One of the more popular concepts in modern customer experience thinking is the idea of the internal customer. But who exactly are internal customers, and why do they matter?
Who is an Internal Customer?
An internal customer is an individual from an organization who receives a specific service from a staff member within the same organization. They’re typically employees who perform a specific task that directly affects the job performance of another staff member. For instance, a person who manages a company’s email address is an internal customer of a person who writes and designs content for all outgoing messages. Internal customers can also describe one department that similarly affects the daily operations of another.
Internal customers are the people who consume or experience your internal interactions, processes, and relationships. Internal customers are owners, employees, and board members. Internal customers are anybody that has a relationship with or a role within a company.
Internal customers are the first buyers of the ideas of the company, they are one of the assets to make possible the company’s goal. Internal customers are impacted by organizational results, quality and compliance, organizational culture, as well as the successes and failures of their peers. Some examples of internal customers within our company are executives, managers, administrative personnel, regular employees, and temporary employees. In other words, all those people who are hired by the company directly or indirectly to provide a service and whose main role is to generate the final product of the company in one way or another.
To have a better understanding, it is important to ask: How much do we know our internal customers? Here are some tips to identify who our internal customers are:
1) Internal employees who are the first buyers of the company’s promise of service and quality.
2) They are the staff who are commonly related to the company process and products.
3) Are those who are guided and assisted by the chain of command to deliver part or the final product or service.
Given the critical role external customers play in generating revenue, you might assume you should make them your top priority. However, you should service internal customers first. Keep reading to find out the reasons why and get tips on how to service them properly.
Example of Internal Customer?
Internal customers are the stakeholder directly impacting the product or services, thus helping the company meet its organizational goal. The internal customer is in every department and can show up in any form of a relationship. Some of the examples are given below.
- People within a Team
Everything is not dependent on a single person when operating as a team. One person in a marketing or sales team oversees writing the emails, and another oversees sending them out. The entire process is delayed if the person in charge of sending the email design is late. Therefore, proper coordination and communication within the team are required.
- IT Department and its Company Employees
Technology and digitalization have made work so much easier and more efficient. The employees rely on the IT department to ensure that the system is working efficiently. If the system is inefficient and not functioning properly, the entire company suffers. Hence, IT will ask for valuable feedback from their internal customers to resolve the issues and identify the breakdown point.
- Human Resource Department
Every employee of the company is an internal customer of the HR department. This is because HR is also responsible for the well-being of the company’s employees. The HR team ensures that the employees are receiving the required benefits, training, and so on.
Some of the common examples of the Internal customer-
- Temporary workers
- Full-time employees
- Contractor
- Shareholder
Advantages of focusing on internal customers
The advantages of putting internal customers first in an organization’s structure and best practices are as follows:
- Creates a productive work environment: When workers feel appreciated by their co-workers, they may be better equipped to build stronger bonds and take constructive action throughout the workday.
- Enhances prioritization strategies: Staff members can be able to combine internal responsibilities with exterior customer interactions if they view a colleague as a valued customer. For instance, IT teams frequently provide services to clients and colleagues, therefore seeing them as different sorts of clients might improve task scheduling.
- Creates a positive effect on external customers: When employees have high morale and collaboration processes, they can better assess the needs of external customers. As a result, a company might retain more long-term clientele.
How Do You Build Relationships with Internal Customers?
There are several tried and trusted ways to build better relationships with internal customers.
These methods include:
- Show respect and you will get respect in return.
- Build trust in character and ability.
- Open clear lines of communication.
- Respond to feedback.
Ways To Look After Your Internal Customers.
When you place employees and other stakeholders in the context of internal customers, it will transform how you approach their welfare and management.
But most importantly, happy employees will make for delighted external customers. So, are you keen to learn a few helpful ways to cater to your internal customers? Awesome! Let’s get started.
- Create Communication Channels
There are few things as frustrating as working for a company that does not listen to you. When employees feel like their concerns and ideas aren’t heard, they’ll develop apathy towards work.
Offering the means to communicate effectively will help support them just the way you do your external customers.
You need to add communication channels to address their concerns and to enable them to talk to their peers.
Today, there are new platforms that allow your employees to use an instant messaging format to share information. Tools like Slack are awesome since they allow you to have team channels and general channels all in the same space.
You can combine intuitive technology with the ease of use you get from a social media type platform. Using modern and user-friendly tools alongside emails, conferencing tools, and phones will create a communicative culture that’s necessary for this age.
- Build a Journey Map
Building a journey map for your employees will offer you insights and ensure that you don’t miss important steps in their interactions with your business.
You’ll need to create a map from the time a potential hire hears about an opening until they leave. Or even after they leave since it’s not uncommon for businesses to hire former workers.
- Segment Your Employee
Your journey map needs to start by segmenting people based on their roles, functions, or even teams. Since cross-functional teams are very common, you’ll need to consider multiple roles when building different journey maps.
- Identify Touchpoints and Pain Points
It’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your employees to identify key touchpoints. This will enable you to think of ways to improve the experience at these interaction points.
Make sure that you include pain points as well so that you can resolve them. Of course, your journey map and how well it does needs to incorporate feedback on what’s happening at each stage. We’ll discuss the matter of getting feedback in more detail later.
- Set Up Performance Metrics
One of the most important steps you can take is to set up performance KPIs for your employees. This gets everyone in the business on the same page when it comes to what needs to be done and when.
KPIs set up quality standards that people will know they have to live up to. Keeping everyone on track means they’ll be accountable, feel in control and they can make changes too.
This is a start to journey mapping for internal customers. Remember that you need to keep referring to the feedback you get and look for ways to improve your employees’ experiences.
- Offer Training and Learning Opportunities
Today, employees seek growth and personal development along with compensation. As a business, one of the best ways that you can create loyalty and enrich your employees’ experiences is by offering them opportunities to learn.
Consider using a Learning Management System (LMS) to create your own course. You can simply create a membership site on WordPress.
Another way to help is to give people the opportunity to lead in a project or to create a mentorship program within the organization.
You’ll help them build their skills which can be applied to your business. Even better, you’ll create goodwill and the desire of employees to stay with the organization. In summary, the key to proactively impact your internal customers lies in strengthening your organizational culture and developing organizational relationships innovatively and strategically. In this way, your product experience will be 100% excellent.
