Customer satisfaction is an integral part of a successful business; however, while most businesses focus their efforts on external customers, there are also real benefits to be gained by improving the satisfaction of internal customers. Here we’ll look at why it’s important to establish an equilibrium that benefits both internal and external customers.
What’s the difference between internal and external customers?
Essentially, external customers are the consumers that buy your products and services. They are customers in the traditional sense of the word. Internal customers are the stakeholders in your business, employees and partners who, rather than buying things from you, still need you to deliver services to them in order for them to carry out their work effectively.
The importance of customer satisfaction for external customers
While customer satisfaction has always been important, that importance has grown significantly with the internet. Today’s online consumers frequently seek social proof about a company or product before they choose to give it their custom and will look at reviews, ratings, social media comments and more in order to come to a decision.
How good those ratings and reviews are, of course, is directly related to customer satisfaction. If products are of bad quality, delivery is late, customer service is shoddy, the website too slow, etc., customer satisfaction will be poor and this will be reflected in what people have to say. As a consequence, the business at the receiving end will find it harder to attract new customers or keep hold of existing ones. This is why customer satisfaction is the predominant focus of most businesses – without customers, a company has no future.
The value of customer satisfaction for internal customers
While external customer satisfaction is critical, companies need to understand that in order to deliver products and services that make customers happy, they need happy internal customers too. When employees and other stakeholders have satisfaction in what they do, the business performs better. People are more productive, there is better collaboration and things work seamlessly without friction because everyone has everything they need to do their jobs effectively and have those all-important positive relationships that provide security, support and self-confidence. Just like modern consumers, today’s internal customers need to feel valued too.
Remember, it’s the internal customer that carries out the human-to-human interactions with external customers. A dissatisfied employee is less likely to be enthusiastic about promoting your products or going above and beyond to help customers, both of which can have a negative effect on sales or reviews. Nor is an unhappy employee going to put as much creative effort into developing new products or services.
Additionally, many potential employees will also take a very close look at social proof when looking for their next job and will seek out reviews by other employees. If there are low ratings because of issues in the workplace, poor pay, harsh working conditions, lack of promotion opportunities or an inability to do the work effectively, businesses will find it much harder to recruit the talent they need to go forward. Indeed, the best people will seek and stay with the best companies and it is those who will go on to greater success.
Equalibrium for online businesses
For online business, equilibrium means providing your employees with the right hosting and IT solutions to deliver better customer experiences. A hosting plan that comes with cPanel, for example, makes it easier for your team to manage the website and add new functionality that benefits the customer. Making sure your web host offers 24/7 technical support provides internal customers with consultant-level expertise that can help overcome the hurdles which prevent innovative ideas becoming a reality. Adopting cloud storage, meanwhile, centralises data and makes it available online, enabling employees to work remotely, collaborate and share files easily and have access to the most up-to-date information.
Ultimately, by providing these things for your internal customers, you deliver the means by which external customer satisfaction can be improved.
Customer satisfaction in web hosting
At webhosting UK, this equilibrium is something we take very seriously in our approach to delivering great web hosting services. We rely on our highly skilled teams and industry-leading partners in order to provide world-class web hosting for our customers. To achieve this, we ensure our employees have the right working environment and support to be happy, and provide them with the training to acquire the expertise needed in the fast changing digital market. We also make sure they have the tools and technologies required to carry out their work effectively.
Additionally, we work hard to develop strong working relationships with our partners, like cPanel, Plesk, FortiGate and others, so that we continue to expand and develop our services with the help of the best in the business.
All of this, of course, ensures that, at the end of the day, our customer satisfaction levels are exceptional. We are regularly rated five-stars by our customers and have over 2000 excellent reviews on Trustpilot and Facebook.
If you are looking for a hosting company whose highly satisfied internal customers enthusiastically deliver great web hosting solutions for you, visit our homepage.
