Every company has customers, whether these are high street consumers or other businesses. And 
it’s the same for the people inside your company. ALL employees have customers, regardless of whether they’re working on the front-lines.
For the ones who don’t work in direct contact with customers, ask yourself: “If I didn’t do my job today, who would be affected?” That person is your customer. We call these people internal customers.
Why should a business care about how internal customers are treated, or how efficiently they are served? As long as the real customers – the ones you buy your products – are happy, then everything is working as it should, right? Wrong!
As Virgin CEO and founder Richard Branson once said…“The way employees are treated is the way they will treat your customers.” And as any failed business knows with hindsight, the breakdown in customer relationships often begins with a breakdown in communications within the company itself.
What is internal customer service?
Internal customer service is the service given to your employees from their fellow employees. It is the working relationships between individuals, teams and departments. It is the thing that determines how quickly your external customer will get what they want, to a standard they are satisfied with.
Serving an internal customer well means delivering what they need, on time and to a desired standard, so that they can do their job. When one team or individual fails to deliver, that’s going to impact on another’s ability to produce results. And this domino-effect is going to impinge on every other aspect of a project, leading to a potentially disastrous outcome for all.
Improving internal customer service
How can leaders go about evaluating and improving their internal customer service? You might feel that your employees and teams aren’t communicating as well as they could be; that projects are going overrun or not fulfilling standards due to a misconception of what is expected. If this is happening frequently and the workflow is becoming overwhelmed, you may want to consider taking the following steps.
1. Draw up a ‘business tree’
Draw up a tree of your business, outlining every team and department and the tasks they are responsible for. Identify the role of each member and what their job title entails. Who are they serving? Who is their customer?
Use this time to also identify gaps in the workflow system that could be filled by new recruits later on.
2. Make it two-way
By communicating to your employees or team leaders exactly what is expected of them, you’ll be able to gather their feedback on whether these demands are realistic. This is a perfect time to find out what’s really going on within your company and what challenges your employees might face when carrying out their tasks.
If an individual or team are feeling overworked, undervalued, or are lacking the right resources in order to do their job well, then this is the time to address those concerns.
3. Establish clear SLAs
Once each individual and team has explained what they can provide within dedicated time slots (and is equipped with the right tools to do so), it’s time to establish clear Standard Level Agreements (SLAs) for each team so that everyone else will know what to expect.
This includes things like availability, time constraints, resources required, turnaround times, contact method etc. Let everybody know the best way to approach a person or team when making a request, to ensure the best outcome for all.
4. Open up
Open up lines of communication so that all teams can reach one another in a way that is convenient and accessible. This could be a company intranet with a virtual bulletin board, or using a third party application such as Slack. Email and Skype work well too.
And communication doesn’t have to all be about work. Arrange a regular circulation of employee news, updates and friendly info that everybody can use to catch up on their colleagues’ lives and contribute things they want to share.
A weekly blog or newsletter works very well, but targeted internal communication software such as Newsweaver Internal Connect can provide valuable insight into what makes your employees tick. Used by companies with over 100,000 employees such as Vodafone, it helps to keep all employees in the loop about other areas of the business and supplies real-time metrics showing which topics are engaging employees the most.
5. Get social
Being sociable with colleagues one of the fastest ways to break down internal barriers and get employees feeling more comfortable with one another in the office. Provide plenty of opportunities and places for employees to mingle, both in daily break times and outside of work too.
6. Welcome collaboration
Your employees are your company’s best assets, so it would be wise to welcome their ideas as currency for your brand’s growth.
Mobile network provider O2 uses specific workplace initiatives to promote collaboration and creativity, including Think Big, where employees can suggest community projects to support, and The Funsters, where people can suggest ideas for team-building activities outside of the office.
As well as allowing complaints and concerns to be brought to the fore in an honest, open and non-pressured way, you should also provide opportunities for your staff to get creative and share ideas that could benefit the business both internally and beyond.
Why internal matters
There are a number of proven benefits to maintaining excellent internal customer service within your company. These are:
Improved employee satisfaction
Smoother workflow, leading to better quality output
Reduced costs due to things getting done first time around
Slower employee turnover rate.
Why is employee satisfaction important? The truth is that according to figures from the Gallup Organisation, a quarter of the US workforce are in industries with a 100% turnover rate. This is hardly going to be good for business, or for the morale of remaining employees.
Unhappy employees can’t make happy customers, at least not in the long term. In a worldwide study by Watson Wyatt, it was found that companies with effective internal communications have a 15.7% higher market value and deliver a 29% higher shareholder return.
This alone should be enough to get leaders thinking about what’s going on on the inside.