Internal Customer Relationship Management
Internal Customer Relationship Management
The Six Needs of a Customer are:
1. To be informed
2. To be in control
3. To have choices
4. For customer service reps to be friendly,
5. Knowledgeable, and
6. Attentive
Are you keeping your internal customers in the know? You may think you don’t have time to talk to everyone in your office or place of business about what is going on, but uniformed customers are unhappy and uncooperative customers. Hold a brief team meeting to bring everyone up to speed. Take a few moments to jot down a memo, or send out an email to keep people updated. With everyone on the same page, work will flow more smoothly.
Are you telling your co-workers or staff what to do and how to do it? Or are you explaining to them what needs to be done, then empowering them to find the best way to accomplish the goal? Do you collaborate as a team, or is every man an island to himself? Remember customers need to feel in control, and this is no different for the workers in your organization. You can facilitate that feeling by giving direction, then enabling your staff to do what they do best.
Offer choices. While it is important to delegate tasks, most people don’t appreciate having work delegated to them without their input or consent. You can avoid being the target of resentment by explaining what needs to be done, then asking for help. A true team will evaluate the task at hand, and those with the expertise AND the time available will typically step up. Should this not happen, don’t panic! Explain that you realize everyone is swamped, and ask the question, “How can we get this done without any one person feeling overwhelmed?” Engage the team in problem solving, and together, you will work out a viable solution.
If your attitude is something like this, “I don’t have time to be friendly for the sake of some sensitive co-worker’s feelings”, then you are violating Customer Need number four. Just as your external customers appreciate a smile, a friendly greeting, or a kind word of encouragement, so do your internal customers. Friendliness breeds more of the same, and builds loyalty as well as the willingness to cooperate.
People rely on you to help them get their jobs done. When they come to you with questions, is your most common answer, “I don’t know”? Customers need you to be in the know. Your ability to intelligently answer internal customer inquiries establishes their trust in you as a knowledgeable, competent member of the team. This is especially true if you are in a management role. It is your responsibility to be on top of the information your internal customers need to know. If you honestly don’t know the answer to something, reply with, “I’ll find out for you.” Then, ensure that you follow through on that promise in order to maintain your credibility.
One of the most fundamental service delivery standards in customer service is that of making eye contact with a customer within the first 3 to 7 seconds. How often does it happen though, that in a workplace co-workers pass each other without so much as a hello? Customers who feel ignored tend to develop a sense of indifference or general dislike towards the offending service provider. Over 60% of all external customers who leave a service provider do so because of that sense of indifference! Without attentive service to your internal customers, you could experience high staff turnover, discontent amongst your team, and uncooperative staff members. Isn’t it amazing what a little acknowledgement can do?
Internal Customer Relationship Management - To learn more about this author, visit Julie Christiansen's Website.
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We know that there are two kinds of customers: Internal and External. Internal customers are the people with whom we work – and we rely on them to help us meet the company’s objectives. What do we do, when internal customer relations go awry? The principles of providing exceptional customer service do not change when dealing with internal customers, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that the people in our workplace are our customers too! The basic needs of a customer are especially important to remember and implement when considering your co-workers.
The Six Needs of a Customer are:
1. To be informed
2. To be in control
3. To have choices
4. For customer service reps to be friendly,
5. Knowledgeable, and
6. Attentive
Are you keeping your internal customers in the know? You may think you don’t have time to talk to everyone in your office or place of business about what is going on, but uniformed customers are unhappy and uncooperative customers. Hold a brief team meeting to bring everyone up to speed. Take a few moments to jot down a memo, or send out an email to keep people updated. With everyone on the same page, work will flow more smoothly.
Are you telling your co-workers or staff what to do and how to do it? Or are you explaining to them what needs to be done, then empowering them to find the best way to accomplish the goal? Do you collaborate as a team, or is every man an island to himself? Remember customers need to feel in control, and this is no different for the workers in your organization. You can facilitate that feeling by giving direction, then enabling your staff to do what they do best.
Offer choices. While it is important to delegate tasks, most people don’t appreciate having work delegated to them without their input or consent. You can avoid being the target of resentment by explaining what needs to be done, then asking for help. A true team will evaluate the task at hand, and those with the expertise AND the time available will typically step up. Should this not happen, don’t panic! Explain that you realize everyone is swamped, and ask the question, “How can we get this done without any one person feeling overwhelmed?” Engage the team in problem solving, and together, you will work out a viable solution.
If your attitude is something like this, “I don’t have time to be friendly for the sake of some sensitive co-worker’s feelings”, then you are violating Customer Need number four. Just as your external customers appreciate a smile, a friendly greeting, or a kind word of encouragement, so do your internal customers. Friendliness breeds more of the same, and builds loyalty as well as the willingness to cooperate.
People rely on you to help them get their jobs done. When they come to you with questions, is your most common answer, “I don’t know”? Customers need you to be in the know. Your ability to intelligently answer internal customer inquiries establishes their trust in you as a knowledgeable, competent member of the team. This is especially true if you are in a management role. It is your responsibility to be on top of the information your internal customers need to know. If you honestly don’t know the answer to something, reply with, “I’ll find out for you.” Then, ensure that you follow through on that promise in order to maintain your credibility.
One of the most fundamental service delivery standards in customer service is that of making eye contact with a customer within the first 3 to 7 seconds. How often does it happen though, that in a workplace co-workers pass each other without so much as a hello? Customers who feel ignored tend to develop a sense of indifference or general dislike towards the offending service provider. Over 60% of all external customers who leave a service provider do so because of that sense of indifference! Without attentive service to your internal customers, you could experience high staff turnover, discontent amongst your team, and uncooperative staff members. Isn’t it amazing what a little acknowledgement can do?
Internal Customer Relationship Management - To learn more about this author, visit Julie Christiansen's Website.
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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