Management, Human Resources, and Life in a Customer Focused World

Human Resources is one of the areas that is a challenge.  The definition of Human Resources tends to be one that is nebulous because each company uses it differently. In some companies, HR is simply the people that handle internal complaints and concerns including hiring, firing, harassment, etc. In others, HR’s role is expanded to include performance management, training and development.
One of my readers posed the question:

How can HR be more Customer Focused?

The answer to this is that it, again, depends on your definition of HR.
If it is the first, then there isn’t a huge impact that HR can have on being “customer focused” in my opinion. The biggest area where they can make a difference to the customers is by being responsive and quickly addressing the internal problems.  This, indirectly, helps fix problems that could otherwise negatively impact a customer.
If it is the second, however, a HR professional can be leveraged.  Their skills in training and development as well as performance management can be put to use developing both on- and off-line training for customers.  They can also focus on trying to understand where the current customer offerings are missing opportunities and help identify the best areas of ROI.
Human Resources is, admittedly, a challenging area that is a strong support role for the company with a difficult transition to becoming a leading customer focus role.  Anyone else have thoughts on great ways to turn HR into a customer focused organization?