Internal service – barriers, flows and assessment

Abstract

AcknowledgementThe author would like to acknowledge the detailed and constructive assistance provided by the anonymous reviewers and the editors in the development of this paper. 2Internal Service -Barriers, Flows and Assessment STRUCTURED ABSTRACT PurposeThis exploratory paper investigates internal service from a service management perspective. The objectives were to identify the main internal barriers that are preventing improvements to external service within business-to-business organisations, to explore the bi-directionality of internal services provided between internal functions, to assess the quality of internal services provided between functions and develop a means of testing staff and managers for their level of internal versus external focus. Methodology/ApproachA qualitative study was conducted involving structured interviews in two European countries with 20 staff and managers from a large international express package delivery firm. FindingsFive findings emerged. First, six main internal barriers to improving external quality were identified. Second, the study found that the barriers in B2B organisations were the same as those in B2C organisations. Third, it suggested that internal service, unlike external B2C service, is bi-directional. Fourth, it demonstrated a perception gap in internal service provision suggesting some degree of arrogance or delusion. Fifth, it demonstrated that the managers and staff viewed their service from an organisational, inside-out, perspective, despite articulating a desire to provide excellent service to their business customers. Research limitations/implicationsThe key limitations were that only one organisation was studied and 20 interviews conducted. The paper provides support for the TQM approach and suggests that a dual approach combining a service, customer, perspective with an operations, efficiency, perspective might be useful in generating deeper insights to better understand and bring about improvements to the quality of services delivered. Practical implicationsFrom a practitioner perspective, the findings suggest that managers and supervisors need to develop a better understanding of the performance of internal services.

The customer experience: a road‐map for improvement

“…Firstly it has identified the critical importance of mindset change in customer experience design (see also Johnston 2008) and shown how some organisations have gone about achieving this. Secondly it has highlighted the importance of involving customers in the change programmes, not simply as providers of information but through active engagement in forums and panels and in one case direct involvement as part of the Experience Teams, indeed sometimes leading the teams.…”

“…The second reason was to change the mindset of the staff and managers. The Experience Teams in all the organisations believed that the biggest barrier to change was not a lack of resources but getting their people to see their services from the point of view of the customer, outside-in (Price andBrodie 2001 andJohnston 2008), i.e. the customer experience.…”

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The Identification of Critical Success Factors for Quality Internal IT Services in Public Sector Organisations in Hong Kong

“…From another perspective, research suggests that problems in internal services undermine an organisation's ability to improve the level of service provided to its external customers (Johnston 2008). …”