Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

Have you ever heard the phrase “Internal customer”? I hate that phrase, and we encourage all of our customers to drop it. Here’s why. Service is taking action to create value for someone else. Now, if that someone else is the external paying client, guest, visitor, member, then it’s called a paying customer, and that’s the customer that everybody inside the organization should be focusing on serving well. 

But then what about the internal service where you have the IT department, the finance department, the H.R. department, and so many others? Inside an organization, we are service partners to each other. Why do I say that? Because the definition of service is taking action to create value for someone else. 

Now let’s take a classic situation. Finance and the sales team. Often they’re battling with each other. This one wants all the reports to be accurate. This one wants a little more flexibility. But let me ask you, are there some things that finance could do that would be action that would create a little more value, a little more ease, a little more convenience for the sales team?

For sure. But at the same time, is there action the people on the sales team could take that would make it a little quicker, a little more efficient, and a little more accurate for the people in finance? 

Absolutely true. 

So then if both parties inside an organization can take action to create value for the other, who’s the customer? And that’s the point, They’re not internal customers to each other. I don’t want anybody inside the organization saying, “Hey, I’m the customer. It’s your job to serve me.”

No, inside an organization, we are service partners with each other and our job is to continuously improve and uplift that service so that together we can give the external real customer a better experience that keeps them coming back, keeps them loyal, keeps them sharing more.