The Internal vs. External Customer

 

 By Jim Byrd

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Taking Care Of The Customer

The implications here are to somehow, create a balance between the needs of both the internal and, that of the external customers. A firm must to some extent meet the needs of the external customers, who they are primarily producing products and services for, and also take care of the internal customers who are delivering these products and services as well. At some cost level, needs and expectations of all customers must be consistently met, and hopefully, in most cases, exceed.

The focus should be on updating and ensuring that all sentiments of both internal and external customers are somewhat positive. In the real world, we want not most customers to be happy; we need all customers to be happy, this creates synergy. Show some kind of accountability, in that you do not just read notes from the suggestion box and then ball them up and place them in the round file.

Some remedies:

1. Keep in touch: somehow or means stay in touch with both the internal and external customers.

2. Take care of customer complaints promptly; it is part of what makes the firm go.

3. Create check-valves to anticipate customer needs. With this, we are talking cross-functional teams to monitor activities within the firm.

4. Use empathy; put yourself in the shoes of the customers, albeit internal or external. The focus at this point should be that of reasonable expectations and outcomes.

5. Lastly, build effective teams to try at best to build synergies within the firm. With this, you should be able to create a strong moral and spirit within the firm which will then reflect the quality of both products and services being presented to old and new external customers. More importantly, these objectives will, in fact, increase the bottom line.

Source: Michael M. Lombardo, September 2014. FYI: For Your Improvement – Competencies Development Guide, 6th Edition. Retrieved from http://amzn.to/2a4psSI