Customer satisfaction assessment for “internal” suppliers

Abstract

Customer satisfaction assessment is now widely recognized as a vital input to any strategy for customer focused business performance improvement. The need to improve responsiveness and reduce overheads is focusing management attention on the major internal business functions such as IT. Argues that these functions, threatened with major cost reductions or outsourcing, are increasingly feeling the need to understand better their customers business needs and to assess how successful they are in satisfying them. Any customer satisfaction assessment tool must recognize the varying needs of individual “customers” within the “customer” organizations. Data collection must lead to prompt action: “event‐driven” assessments owned by “empowered” teams of service providers can help achieve this. Such a “fast cycle” satisfaction assessment/improvement process will not happen spontaneously: “selling”, training, culture change and management leadership are needed to embed action‐oriented customer‐satisfaction assessment in internal service providers.

Citation

Jones, C.R. (1996), "Customer satisfaction assessment for “internal” suppliers", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 45-48. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604529610108144