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Turning Customer Service
Inside Out!
How Poor Internal Customer Service
Affects External Customers
While
companies focus thousands of dollars on external customer
service in hopes of wooing and retaining customers, little
attention is being paid to the effect poor internal customer
service has on overall customer satisfaction. It all starts
within your organization! Sooner or later the ripple effect
reaches your external customers. To really walk your service
talk, your commitment to internal customer service must match
your company's external focus on customer care.
When we think of customer service we think of staff serving
customers over a counter or over the phone. But customer service
occurs within your organization as well. How well does staff
serve its internal customers: other departments, its management,
vendors and consultants? Believe it or not, it all counts.
Internal customer service refers to service directed to others
within your organization. It refers to your level of
responsiveness, quality, communication, teamwork and morale.
I define Internal Customer Service as effectively serving other
departments within your organization. How well are you providing
other departments with service, products or information to help
them do their jobs? How well are you listening to and
understanding their concerns? How well are you solving problems
for each other to help your organization succeed?
Teaming with Success
How
well do you work with other departments? Does your Marketing
department communicate well with the Legal department? Does
sales relate well with Shipping and Receiving? Do Catering and
Facilities work well together? When it's time to communicate
with others from different departments do you take a deep
breath, or smile and relish a chance to renew contact with
colleagues from elsewhere in the company?
As a manager I once joined a publishing company and found myself
in the midst of a war between departments. Production resented
Editorial for the way they missed deadlines and delivered shoddy
copy. Conversely, Editorial had little respect for the resulting
manuscripts they received back from Production, full of errors
and oversights. Poor teamwork, poor communication and myopic
thinking had led to a hardening of positions over time. They
each cared about the finished product but were putting pressure
on each other without realizing it. Over time, both groups came
to appreciate each other and how to best work together to
achieve win-wins for the greater good of their customers.
Do you relish or dread committee work with other departments?
Does it seem their aims are contrary to your department's? When
other departments contact you for help do you regard it as a
nuisance, a distraction and a drain of your valuable time? Can
you see the greater good that comes from helping them solve
their problems or fulfill their needs?
Take pride in opportunities to help other departments look good.
Obviously, you don't want their success to come at your expense.
Usually helping others doesn't mean you lose a zero-sum game,
where only one of you can win and helping others hurts you. In
most cases helping other departments leads to a win-win
situation. And what goes around usually comes around. Helping
other departments succeed can help yours too when the roles are
reversed.
Up with People
Good
internal customer service starts with good morale within your
group. Are your people happy? Do they feel good about themselves
and their contributions to the goals of the department and to
the company at large? They should, and effort should be made to
help them do so. Happy employees are productive, and customers
take note. Happy employees are also better team players. Will
you fly the airline whose employees are striking with
management, or the airline whose employees are management?
Employees invested in employee stock purchasing plans with
matching contributions see themselves as much more a part of the
company. Thus, as the company goes, so goes their lot.
When I fly out of Oakland International Airport I use an
outlying parking lot and shuttle van. This shuttle is shared by
employees from Southwest Airlines, coming to work or returning
to their cars after their shifts. They are as happy and upbeat
when starting their shifts as when they're finishing shifts.
That's great morale, and tells me they like their jobs. It's
contagious! Sometimes I'm envious on that shuttle when I know
I'll be checking in at another airline's ticket counter.
Who's On Top?
Many
organizational charts employ an inverted pyramid with customers
at top. Some companies instead put their employees at the top.
In many senses, the employees are management's customers.
Corporate values that emphasize treating employees well
translate to good customer care too. Does your organization
value its people? Invariably, companies that care about their
people can better ask their people to care about their
customers.
Catering to Customer
Service Needs
Here
are five tips for your organization to help strengthen its
internal customer service orientation.
1. Employees should never complain within earshot of customers.
It gives them the impression your company isn't well run,
shaking their confidence in you.
2. Employees should never complain to customers about other
department's employees. Who wants to patronize a company whose
people don't get along with each other?
3. Employees at every level should strive to build bridges
between departments. This can be done through cross training,
joint picnics, parties or off-sites, or creative gatherings, as
well as day-to-day niceties.
4. Utilize post mortems after joint projects so everyone can
learn from the experience. You can mend fences and gain new
understandings when everyone reviews what went right...or wrong.
By doing so after the project the immediate pressure is off, yet
stronger bonds can be forged while the experience is fresh in
peoples' minds. Not doing so can result in lingering animosities
that will exacerbate future collaborations.
5. Let your employees become "Customer for a Day" to experience
firsthand what your customers experience when doing business
with you.
Congratulations on turning customer service inside out! By
improving internal customer service you have just enhanced the
customer service your external customers receive. You're walking
your talk regarding customer service. Touché.
CRAIG HARRISON is a speaker, trainer and consultant who makes
communication and customer service fun and easy for his
clients. To hear his voice, call (888) 450-0664. Otherwise you
can visit his website
http://www.expressionsofexcellence.com or send e-mail to
Excellence@craigspeaks.com
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