The Internal Customer

Everyone in your company can name your customer. They can even describe in detail the products and services you offer. Many know your market position in regards to your competitors. However, do they know who their internal customer is? Does it matter?

Does it matter?

The short answer is “yes, absolutely”. In reality many don’t realize how important this department or person is and who they are.  For you, this is incredible vital. If your employees aren’t aware of their internal customer is how can they be of service? How can they help in create efficiencies? How can they be sure the company is providing the best service possible to the external or final customer?

Who is the internal customer?

Briefly, it is the person or department who relies on your work in order to do theirs. For example – a truck driver cannot take their load to the next destination if the shipper does not have the cargo and paperwork ready. Therefore the shipper’s internal customer is the truck driver. In the big picture, if this is not done efficiently and you are paying for people to wait, you will ultimately be increasing your cost which in turn reduces your gross profit. No one wants that.  Another example would be the person who takes the orders from your customer.  If they do not process the order the correctly, the warehouse will not complete the order properly and you will have an angry customer who didn’t get what they wanted.  Who wants to talk to angry customers? In this case the internal customer for order taker is the warehouse.  By now I know you are getting the idea.

Why don’t your employees understand this?

Usually it is because they are so caught up in their work; they don’t always look up to see who is depending on them. Or maybe the person who hands it off to them is having difficulties.  This can be infectious all the way down the line and throughout the process.

How to create awareness?

This will depend on the size of your company. If you are small, you can have each person down the line speak with their internal customer to understand how they use the information that is given to them. Questions can be asked on how to improve and make communication easier.

If you are a medium size company, you may want to have meetings where departments present to each other or the company as a whole.  This way everyone can understand how everyone needs to work together. After the presentation be sure to ask for questions from the group, you can really take it a step further by having the departments meet and work out any ongoing issues they may have.

If you are a larger company, do some videos and store then on your intranet site. Since companywide meetings may be difficult or the internal customers may not be physically near each other.

Only once people understand how their work affects others and the running of the company as a whole, can they truly engage in a process of improvement. Imagine the possibilities within your company…go ahead and dream, its ok!