Inter Departmental
Satisfaction Study
An Internal Customer Satisfaction Survey simply measures, how satisfied internal customers or employee within organization are. In particular this survey measures perceptions and impressions of internal service, be it communication, productivity and / or responsiveness. The survey can also be used to measure expectations of internal service – after all, if you’re not 100% certain of exactly what colleagues in other departments expect from you, you will have very little hope of ever truly satisfying their needs.
The survey can either be run on behalf of one specific department (e.g. IT) to get very specific feedback on their performance or it can be run to collect feedback on the performance of all internal services/departments.
The internal feedback survey is used by HR / Management / Marketing / Customer Service / Shared Services and / or Line Managers to draw out feedback from internal customers in order to benchmark internal customer satisfaction, to solicit suggestions for improvement, and try to identify trends related to performance.
Who can participate in this type of survey?
An internal customer is the one who depends on someone else in the organization in order to do their job. It typically covers the supply of information by one employee to another or any action that can support or serve external customers. For example: Technical Support / IT, Customer Service, Finance, Payroll, Legal, Marketing, Operations, Facilities, Training, Reception and / or Administration.
Need for initiating a Internal Customer Satisfaction Survey
Internal customer satisfaction is a much neglected component of customer satisfaction and quality improvement, as the main focus is traditionally external customer satisfaction. Total customer satisfaction can only be obtained if everyone within the company or organisation works together to achieve the common objective, which means meeting the needs and expectations of both internal and external customers/staff.
The Benefits of an Internal Customer Satisfaction Survey
o Measure satisfaction of internal customers and provide a quantitative baseline to compare results. Over time these results can be used to compare, benchmark, measure and spot long term trends, which in turn enables fact-based decision making.
o Learn what strengths and weaknesses the organisation has in order to maximise the strengths and remedy the weaknesses.
o Measure the internal customer satisfaction to reinforce the company’s service orientation, values and mission.
o Motivate staff as everyone works towards a common goal of excellent customer service both internally and externally. E.g. An internal satisfaction target may be set that all departments strive to.
o Reward and recognise the staff, teams and / or individuals who have performed well are recognised and rewarded publicly.
o Assist to direct training spend into much needed areas by identifying the areas where teams and / or individuals have not performed well.