Customers
If satisfying customers is a strategic imperative, it seems obvious that customers should also be used as SMEs. In actuality, this is seldom done. Collecting information from customers is usually considered to be a marketing activity rather than an HR activity. Yet example, cashiers spend 78% of their time interacting with customers and only 13% of their time interacting with managers. For jobs like these, using customers as SMEs is likely to become more common as organizations increasingly incorporate the perspectives of customers when designing jobs and assessing employee performance.