Theme 9: People as a competitive tool

Internal marketing

The process of eliciting support for a company and its activities among its own employees, in order to encourage them to promote its goals. This process can happen at a number of levels, from increasing awareness of individual products or marketing campaigns, to explaining overall business strategy.

The following are the features of an internal marketing-oriented business:
1. creating enabling culture: this is done when employees are empowered by management through allowing creativity, innovation, allowing initiatives and accountability and responsibility of their decisions.
2. Practising participative hiring: that is involving current employees in the process of hiring new employees.
3. Ensuring equitable cock recognition and reward: business must exercise employee recognition with reward to what employee has achieved.
4. Demonstrating fairness during hardtimes: fair treatment of employees when faced with hardtimes and difficult moments like death of the near family members. this can be achieved by setting aside emergency funds.
5. Good organisation structure that allows learning, total quality management and re-engineering.

Benefits of Internal Marketing
1. Internal Marketing encourages the internal market (Employees) to perform better.
2. Internal Marketing empowers employees and gives them Accountability and responsibility.
3. Internal Marketing creates common understanding of the business organisation.
4. Internal marketing encourages employees to offer superb service to clients by appreciating their valuable contribution to the success of the business.
5.Internal marketing helps non marketing staffs to learn and be able to perform their tasks in a marketing-like manner.
6. Internal Marketing improves customers retention and individual employee development.
7. Internal Marketing integrates business culture, structure, human resources management, vision and strategy with the employees' professional and social needs.
8. Internal marketing creates good coordination and cooperation among departments of the business.
Problems affecting successful implementation of Internal Marketing.

The following are the problems affecting effective implementation of internal Marketing.
1. Managerial Incompetence in interpersonal, technical and conceptual skills is some of the stumbling blocks against successful internal marketing.
2. Poor understanding of internal Marketing concept.
3. Individual conflict and conflict between departments makes the implementation of internal marketing difficult.
4. Rigid organisational structure coupled by bureaucratic leadership hinder success of internal Marketing.
5. Ignoring and not listening to subordinate staffs.
6. the Tendency of ignoring employees importance and treating them like any other tools of the business.
7. Unnecessary protection of information against employees.
8. Resistance to change.

Customer Service - Internal Customers: Many people deal with customers WITHIN their own companies. Internal customers are those people and employees who might use your services and products, who reside in the same company. For example the computer department, and human resources department serve internal needs.

Customer Service – External Customers: Refers to individuals or households that purchase goods and services generated within the economy. The word historically derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods there, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.

Customer service in my own opinion is extremely important, sometimes almost as important as the quality of the product or service offered, since customer service at best can be very fulfilling to the customer. Getting the adequate answers to your questions and being treated good makes the customer feel good and more willing to do the purchase. As to bad customer service, where the customer is belittled and answers are not given, that drives the customer away to another retailer or shop no matter how good the product is. Also in my opinion and experience, it’s bad to treat customers the same way, because not all customers are the same with equal value. Better customers should be treated better since they bring in more money and you don’t want to lose them, other customers should also be treated well so they might one day become regular customers also.

Sources:

Internal Marketing (Jeff Pervaiz 2005)

www.tutor2u.net

www.wikipedia.com