Internal Customer QuestionnaireInstructions: Use this SkillGuide to create a questionnaire you can use to determine the needs of internal customers.Questionnaire Category Question
Processes and procedures How flexible are you when meeting internal customer requests?
What policies inhibit your ability to assist your internal customer?
Employee attitudes Do you consider your internal customer a partner?
How do you feel about providing customer service?
Communication Do you ask your internal customers what they want and expect?
Do you solicit feedback to improve internal customer service?
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Instructions: Use this SkillGuide to help you create an internal customer service strategy statement.
The Three C’s Purpose Possible Phrasing Stem
Customer Identify your internal customer “To provide support to those who depend on me…”
Contribution Identify the contribution you are expected to make “Our purpose is to…”
Claim to fame Identify the individual’s or department’s desired performance “We pledge our commitment to creating….”
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Instructions: Use this SkillGuide to help you identify and be flexible with the laws, policies, and standards that govern your organization.
Rule Definition Options
Law Set of federal, state, and local regulations set forth and enforced by the government
Inflexible
Policy Rules that dictate organizational action and behavior
Flexible only when the customer has suffered because of organizational error
Standard Common practices within a department or industry
Flexible in order to meet the organization’s external customer
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The Characteristics of a Service-oriented Mindset
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An internal customer is a person or group that is supported by or dependent on another within the organization. Just like an external customer, an internal customer has expectations that must be met by service-oriented individuals or groups within the organization.
To ensure effective internal customer service, people within an organization must develop a service-oriented mindset which is collaborative, responsive, and dependable.
collaborative
A collaborator works in concert with people. He takes on the behavior of a partner rather than a person centered on his own goals. One result of collaboration is that separate goals merge into one. Collaborators play a part in ensuring that the job gets done. However, you can’t effectively collaborate unless you embody the second characteristic of a service-oriented mindset and are responsive to your internal customers’ needs.
responsive
In a world where people need everything done yesterday, it isn’t hard to understand the value of a partner who can take the ball and run with it. An internal customer appreciates a partner who reacts quickly and decisively to get the job done. This characteristic is the visible manifestation of an employee who understands and respects the needs of his co-worker.
dependable
The third and perhaps most important characteristic of a service-oriented mindset is dependability. A service-minded employee is someone who can be counted on to produce on time—every time. Dependability doesn’t necessarily mean performing superhuman feats day in and day out. Rather, dependability is achieved when tasks, actions, and projects are stated in a manner that is fully understood. When the task is clearly defined, it becomes easier to set realistic deadlines and, more importantly, to meet them.
At its core, service is an attitude. To develop effective internal customer service, an organization must encourage and reward a service-oriented attitude that is collaborative, responsive, and dependable.
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Creating a Collaborative Team Environment
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Babe Ruth once remarked, “The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” The same principle applies in the business world. As a manager, your success depends on your ability to create an environment that is open to collaboration, flexible with processes and procedures, and willing to use internal support networks.
Ultimately, the road to effective internal customer service involves three steps: determining the needs and expectations of internal customers; providing clear vision; and encouraging teamwork and collaboration.
Determine the needs and expectations of internal customers.
The first technique for supporting effective internal customer service is to determine the needs and wants of the internal customers. Your aim here is to identify the state of service in your organization. To accomplish this, you need to look for gaps in service in three key areas: processes and procedures, employee attitudes, and communication practices.
Processes and procedures – Effective internal service relies on processes and procedures that help your internal customers.
Employee attitudes – Effective internal service is fueled by an attitude of cooperation and partnership.
Communication practices – You can’t serve internal customers if you don’t ask them what they want. Another key to effective internal service, then, is to promote a culture that encourages open communication.
To gain an accurate assessment of the customer service gaps that exist in your organization, you must evaluate the true needs and wants of your internal customers. This step will ensure that your solution isn’t just another quick fix.
Provide a clear vision.
