Understanding the Linkage between Quality Internal Support and Employee Motivation and Efficiency
Abstract: What you give is what you get and vice versa. Internal support is the backbone of performance and ultimate outcome and the two are intimately linked.
The heartbeat of an organization is determined by the free flow of communication across its various departments. With internal office processes playing a pivotal role in internal customer service, it becomes really fascinating to discuss the positive impacts of quality internal support and well-organized office processes on employee efficiency and motivation. The quality of internal customer service influences the competency of an organization in the area of service delivery to its external customers. In simple terms, an employee who gets high level of support from his company’s admin team is able to meet the expectations of the external clients to a greater extent.
The Stress and the “Soft” Hope
With last minute requests and constant emergencies creating a stressful environment for the internal support teams, it makes sense for them to adopt a “help me help you” approach so as to promote realistic expectations with regards to timelines and quality. Such an approach relies on internal customers’ inputs and prioritization of requests for its success. Most internal support issues are the outcomes of isolated working styles of departments and their focus on their own priorities. Luckily, this scenario is moving onto a much brighter side with the advent of automated business operations tools. Thanks to the software boom for its priceless contribution on internal support and control by way of centralization of organization-wide communication.
The Internal Customer Survey diagram produced by Quantum Management Indicators explains the interdependence concept with precision:
Automation Redefines Internal Customer Service
Red tapism was a concept of the past and this does not apply to modern-day organizations that need to respond to clients’ requests with immense promptness. Internal office support tools are designed to facilitate internal customer service in a systematic and systemic way and establish clear channels of communication among the support teams, employees, and their reporting authorities. And this goes a long way to reduce the stress levels of the internal service provider and the internal customers at the same time. More importantly, it fosters healthy relationships.
Solutions Rest on the Cloud
With internal office processes becoming a cloud-based service, employees need to input their requisitions into a common virtual platform accessed by his manager and the operations staff. Such a platform typically comes with features that facilitate progress tracking. Needless to mention, this clarity of communication helps teams to estimate the timelines within which a problem can be solved. The deployment of programmed process management tools has simplified the otherwise complicated and time-consuming internal operations such as leave management and HR services, resource planning, and processing of purchase orders. Such tools are designed with a “We can manage what we can measure” concept and this allows support teams to evaluate and improve the efficiency of the processes and implement a cost-cutting strategy with utmost success.
The Perfect Cause-and-Effect Relationship
The saying “Charity begins at home” applies to the service provided by support teams. Organizations with excellent external customer service and not-so-efficient internal support often thrive on the edge of acceptability. And there may be situations in which lack of quality internal support may result in poor service delivery to the external customer. With poor client feedback creating all that tension, the line and staff authorities will have nothing else to do than to point fingers at each other. Additionally, poor performance and negative feedbacks impact an employee’s motivation, morale, and future performance to a high extent.
Raising Internal Support to New Heights
Internal customers should not be taken for granted just because they don’t have a choice! Good business has its roots in an outstanding internal customer service. High communication environments promote interdepartmental collaboration, goal alignment, and coordination of processes and procedures and this way, they help departments operate with high efficiency. With technology and modern-day communication being connected with a single thread, it does not take much to conclude that today’s internal customer service has become smarter with a high-tech look and appeal. Luckily!
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