ABSTRACT
Long-term, on-going relationships are highly sought after by marketers, but such relationships require improved customer service. High levels of service depend on individuals ensuring their suppliers and customers are happy. The internal marketing concept is also concerned with ensuring that all members of staff work together, in tune with the organization’s mission, strategy and goals. The aim is to ensure that all staff represent the business in the best possible way in all transactions they have with suppliers, customers and other staff. Internal marketing centres on the notion that every member of the organization has a ‘supplier’ and a ‘customer’. Internal marketing is a philosophy for managing human resources with a marketing perspective. Relationship marketing has built on this to propose that senior managers should view non-marketing employees as ‘part-time marketers’ in order to better satisfy customers and employees and that all employees must recognize they are colleagues’ customers. In order to achieve this internal cohesiveness, six steps have been proposed:
1 The creation of internal awareness. 2 Identification of internal ‘customers’ and ‘suppliers’. 3 Determination of internal customers’ expectations. 4 Communication of these expectations to internal suppliers. 5 Internal suppliers’ modifications to their activities to reflect internal customers’
views. 6 A measure of internal service quality and feedback to ensure a satisfactory
exchange between internal customers and suppliers.