The second technique for supporting excellent internal customer service is to provide a clear vision of your company’s internal service strategy. An executive once asked his team members how they could expect their employees to provide outstanding service if they—the executive team—couldn’t define it. That’s exactly what creating an internal service strategy statement addresses. There is no magic formula, but here are a few tips for creating your vision statement:
It should complement the company’s existing vision and values.
It doesn’t have to be a particular length, but it should be clear and concise.
It should be actionable and describe what behaviors are expected.
It should not be developed in a vacuum–include employees, management, and customers in its development.
An internal service strategy vision statement should also include the three C’s: Customer, Contribution, and Claim to Fame.
The first C stands for customer. Your statement should clearly identify who the internal customer is. For example, an internal service statement might include: “Each associate we interact with…” or “To provide support to those who depend on me…”
The second C is for contribution. The internal service statement should identify what contribution the employee is expected to make. It can include phrases like “I will strive to,” “we promise to…,” “our purpose is…,” and so on.
The third C should address the company’s, department’s, or individual’s claim to fame for providing the desired contribution. For example, a facilities department would include “We insist on sparkling clean restrooms.”
Once you’ve created an internal customer service strategy statement, communicate it. Post it in the halls, include it in new-employee orientations, and demonstrate it every day.
Encourage teamwork and collaboration.
It’s not enough to communicate an internal customer focus, your employees must also be able to act on it. The third technique is to encourage teamwork and collaboration throughout your organization.
Develop cooperative goals throughout the company. – Cooperative goals create a sense of unity. For example, a cross-functional team may set a goal to process all customer work orders in 36 hours. The only way to reach this goal would be to have participation from the sales, order entry, manufacturing, shipping, and billing teams.
Provide the resources and the tools necessary to carry out the vision. – Having the resources will empower a person or department to continue to provide internal customer service. For example, data entry clerks need the skills to use a database to support their internal customers.
Support discussion and feedback about internal service systems. – A company must encourage feedback about systems and be willing to discuss ways of improving them. Employees know what’s working and what’s not. They need to feel that they can continually improve the processes.
Continually evaluate processes to improve results. – Your company as a whole should reflect on how it approaches internal customer service. By continually evaluating your processes and procedures, you can refine them and ultimately improve results.
Creating an atmosphere that is open to collaboration and teamwork can be difficult, but it is possible. First, focus on the gaps in your internal service and identify specifically what internal customers expect and want. Once you know people’s needs, create a clear vision of what your company’s internal customer service is, or should be. Finally, support a culture rich in internal customer service by supporting cooperative goals, providing resources, encouraging feedback, and continually refining processes.
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Overcoming the Four Obstacles to Teamwork
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Excellent customer service starts internally. Unless processes, procedures, organizational culture, and employee relationships support a team-based, service environment, the organization will fail to deliver excellent service. To achieve a high level of service, an organization must foster collaboration by overcoming the obstacles to teamwork.
There are four obstacles to developing true teamwork in an organization. Each obstacle and its remedy is described below.
Internal competition among employees
When a competitive environment is encouraged, employees aren’t motivated to work together. It’s “every man for himself” and anything that cuts into an employee’s productive time is resented as an impediment to personal success. The success of the organization just doesn’t count.
To overcome this obstacle by creating diverse teams, use a variety of team models. Show via role plays how every employee is a service provider. And set up a system of joint rewards or compensation for team success.
Pessimism about an overused phrase such as “teamwork”
The next obstacle to overcome is the pessimism that may have developed from all the talk about teamwork, followed by ineffective action or no action at all. Team members need to see support for teamwork from management. Executives set the tone by demonstrating their own teamwork. They also need to work with the teams, not with individuals.
To overcome pessimism, you need to address the issue head-on. Give employees a forum for voicing their fears and concerns about why teamwork won’t work. Then be ready to address each concern with positive action. Ensure that management demonstrates visible leadership support for the teams. Reward team and individual efforts, with the emphasis on team rewards. Reward systems need to recognize the results of teams. Individual rewards are acceptable as long as they’re accompanied by team rewards. Managers will see results where they put the rewards.
