Customer satisfaction and the internal market: Marketing our customers to our employees

Many management theorists and consultants urge companies to focus on their customers′ needs and satisfaction – this is common to strategic management, the marketing concept, the pursuit of “excellence”, market‐orientation, total quality management, relationship marketing strategies, and service quality theorists. However, in spite of the availability of many techniques and systems for monitoring and measuring customer satisfaction and using it in decision making, there are major implementation problems facing a customer satisfaction strategy which have been totally ignored. An internal market perspective suggests where these implementation barriers may arise inside organizations in ways which directly mirror the external market. Workshop and survey information confirm the existence of powerful but hidden implementation obstacles in the internal market. This leads to the identification of a need for an internal marketing strategy for customer satisfaction that goes far beyond customer satisfaction questionnaires, to confront the behavioural and organizational barriers to delivering customer satisfaction where it matters – in the external customer marketplace.