Distinctions
Customer and User
Who pays, and who experiences?
Typically holds the commercial/contractual relationship and budget.
Occupies or uses the facility day to day, frequently a different person with different, sometimes conflicting priorities.
The difference in one sentence
The customer pays; the user experiences — and FM has to satisfy both.
Why they get conflated
In service conversations, customer and user are treated as one voice, though they rarely want the same thing.
Why it matters
A provider satisfying the customer can still produce persistently dissatisfied users, and vice versa.
How to tell them apart
Ask who controls the budget and who uses the space daily. Two different answers mean two different conversations.
Back to distinctionsLast reviewed: 2026-08-23