An organizational style that pushes instead of pulls for internal customers
Do you “pull” for your internal customers or do you just “push” tasks through their work stations? An organization that pulls for its customers focuses more on meeting specific needs than on blindly adhering to processes.
To overcome this obstacle, you must create a new organizational mindset by focusing on customer relationships as the key to customer loyalty. Read and discuss articles on the pull system. Encourage employees to assist and teach one another. Discuss the value of service in staff meetings. Discuss the pull system as a team, encourage assistance and teaching, and talk about the value of service. Keep coming back to this subject to convey the importance of these issues. By constantly bringing them up for discussion, you’ll keep these concepts in the front of your employees’ minds, where they can’t help but think of them as they interact with internal and external customers.
A lack of vision or support for the team from management
When management just says “fix this” and turns a committee loose on a project, the results are rarely satisfying. Without management sharing its vision or openly supporting a project, committee members will frequently just wander aimlessly.
To overcome this obstacle, you must negotiate contracts that reward the team and management for promoting team efforts. Demonstrate support of team leadership and establish open communication about all phases of department operations.
Excellent customer service starts internally and is reflected externally. To ensure effective internal customer service, your organization must work to overcome the four obstacles to teamwork. By meeting each obstacle head-on, you can turn a competitive group of loners into a service-oriented group of teams.
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A 3-step Method to Improve Internal Customer Service
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One of the best ways to improve your organization’s external customer service is to improve the level of service to your internal customers. An internal customer is a person or group that is supported by or dependent on another within the organization. Just like an external customer, an internal customer has expectations that must be met by service-oriented individuals or groups within the organization.
You can organize your company to establish excellent internal customer service by creating teams to analyze the current level of service, develop company-wide commitment, and manage conflict.
Step 1: Analyze the current level of service and identify areas for improvement.
The first step in the process is to organize a cross-functional task force to conduct research. This task force will identify who the internal customers are for each functional area. Then employees in each area can be surveyed. The survey should ask employees what their interdependent departments are doing right and where their needs are not being met.
In this way, and organization can build on its strengths and target its efforts on areas that need improvement. After the initial survey, an organization should survey again in six months to track its progress.
Step 2: Develop a company-wide commitment to customer service.
To succeed at improving internal customer service, an organization must develop company-wide commitment to it through education, communication, and amelioration.
Educate – An organization must educate its employees about the impact of customer service on the company’s ability to successfully conduct business. To educate employees, an organization might distribute a summary of research results or articles on the impact of customer service on customer loyalty.
Communicate – The importance of the initiative must be communicated to everyone. People also need to air their feelings and concerns. To communicate organizational commitment to customer service excellence, an organization can schedule dialogues and debates, and require all employees to attend at least one session.
Ameliorate – Ameliorate means to “make better.” Ameliorating customer service requires everyone to get involved, either by participating in cross-functional teams or through representatives from each area. These teams are charged with proposing solutions to the internal service problems.
Creating cross-functional teams composed of people from interrelated departments helps employees see that they have a say in making changes that will benefit them. Convincing them that management will really consider their proposals is the other half of the battle.
Step 3: Manage internal conflict.
Conflicts arise as team members look at issues from different perspectives. Conflict is a starting point for two-way communication and an important step in identifying workable solutions. When opposing parties express arguments of “opposition,” they raise the group’s level of awareness and understanding of the issues. As ideas are challenged, mutually agreed on elements can be identified.
Effectively managing conflict leads to better team solutions. Staff members will thoroughly understand the problems and the solutions, and they will have a vested interest in the results. If there is no conflict, you can create it by appointing a “designated critic” for each team meeting. The designated critic’s job is to challenge ideas and assumptions in an attempt to open the door for discussing and evaluating ideas.
