Who is an internal customer? What are the contributions of an internal customer to the organisation?

Internal customer is a term used for employees of a company to emphasize the need to motivate the employees to accept and adopt ways of behaving which are in the overall interest of company as well as the employees. It is suggested that a company can perform better by marketing or selling to its employees the company's culture and doing ways of business, just as it markets its products to customer, sometimes called external customers to differentiate them from internal customers.

The concept of internal customer is useful in any type of business. However, is much more useful and more widely practiced in companies engaged in service business.

The concept of internal customers as used in service marketing practices gives rise to three different types of marketing gives rise to three different, but interlinked, types of marketing that every company must undertake. These are:

• External Marketing


• Internal Marketing


• Interactive Marketing

External marketing refers to the traditional marketing by the company directed towards external customers. Internal marketing refers to the efforts of the company aimed at internal customers, or employees, to motivate them to provide good quality service to customers. Interactive marketing refers to the behaviour of the employees during their interaction with the external customers.

The internal customers, interact with the external customers mostly during the process of delivering service to them. The internal customers contribute to the company's success by help in marketing to the external customers during such  interaction. They do this in several different ways described below.

• They provide good service to the customer, and thereby increase the chances of repeat business.


• They may actually participate in the marketing or selling process. For example, a waiter in a restaurant can have substantial influence on the quantity and choice of orders placed by customers.


• The service provider, that is, the internal customers themselves are a part of the total service experience of the external customer, and thus a part of the product delivered. This is the reason why so many advertisements of airlines focus on their air hostesses and other flight staff.


• The internal customers can actually try to sell the services of the company.