Sales and Marketing: Internal Customers

As an employee, there are many occasions whereby within a company, the employee's and/ or departments are the customers. Each department depending on the size of the company may rely on products and/or service from another department to get their job done. Thus, this creates internal customers. One thing you have to keep in mind is that just because someone is not paying for a product or service, it doesn't mean that they are not relying on you to complete your job. Another area I see employees as being Internal Customers is when dealing with the Human resource department. It is their job to resolve issues, do reviews, provide information, and help the employees. The employees are their customers!

Where I see a break down in the company I work for is the lack of communication between Human Resource department and its employees. It is very unclear of policies and procedures needed to get information about our benefits. The Human Resource department has their own directory on our intranet, however many of the forms there are outdated or no longer used. In addition, when you write them an email it can take months before you even get a reply. The total lack of communication, and being at a satellite store, instead of the corporate office, makes most feel like less important of employees. When I have communication with our corporate office, I will ask them if they know about this or that out of our human resource department. Our corporate office personal seems to not have problems with our human resource department communicating information to them. However when I speak to other sales associates in satellite offices, I hear nothing but complaints that they can't get the forms needed or the information they need to make claims or change their benefits.

This is very discouraging, and I feel one of the main reasons why we have such a high turn over rate of employees at our satellite offices. Most feel they are just not important. During our last quarter meeting, someone brought up the fact that there was a lack of communication between corporate human resource department, the V.P. response was to comment how great customer service he received from our human resource department. The V.P. didn't bother to listen to the problem, but basically brushed it off as he got great customer service, so the rest of us must be getting great customer service. I am not sure if he got good customer service because he is a V.P. or because his office is located at our corporate office. The response he gave made most of us feel like we shouldn't complain and just be happy we have a job.

Following the customer service model, I feel that our human resource department is failing due to either the communication systems they have in place or the people they have working in the Human resource department. Given the nature of this forum, I won't use the colorful choice words that most satellite employees have for our Human Resource department. It very difficult to come up with a solution, when you are not sure what the problem is, and why many of the sales staff is treated like a second class citizen. All I know is it can't get any worse, it can only get better!

References cited:

Swartzlander A., (2004) Serving Internal and External Customers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Person Education, LTD