One of the best ways to provide consistently excellent external customer service is to encourage consistently excellent internal customer service. As you work to improve the level of service internally, keep these three steps in mind. First, you must identify your current level of internal customer service. Next, you must develop a company-wide commitment to customer service through education, communication, and amelioration. And finally, you must manage conflicting perspectives to arrive at internal customer service solutions that benefit the entire organization.
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Values Necessary for Successful Partnering
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According to author, Roger B. Tompkins, partnering is “a relationship which occurs when two or more people voluntarily commit to help each other as part of achieving what each wants to achieve, independently.” Partnering is a teamwork mindset that can be externalized in many forms. In the customer service world, partnering can serve everyone well, especially internal customers.
For the partnering process to work, certain values must be held by both parties. These critical values are:
involvement
The first value that encourages partnering is involvement. Without buy in from suppliers, departments, managers, and customers, taking on a partnering mindset is difficult to do. Everyone needs to be encouraged to cooperate, mentor, support, educate, and train others. The spirit of competition must be minimized. Employees should be made to feel safe enough to reach out to one another.
acceptance
The next partnering value is acceptance. The negative effects associated with judging others’ skills have no place in partnering. Every employee should be treated as a valuable member of the team. Individual employees should be encouraged to value the skills and talents of their coworkers.
recognition
Helping others to achieve can only happen when you feel recognized for what you’ve done. In an environment that lacks proper recognition, employees view the recognition “pool” as limited, like a jar full of candy—once it’s gone, it’s gone. Recognition should be unlimited, immediate, and offered to all. Everyone appreciates thanks and praise.
honesty
Honesty is another value that contributes to partnering success. Information sharing must be inclusive rather than exclusive. Employees need to know that they’re getting honest, up-to-date information—whether it’s good news or bad.
energy
An atmosphere of positive energy can encourage partnering. Working with difficult customers for hours at a time is draining and can diminish commitment to service. To recoup, the work environment needs to be filled with positive energy rather than complaints. Managers should encourage teamwork and collaboration. Rewards should be given spontaneously as well as at regular intervals. Managers should have the freedom to offer perks and incentives for outstanding service.
renewal
An organization’s culture must also support periods of professional and personal renewal. To achieve renewal, an organization can offer regular workshops on interesting and relevant topics. Other opportunities for renewal include employee retreats, job responsibility swapping among employees, and, the use of compensation time. These offerings, coupled with the tone set by management, contribute to an environment where employees can thrive.
Partnering should be a good experience that brings forth growth, support, and better customer service. With willing partners, your organization can implement partner relationships successfully. The necessary partnering values play an important role in the outcome of the experience for the company and its employees. Involvement, acceptance, recognition, honesty, energy and renewal should be part of the organizational culture as well as the employees’ standard values.
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The Five-step Partnering Process
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Partnering is a powerful tool for improving internal customer service. It is a teamwork mindset created when two or more people within an organization voluntarily commit to help each other. Partnering takes commitment and a certain amount of effort. However, the process of setting up these relationships is simplified when you break the partnering process down into its five essential steps.
Step 1: Identify partnering opportunities.
To identify partnering opportunities, you must examine the organization for systemic strengths and weaknesses. Where and why do processes and procedures break down? Which parts of the organization run smoothly, and what makes them successful? If, for example, employees frequently complain about paycheck mistakes, the cause may be poor communication between department managers and accounting employees. Once the weakness is identified, a partnering relationship may be established to work the solution.
Step 2: Select a partner.
After identifying appropriate places to introduce partner relationships, the second step of the partnering process is to select a partner. Remember that partners can be individuals, departments, or even a category of people, such as your customer base. The partners should be willing, committed, accepting of others, honest, and excited about the opportunity for an alliance.
To help you select a potential partner, consider the following questions:
Does this partner have something new to offer me, my department, or my company?
Do I have skills I can share with this partner?
Does this partner have the time to commit to a working relationship?
Can this partner visualize the short-term and long-term possibilities of a partnering relationship?
