It's your customer service squad's job to please customers and keep them satisfied. Merely, if they're in charge of customers, who's making certain your employees stay happy, too?

Employee satisfaction is nigh equally important as client satisfaction. When your employees are happy, they provide meliorate service to your customers. When they're upset or unmotivated, their performance suffers besides. Keeping your team fueled and ready is a crucial component of managing an effective customer service team.

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While service and support reps provide customers with external customer service, internal customer service refers to the experience employees accept when interacting with your business. For example, if your company provides an IT desk, that would be considered internal customer service.

In this post, we'll break downward internal customer service and listing out some best practices you lot should consider when supporting employees at your business.

What Is Internal Customer Service?

When employees have a problem that'south impeding their workflow, they reach out to an internal client service team for assistance. Internal customer service refers to the services your business provides to its employees. These interactions aren't customer-facing and involve 2 or more team members.

The about notable instance of internal customer service is an IT desk. If an employee has a technical trouble, they can achieve out to the IT team for support. The IT team will analyze the effect and come up with a solution that fits the employee's short- and long-term needs. This blazon of immediate response ensures bug are resolved and employees tin can get back to work as soon every bit possible.

Why Internal Client Service Is Important

Roadblocks will happen at whatever business organisation, but internal client service provides consistency for your team's productivity. It's the internal service squad'due south task to brand sure your employees have everything they need to complete their goals. That manner, they spend less fourth dimension troubleshooting and more time working with customers.

And, when your employees can stay focused on their goals your customers volition be happier, too. Client interactions will be smoother and employees volition provide ameliorate service since there are fewer distractions in their workflow. Your support and service teams will work more confidently knowing they're being supported equally well.

Now that nosotros're familiar with internal customer service, let's get over some best practices you should consider when implementing it at your business.

Internal Customer Service Best Practices

1. Consider the purpose of the team.

Whether it's an IT desk, Human Resources department, or some other form of internal client service, these teams need to understand their role in the system. Their job is to maintain the backend of the business so marketing, sales, customer service, and product direction teams tin can accomplish their goals. In that location may only be a handful of these employees at your company, only they're crucial to your organization's success.

ii. Publish a daily schedule for your service desk.

A daily schedule lets employees know when they can access your service desk-bound. This is important because information technology prevents stressful interactions with your internal teams.

For instance, if a support rep is working and suddenly their calculator crashes, they need to set expectations for the client. If your internal noesis base doesn't contain your service desk's schedule, the rep can't provide the customer with an accurate timeline. That could easily issue in a poor client review and potentially churn.

iii. Prepare articulate expectations.

Just similar how support reps set expectations for customers, internal teams should exercise the aforementioned for employees. When an employee has a trouble, they should be given a specific timeline for when information technology will be resolved. Even if the answer isn't ideal, information technology'south of import to be transparent then employees tin can plan their workflow accordingly.

four. Adopt customer service tools.

For many businesses, customer service tools can assist both internal and external teams. Internal teams can apply these features to process employee requests and complete daily tasks. And, if both teams use the same tools, it'south easier to share information because everyone is familiar with the software.

five. Keep a conversational tone.

Since these teams piece of work with employees and internal stakeholders, they can skip some formalities when it comes to communication. Of course, they should address stakeholders in an advisable, professional way, but they don't have to communicate the same fashion they would with a customer. In fact, using a casual, friendly tone will build a stronger rapport with your employees.

6. Be cognizant of employee goals.

While internal teams should be friendly, they should also exist aware of what the employee is trying to accomplish. If the issue is important or time-sensitive, they should react immediately and create a short-term solution. If it's a problem that keeps popping up, they should expect into options that will prevent the upshot in the long run. Identifying and reacting to goals volition assistance internal teams effectively solve issues in an efficient and organized way.

7. Create internal service standards.

Internal service standards are similar daily metrics for internal teams. You can mensurate things like average response time, average handling time, and which hours of the solar day your squad is busiest. Gathering and analyzing this information can help you improve your internal service features.

Another standard yous can measure is employee satisfaction. Feedback collection tools like NPS® surveys and anonymous reviews tin show how employees feel about their internal teams. This can help y'all place and right roadblocks that are impeding your organization'southward success. And, internal team members will be more motivated knowing they're existence measured on the employee's experience.

viii. Provide cocky-service support options.

Some employees may have trouble accessing your internal client service teams even when they're available. For example, if a remote salesperson breaks their calculator, they may not be able to bring it to your It desk. By the fourth dimension it does get to your service team, at that place's no telling how long it will have to fix it. All this time, the employee is losing sales because they tin can't employ their computer or admission their contacts.

For these cases, your business concern should provide self-service back up options. This could exist an internal knowledge base, a virtual banana, or even a community page where employees share ideas. These tools help employees solve their problems without having to reach out to your internal service teams.

ix. Explain how problems happen and how to solve them.

Often, internal team members are the subject-matter experts in their role at the visitor. So, after your squad resolves a example, they should tell employees how the consequence occurred and what they did to fix it. Non merely does this assure the problem is solved, merely it likewise shows employees how to correct information technology in case they see it again. Many internal bug upshot from user error, then educating employees on how to fix them can prevent mutual roadblocks from reoccurring.

x. Back up multiple advice channels.

It shouldn't exist difficult to contact your internal service teams. Each team should at least have an email and phone number that employees can use for communication. The best internal teams take ticketing systems that record service requests as well equally their solutions. That way, you can document every internal interaction and refer to by cases when they go relevant in the hereafter.

For more than means to meliorate service at your company, read some customer service tips for startups.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Arrangement, Internet Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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Originally published Aug xvi, 2019 8:00:00 AM, updated June 09 2021