Every Job Is a Customer Service Job

Every com­pany hopes for cus­tomer ser­vice excel­lence. Only a por­tion of them, how­ever, strate­gi­cally aim for this excel­lence through their day-to-day busi­ness prac­tices. And of those, an even smaller seg­ment actu­ally achieve (and main­tain) the goal.

Of the tiny busi­ness pop­u­la­tion who can truly claim cus­tomer ser­vice supe­ri­or­ity, one thing is cer­tain: Every employee owns a piece of that prize. Sim­ply put, a com­pany can­not achieve cus­tomer ser­vice excel­lence with­out first attain­ing high lev­els of effi­ciency, qual­ity, and pro­duc­tiv­ity among its inter­nal ser­vice providers.

Empha­size Inter­nal Cus­tomer Service

All too often, com­pa­nies place a strong empha­sis on exter­nal cus­tomer care while los­ing sight of the fact that inter­nal cus­tomers mat­ter just as much. Why does it mat­ter? Because some­where down the line, the ser­vice pro­vided to an inter­nal cus­tomer will show up in an exter­nal cus­tomer transaction.

(Just in case it’s not obvi­ous, an inter­nal cus­tomer is defined as any employee who depends on the tim­ing, qual­ity and accu­racy of a colleague’s work in order for them to suc­ceed in their own work.)

As a cus­tomer ser­vice con­sul­tant, what I’ve seen is that those orga­ni­za­tions in which a cus­tomer care cul­ture is truly embed­ded do not make dis­tinc­tions about inter­nal and exter­nal care. Each employee’s mis­sion is sim­ply to demon­strate excel­lence with each and every task. There’s an implicit under­stand­ing that every job is a “cus­tomer ser­vice” job.

Start With Awareness

In devel­op­ing a company-wide cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing pro­gram for a large insur­ance client, my col­leagues and I cre­ated an activ­ity called The Rip­ple Effect. Just like it sounds, the game aimed to show employ­ees the impact of their work upon oth­ers’ abil­ity to do their own job well). It proved to be one of the most pop­u­lar sec­tions of the course and pro­vided some true a-ha moments on the part of the par­tic­i­pants. Many of them admit­ted that they’d never seri­ously con­sid­ered the rip­ple effect of their work on that of their inter­nal customers—and ulti­mately on the company’s exter­nal customers.

In another ini­tia­tive (this one too aimed at help­ing employ­ees to rec­og­nize their inter­de­pen­dence), we cre­ated an Engage­ment Cycle which tracked a cus­tomer engage­ment from begin­ning to end and charted the var­i­ous inter­nal cus­tomer needs at each stage. Again the a-ha’s.

Define Cus­tomer Ser­vice as a Func­tion, Not a Department

How does your orga­ni­za­tion view cus­tomer service—as a depart­ment, a spe­cific job role, or as a respon­si­bil­ity shared by every employee?

To help you assess the level of inter­nal cus­tomer ser­vice in your orga­ni­za­tion, begin by get­ting each employee to answer some sim­ple questions:

1. Who are your inter­nal customers?
2. What do these cus­tomers need from you in order to do their jobs well?
3. Are you in reg­u­lar two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion with those customers?
4. If inter­nal cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion were mea­sured, how would you rate?

Man­agers can ask them­selves a cou­ple of addi­tional questions:

5. How is frus­tra­tion over inter­nal cus­tomer ser­vice affect­ing morale and turnover?
6. What does my team need to do to both pro­vide and receive excel­lent inter­nal cus­tomer service?

Teach Them to Be Good Customers

What does an orga­ni­za­tion want from its cus­tomers? Sat­is­fac­tion, loy­alty, and maybe a bit of appreciation.

Inter­nal cus­tomer ser­vice works the same way. Employ­ees will be moti­vated to con­tinue pro­vid­ing good ser­vice to cowork­ers if they’re given appro­pri­ate feed­back and, at least every once in awhile, sin­cere thanks for a job well done.

Are your employ­ees sat­is­fied? Find out today. Down­load this free employee sat­is­fac­tion sur­vey or paste this link into your browser: http://info.impactlearning.com/reg_esatsurvey.html