Does this partner have strengths that overlap mine?
Can this partner envision, organize, and carry out a plan with me?
Selecting the right partner is critical for the success of the venture. If a potential partner doesn’t have the willingness, proper skills, or right attitude, the partnering relationship may fail.
Step 3: Establish mutual goals.
Once a partner has been selected, the next step is for both partners to establish mutual goals for the relationship. These goals must reflect why the decision was made to partner in the first place. Do the partners hope to improve communication, fix processes, set boundaries, or interact more effectively? These goals will chart the course for the relationship and keep both parties focused on desired outcomes.
Step 4: Create a communication plan.
You’ve now identified partnering opportunities, selected a partner, and established mutual goals. The fourth step is to create a communication plan for yourself and your partner. This plan is an important way to define expectations, boundaries, and goals for all communication.
To create an effective plan, consider the following questions.
Will you update each other via e-mail, voice mail, or in person?
How often will you communicate?
What obstacles will you face when communicating?
Will you formally document your communication?
How will you set time aside for communicating?
How will you be straightforward with each other?
The best method of communication for you and your partners will depend on your answers to these key questions.
Step 5: Measure progress.
The final step of the partnering process is to measure your progress. You need to assess how well you are meeting or exceeding your goals. The measurement can be both quantitative and qualitative. You could:
Keep informal or formal notes about progress
Evaluate process outputs based on performance statistics
Fill out surveys about improvements
Ask other employees to describe the partnering effects
Redefine goals for the partnering relationship.
If you want your partnering relationship to succeed, you need to identify partnering opportunities, select a suitable partner, establish mutual goals, communicate effectively, and measure progress. By following these five steps or guidelines, you will more quickly and easily arrive at an optimal partnering relationship.
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Partnering with Support Staff
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Partnering is the process of fostering a teamwork mindset. In the customer service industry, partnering is especially effective in showing support staff that they are valued, and encouraging better communication between sales and support teams. Partnering for this purpose is achieved by establishing the importance of the support person’s role, promoting teamwork, and encouraging open communication.
Establish the importance of the support person's role.
Support people who feel appreciated by their internal customers have higher morale and a better work attitude than those who don’t. Unfortunately, the business world is structured so that the support staff plays a secondary role to its internal customers. But their efforts contribute to the success of the department.
This is where partnering comes into play. The first partnering technique that you, as the internal customer, can use to make the support person feel appreciated is to establish the importance of that person’s role. When you make a sale or win a contract, make sure the support person receives recognition along with the salesperson. Encourage all salespeople to give timely and specific praise to support members for tasks well done.
Promote teamwork.
The second way you can partner with the support staff to show your appreciation is by promoting teamwork. As an internal customer, you can stress the key benefits of teamwork: more contracts, more money for the firm, more perks. You can include support staffers in all phases of planning and execution, and in contract celebrations. And, reward them for their work.
When you promote teamwork in this way, support people work with renewed energy and ambition. They understand the benefits of performing their tasks well, they see how their efforts influence the success of the internal customer and the company, and they can expect their efforts to be recognized.
Encourage open communication.
Another way to partner with support staff is to keep them informed. Support people who are kept “in the loop” are more appreciative and work harder than those who are not. Go out of your way to make support staffers feel like insiders when it comes to client moves. Encourage their input. Ask sales staff to request ideas and suggestions from their support people. Listen to their comments and act on all good suggestions.
One way to put these partnering techniques to use is to hold a staff meeting that includes both sales and support personnel. During the meeting, stress the critical role the support workers play in helping the sales team secure contracts. If you are applauding new contracts won by sales personnel, praise the services that the support personnel provided. Next, focus on promoting teamwork among the staff. Emphasize how teamwork might help the department break its sales record. Finally, encourage communication on the part of the support staffers. Inform them about potential clients the sales team has been asked to pursue, and set aside a half hour or so for the support people to address their concerns.
