WHO IS YOUR
CUSTOMER?
HOW TO UNDERSTAND
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS
METHODS TO BOOST YOUR CUSTOMERS' BASE
- Essentially create a clear
customers experience vision
- It's crucial to understand who
your customers are
- Make an expressive connection
with your customers
- Relate to customer feedback and
act upon regular employee feedback for growth
- Utilize a quality framework for
the development of your team.
Why is Improving Customer Experience Essential For Businesses?
Positive customer
experience is crucial for your business conquest because happy customers
convert to loyal ones who help in increasing revenue. While it may seem like
extra effort to focus solely on customer experience, it is worth it.
WHAT IS THE CORRELATION BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CUSTOMERS?
How can you build on
it to expand your business in today's fast-driven economy? These and many other
business growth problems this manual will help you to solve. Business growth
and sustainability are paramount to every profit-driven organisation.
In trying to respond
to this question, many people would think only of the customer who purchases
their company goods or services – the external customer.
It is not unexpected
because it is usually complex for average employees to identify their customers
when those customers are internal to the firm. And -as a result, these internal
customers who are fellow employees often get little attention; traditionally,
the focus is more on external customers.
It is splendid to want
to serve the external customers more; it is essential to know that the quality
of service the external customers receive is a role of the quality of service
that the internal customers receive, called internal service quality.
Put differently, the
quality of service the external customers receive relies on the quality of
service the internal customers receive. Hence focusing more on the external
service at the outlay of the internal service does not work. And the expense is
impeded growth and profit.
To explain this
further, I’d like to take you via the Service-Profit Chain.
A notion developed by
a group of experimenters from Harvard University, the Service-Profit chain
dissects the levers that translate good service into profitability. The
research levers are represented by ties in an eight-link chain as depicted
below.
THE SERVICE-PROFIT
CHAIN
The service-profit
chain works this way: Employee satisfaction increases when the internal service
quality is enhanced. When the employee is satisfied, loyalty increases which
raise productivity.
Higher productivity
results delivery of more significant external service value to customers and
enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty. Profit and growth are stimulated by
customer loyalty.
THE QUALITY OF SUPPORT
OR SERVICE EMPLOYEES
It is consequential
that one of the ties in the chain is the internal service quality - the quality
of support or service employees receive from fellow employees. And the natural
idea of chains is that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Hence to make
the chain strong to maximize profit and growth, all the links must be
constructed strong. If any is weak, profit and growth diminish.
Companies that
understand this development and sustain a corporate culture centred on
excellent service for customers and employees. They know that focusing only on
service to external customers could be a flawed strategy. It does not care for
the internal service quality, consequently leaving that link weak. And since a
chain is as strong as its weakest link, profit and growth will not improve.
However, many
organizations inadvertently do not pay attention to internal service quality.
The result is that their employees are economical with the aid and service they
give to fellow employees.
Do not guard
information instead of sharing them to enhance performance based on the
knowledge. Don't avoid outreach instead of networking across departments. It's
one department versus another instead of one department and other departments.
Employees pass by or sway struggling coworkers to score a point instead of
helping.
And the person at the
receiving end of the resultant suboptimal service is the external customer.
So rather than
supporting themselves to fight the common enemy – the competitor, employees in
these organizations deny themselves mutual support, leaving the customers
dissatisfied and vulnerable for the competitor to capture.
Here's a question to
contemplate: If I ask employees in your organization who their customer is,
will they indeed recognize their fellow employees as one and give them excellent
service?
Learn more ways to increase your Productivity Skills here, including the fantastic read-aloud topics for business growth
Read Self-training Manual here: 3 SURE WAYS TO MAKE MONEY IN NIGERIA WITHOUT A JOB.
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written- by
Kingsley Ehimare (Kingsmond), Business Psychologist, an HR generalist expert & Content Marketer at KCmond Consulting. In his spare time, he can be found reading capacity building publications or scrolling through News apps, thinking about how to make people actualize their potential. For any related queries, contact kcmondconsultans@gmail.com.
This intellectual property belongs to KCmond Consulting. No part of it is expected to copy or publish without the sole permission of owners.
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