Moving Towards a Customer-Focused Approach in Facility Management: Lessons from a Case Study

In the last decade the outsourcing market of Facility Management (FM) has significantly grown in the major developed countries. Private companies and governments have seen in the FM contracts a convenient way to gain competitiveness. However, these contracts have often failed in the delivery of excellent services to end-users. The emphasis towards compliance with the contract terms has often led clients and suppliers to a loss of attention to the real needs of end-users. This paper presents a four-years case study in which the client, an health agency, and its supplier have established a customer-focused approach for FM, developing services from the real needs of end-users. The work highlights how the customer-focused approach has allowed both the client and the supplier to identify concrete opportunities for service improvement and to increase service value. The paper reports the tools, the practices and the skills developed to focus on customer needs.