Partnering is an important tool internal customers can use to show support staff that they appreciate the role they play and the services they provide.
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What to Do When Rules Obstruct Service
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Laws, policies, and standards govern an organization’s internal processes, ensuring safety, efficiency, and consistent results. At times, however, these rules may prevent you from providing internal customers with the best service. When this happens, you need to understand your options.
When rules prevent you from effectively serving your customer, you need to know what, if any, alternative actions are appropriate. The following guidelines will help you to decide whether to search for a compromise.
Laws – Generally speaking, laws are not open for compromise. When you are faced with an issue where the solution would violate a law, your only course of action is to obey the law.
Policies – Policies are rules that govern an organization’s actions and behavior. They are created and enforced by the company. Though not immutable, they are largely inflexible. An employee may overlook a policy if the customer has suffered from a mistake made by the organization.
Standards – Standards are common practices within a department or an industry. They are open to some compromise. When a standard gets in the way, be sure to evaluate both the needs of the customer and the needs of the organization as a whole, then choose the option that best serves your customer.
When it comes to bending the rules to serve an internal or external customer, you need to be informed as well as flexible. Before you can determine what action to take, you must identify the laws, policies, and standards that govern your organization. Laws must be followed, but, you may have some flexibility when it comes to bending policies and standards. Find out what options are acceptable within your organization. Then strive to do what is best for the customer.
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Overcoming the Obstacles to Empowerment
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An empowered employee is a person who does what it takes to make the customer—and in the long run, the company—happy. An empowered employee feels free to do whatever it takes to ensure that the customer gets what he needs and keeps coming back for more. Yet obstacles often prevent employees from exercising this empowerment.
Some obstacles to customer service are instituted by managers in the form of policies, procedures, and standards. But the principle obstacles to empowerment are lack of purpose, lack of protection, and lack of praise. To overcome these obstacles, you must promote the vision of your organization, tolerate mistakes, and praise initiative.
lack of purpose
The first obstacle to empowerment is lack of purpose. Employees whose goals are to merely accomplish their tasks are typically less motivated than those with a higher purpose or goal.
A good way to overcome lack of purpose is to promote the organization’s vision. A vision is the higher goal of the organization—what it hopes to achieve beyond mere dollars and cents. An employee with a vision will almost always work with more zest than someone who views her job as taking 100 calls or processing 100 forms. Employees stay empowered when the vision is reiterated. Meetings are a good place to communicate vision. You can also promote vision during discussions with individual staffers and with an inspirational slogan that is strategically placed so everyone can see it.
lack of protection
Another obstacle to an employee’s empowerment may be a fear of punishment for doing the wrong thing. Employees may want to do everything in their power to please their customers, but they may fear retribution if they make mistakes when breaking a rule.
The best remedy for lack of protection is for management to demonstrate its tolerance of mistakes. Try to set a precedent for tolerating honest mistakes. Give employees the benefit of the doubt. When mistakes are made public, try to express a positive view of the situation. When someone makes a significant mistake, use it as a learning experience. Don’t let major or damaging mistakes go unchecked, however. The point is to create an atmosphere that gives your employees the freedom to sometimes go above and beyond when helping a customer.
Lack of praise
Lack of praise is an obstacle when employees see no good reason to knock themselves out to please the customer. A company whose managers never recognize their teams’ efforts will soon experience a decline in employee satisfaction and productivity.
To remedy this obstacle, managers must praise initiative through public recognition, private praise, evaluations, and promotions. Make it a policy to recognize initiative as a regular part of your activities. Post handwritten notes of thanks in the cubicles of exceptional employees, and you will inspire them to do an even better job. When employees consistently demonstrate initiative in behalf of your customers, mention it in evaluations and consider giving them a promotion.
An organization that empowers its employees not only enjoys a healthy work environment, but also positively affects its external customers. By removing the obstacles to empowerment, promoting vision, tolerating mistakes, and praising initiative, your organization can move a step closer to excellence in serving both your internal and external customers
