Tenet 1 IconWhether you are an employee or a manager, you are on the front line in creating any experience with both internal and external customers.

 

What is a customer? We’ll use a general business related definition of the word “customer.”

 

A customer is a person or organization that will benefit from the goods and/or services offered by a Company and its employees.

 

Who are your customers? No really, make a list of them.

Need some help? Let’s look at the customers of an insurance company.  The most obvious customer is the policyholder or customer. However, customers would also include the insurance agents, their staffs, those in other departments, the management team, and your coworkers. Your customers are everywhere and most people have more of them than they realize.

Companies and, by extension, their employees have an obligation to provide the best customer service and experience possible.  Customers are the most important people for any organization.

Going back to our insurance example, let’s look at why each customer group is important.

 

  • Policyholders: These customers are the ones parting with their money for your product or service. They are the reason you receive a paycheck.
  • Insurance Agents: These customers write the policies and serve as an intermediary with the policyholder. They bring the customer into the company.
  • Agent Staffs: Work with the Agent to complete the required paperwork and interact with the policyholder on questions, concerns, etc.
  • Other Company Departments: It takes people from many departments to process a new insurance policy. Each department has a specific function that is vital to the issuance of a new policy. No one department can work in isolation.  In insurance, an automobile policy touches the automobile, payment plan, accounting, records retention, printing & mailing, and other departments.
  • The Company Management Team: Managers are responsible for making sure the issuance process goes smoothly.  They provide communication and updates needed by their departments and direct reports. They help employees resolve issues and conflicts.
  • Coworkers: We often need to interact with others in the company and/or on our team in order to ask questions, provide support, etc. in our daily routine.

 

The key takeaway is that EVERYONE is your customer. You must treat them as such since each is vital to the success of the company and to your success within the company.  As you go about your work this week, notice how many times you interact with each of the customer groups you identified and see if you discover any new customers you missed.

Next week we’ll look at The 2nd Tenet of Better Engaged Employees – Service Comes from the Inside Out.

 

What did you find surprising or unexpected about identifying your customers? Why?

 

P.S.  First time here? Welcome to the Agent In Engagement site. Thanks for taking the time to stop by!  I hope you’ll explore the rest of the site. Let me know what employee engagement topics interest you.

Other recent Agent in Engagement articles by Gregory F Simpson:

 

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I’m Agent in Engagement Simpson…Gregory F Simpson.

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