f a p c

Adding Value to Oklahoma

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Who are a company’s internal customers?

W hile a company may have many external exchanges, such as customers purchas-

ing a product or service, there often are more opportunities for exchanges within a company or within the various processes of a company.

Such exchanges are internal supplier-customer processes. A process is a planned and repetitive sequence of steps by which a defined product or service is delivered. Processes can be broken into an activity or group of activities that takes an input from a previous work step or internal sup-plier, adds value to it and provides an output to the next work step or internal customer. Internal customer/supplier processes reflect a partnership, as op-posed to a transaction relationship.

It is customary to consider the customer impact of only certain jobs, such as sales, marketing or customer service. However, this may obstruct the goal of delivering maximum value to real customers. Employee satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability are all interconnected. Therefore, whether a company or organization is large or small, pro-viding good customer service begins with the internal environment.

Anyone who plays a role produc-ing or supporting a company’s end product or service is part of the internal process for that organiza-tion — from the person answering

the phone, supplying office products or fixing the computers to the person cleaning the bathrooms or sorting the mail. Each person plays a role in the never-ending chain of daily activities.

Add Value to Internal Processes

Internal suppliers to internal cus-tomers should make conscious efforts to provide good instructions, proper equipment and relevant training.

The concept of internal customers moves across all levels of an orga-nization. For example, a scheduler provides a schedule to a production manager, who instructs an operator, who produces product and sends it to a pallet operator, who sends the pallet to a warehouse operator. Maintenance personnel keep equipment running, sanitation personnel keep the plant clean to produce wholesome product and so forth.

It is important to recognize each transaction has a set of criteria: the production manager needs the sched-ule on time, the operator needs to know what to make, the pallet opera-tor needs to know where to send the product, the equipment needs to work and product needs to be free of adul-teration.

Internal processes or work sys-tems must be identified and defined. A work system is how a company organizes itself to get work done. Formalizing these systems ties the activities to be done to the purpose of producing a product or service and to company goals. Each link has action requirements and expectations that need to be defined.

Survey Internal CustomersSurveys can establish a commu-

nication process, serving as a tool for overall improvement. Some questions internal customers should be asked: 1) What is the perception of the com-

pany? 2) Are quality efforts worth-while? or 3) Is the company a good place to work?

Management practices relate to employee satisfaction, which also

impacts external customer satisfaction. When employees are satisfied with

their treatment and given the cor-rect tools to do their jobs, cus-tomers are more likely continue to do business with the company.

Internal Customers

Shipping

Purchasing

Packing Boss/Supervisor

Accounting

YOU

Internal ProcessCustomer-Supplier Value Chain

Inputs Value-added Outputs