Outstanding customer service is why we continue to frequent particular restaurants, grocery stores, and even hospitals. We enjoy being “attended to” in a manner that makes us feel like we are not only appreciated for our business, but also understood regarding our individual needs.

These organizations have learned, perhaps initially through training, but eventually by surveying the needs of the customer, that each and every contact is critical and is a potentially game-changing contact. Every customer transaction is a moment of contact and done well, we the consumer will continue to invest in their business to help them prosper.

One area that is often left to chance however, is the manner a team or teams within an organization treat each other. Often the work process makes it mandatory, instead of an option, to work directly with other teams, departments, or even certain individuals. And even though we how important external customer service is to the eventual outcome of the organization, we often neglect the importance of internal customer service. Yet all of us, in some fashion, are either customers of someone in our company or we are the supplier of service to others in our company.

How we interact with our internal customers has a tremendous effect on the overall happiness and productivity of the entire company. If we treat each internal customer as we treat our external customer, then the entire organization moves to a higher level of overall satisfaction. But the most important part of internal customer service is to know what our internal customer needs and wants. And the only way to find that out is to go over to their department or individual desk and ask them!