and students also have user records to enable ITSM incident reporting. Maintaining both a user record and consumer record for each employee and student is cumbersome.

I don't know whether user self-registration is a factor in the decision. But we don't allow user self-registration in our system. Thus for us it shouldn't be a consideration in the decision.

I welcome feedback from any of you with significant experience in CSM, especially if you know of, or have experience in, an environment similar to ours--where everyone is treated as a user.

Thank you!

[Michael Searle]

I'm sorry, this sentence should be corrected for clarity.

In all of our employee and student facing systems, users with system accounts are treated as users, not different classes of users.

[Wenhui]

Hey Michael, 

I came across your question while I was researching about the difference between 'consumer' and 'consumer user' in ServiceNow CSM. You question is very interesting, my apologies I do not have significant experience in CSM yet and I am still learning about CSM, but below is what I have found: https://www.servicenow.com/community/csm-forum/consumer-vs-consumer-user-avoiding-registration/m-p/4... 

It looks like the ServiceNow CSM 'Case' table is referencing the 'Consumers' table, which is provided out-of-the-box by ServiceNow. Setting up users in 'Consumers' table will allow utilising ServiceNow OOB capabilities (automating tasks, ect). I think that is probably why your provider is recommending linking all the users records with consumers. 

That is based on my understanding of CSM so far. Hope you already found the answer you are looking for. : )

[Ryan S]

Hi Michael,

What did you end up solutioning on this front? It seems there isn't a clear path which is odd given how widespread the basic use case is of students at colleges using ITSM or CSM.