I suppose in certain contexts, you could say that yes. You’ve heard it said that everybody has a customer, and of course we really should treat all customers the same, but we don’t really treat all customers the say, do we?
When this post came to mind, what I had in mind was internal vs. external customers. When I have a choice, I’ll support external customers every time. The reason for this is simple to me.
- All things being normal, I excel at customer service and it’s something I enjoy a great deal
- External customers generally are paying for a service I’m providing and therefore have higher expectations than internal customers
- External customers have choice as it relates to who provide their service, and I’m flattered when they trust me enough to select me to provide service in consideration of the choices they have.
Internal customers to me are much more challenging to support. By contrast they:
- Have some kind of unexpected problem
- It’s a problem they can’t resolve themselves.
- They don’t have any choice about who they get help from
In the past I’ve said that having internal customers automatically sets you up for a negative interaction. As I described above, it’s one, two three strikes you’re out at the old ball game and that’s often a difficult set of circumstances to overcome. But they can be over come and you can turn those sometimes difficult customers into raving fans as Kenneth Blanchard talks about in his book by the same name. You can find it on Amazon
It’s a noble endeavor to make Raving Fans out of those sometimes difficult customers, but it’s also exceptionally rewarding!
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