Be Different or be dead

February 15, 2010

Why internal customers are as important as external ones

Source: Pexels

Absolutely true. If the way people treat fellow employees is memorable, the customer experience will be delightful as well.

If the service provided among employee groups sucks, service to external customers will follow suit.

Employees need to WOW! one another if they in turn are to be able to WOW! a customer.

Organizations are a mosaic of customer - supplier relationships. Marketing serves Sales; Engineering serves Marketing and Marketing/Sales/Administrative functions serve the Customer Service Organization.

If external customers are to be dazzled, the delivery process needs to operate seamlessly and all delivery units in the organization need to dazzle each other; providing their piece of the service delivery chain and going the extra mile for their internal customer.

If one link in the chain fails then the chain breaks and the external customer is ‘de-dazzled’. If on the other hand every link not only plays their expected part but also goes the extra mile for their internal customers, the service provided to the external customer will most likely blow them away.

How do you know what level of service quality is being provided?

Constant measurement of the service quality provided to customers must be done; the use of internal report card Is the method I successfully used as the leader of many different types of organizations.

Service stories should be told. And service heroes should be honoured.

We need, however, to take this a step further and apply the report card process to measure internal service quality. Sales should rate the level of service Marketing provides them and Marketing should rate Engineering.

Every internal customer-supplier relationship needs to be measured to see if the customer has been dazzled in an engagement with another employee

How to build a report card

Its really not that difficult to do and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Pick six deliverables Sales expects from Marketing, for example, and have Sales rate on a 1-5 scale how effectively and consistently Marketing delivers each.

Have monthly joint review meetings to discuss the results and strike action plans to address any shortfalls.

Include internal service quality in the bonus compensation plan. I assure you that if part of Marketing’s bonus is based on the report card from Sales, the marketing folks will definitely pat attention to Sale’s needs, wants and desires.

The payoff: the service delivery process gets better and better over time; internal customers get dazzled.

And, the external customer both reaps the rewards of having a delightful service experience and returns the favour with continued loyalty.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 2.15.10 at 03:31 pm by Roy Osing
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