Customer as Partner

I was just talking to a friend of mine today when we came across a point of customer as business partner.
My take on the point is, it makes a lot of sense to consider the customer as a business partner to increase customer satisfaction. There are a number of reasons why a customer can be directly compared to business partner:

1. Customer's benefit is organisation's benefit.
2. Customer's loss is organisation loss.
The above points are reasons why a customer should be treated equivalent to a
business partner, but the same points can also be used to understand the effects of considering the customer equivalent to a business partner.

1. Increased customer confidence in organisation will result into smoother running of deals and hence will result into operational efficiency as lesser roadblocks will be faced.
2. Better confidence will result into more customer satisfaction.
3. Better customer satisfaction will result into positive word of mouth.

Hence better business prospects.
But i think this proposition will stand water in a B2B scenario and B2C segment might have to be looked from a different perspective.

Analysis on B2C some other time!!