Why You Should Care About Internal Customer Service
Trevor is a senior manager who never includes the proper documentation when submitting his expenses. Kaley never answers the warehouse phone from salespeople with irate clients who didn’t get their deliveries. Ryan spends more time texting than working.
Any of these sound familiar?
It's often neglected - which is a bad idea
Perhaps the most neglected aspect of customer service is internal customer service. It’s unfortunate, because it plays a pivotal role in an organization’s ability to create outstanding experiences with its external customers. Without it, even the best customer-focused initiatives will eventually falter.
It often feels that too many people just don’t care about making things more difficult for their colleagues. Trevor creates more work for people in accounting. Kaley puts salespeople in awkward situations. Ryan’s coworkers have to pick up the work he’s not doing. The frustration builds, and before long, it spills over into the way employees treat external customers.
But appearances can be deceiving. When we meet the Trevors, Kaleys, and Ryans in the organizations we work with, we find that, for the most part, they do care. They’re just unaware of the impact their actions have on those around them. They don’t realize how much extra stress or rework they are creating—or how this, in turn, damages trust and teamwork. Most importantly, they don’t recognize the negative impact it has on how people perceive them as professionals.
The ripple effect of internal service
Every act of service—or lack of it—creates a ripple effect. A missing expense report detail doesn’t just frustrate accounting; it delays reimbursements and can affect budgets. A phone that goes unanswered doesn’t just inconvenience a colleague; it damages the company’s reputation with customers who may already be on edge. And when one person consistently fails to pull their weight, it lowers morale and erodes the sense of fairness within a team.
Internal customer service is, at its core, about trust and its components: caring, competency, and integrity. When employees view each other as valued customers, the culture shifts. Processes become smoother, relationships become stronger, and the external customer inevitably benefits.
How is your Internal customer service?
Here are some valuable questions to ask yourself:
– How are my actions or inactions affecting my colleagues?
– Am I making things easier for the people I work with, or harder?
– Am I building trust, or unknowingly eroding it?
There are a lot of critical skills involved in providing outstanding internal service—and the more you master them, the bigger a difference you make. When you do, you not only strengthen the organization—you grow your own credibility, your influence and your future.
