ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses what internal service quality is and why it is important to measure at an individual, departmental and organisational level. A complementary approach to using a competency-based model is where organisations develop a set of values or behaviour codes that drive and dictate the way people operate throughout the organisation. The benefits of developing service-orientated values and competencies are that they provide a framework against which employees can be recruited, measured and developed. Best practice service organisations measure a potential recruit's service orientation as part of the recruitment process. As with external customer service measures, begin your measurement programme by gaining qualitative feedback first from internal customers. Internal customer focus groups and one-to-one interviews are typically a good place to start exploratory internal customer service research. An alternative quantitative method of assessing an organisation's orientation towards the customer is to undertake customer orientation culture surveys.
