Very often, internal customer service break downs are  happen between motivated people who are trying to do the right things. This example is an example from  a recent Belding Training Case Study:

ANDY

Andy was in the company’s sales/support team. He told me that time was a critical hot button for customers, and said that this was where things were breaking down. The example he gave was of a customer who, on a Thursday afternoon, had called in a large order for delivery the next Monday morning. Andy sent the order to the logistics coordinator, Janice, who responded that Wednesday morning was the earliest they could do. Andy escalated it to a manager, who arranged for the Monday delivery. He shared that this was a common situation, and his belief that coordinators didn’t appreciate the importance of customer service.

JANICE

In a separate conversation with Janice, we heard the same story. It was unprompted, and with a very different take. She told us that getting large orders approved, assembled, packaged, and shipped involved a lot of moving parts. Their internal standard was a three-day window from order to delivery, and even that was cutting it close.

This Thursday afternoon order for a Monday morning delivery, Janice explained, was basically a one-day request that would cause a number of already-planned deliveries to be late. She echoed Andy’s sentiment that this was a common occurrence, but felt that the salespeople were guilty of over-promising with no regard to consequences.

This didn’t have to happen

Had the two colleagues viewed each other as internal customers, the outcome would have been quite different. 

Take a look at the case study

Check out Belding’s Internal Customer Service Case study and see what went wrong, and how it can be prevented