by Chris Taylor 
The Institute of Customer Services describes Customer Experience (CX) as what an organisation does to meet customer expectations and achieve customer satisfaction. Most businesses are working to improve their customer’s satisfaction. Have you considered how the same principles could improve internal customer satisfaction?
Who are Internal Customers?
In any business, only some employees will deal with external customers. However, everybody will interact with internal customers. These are people who are dependent on you to do their job. This could be someone you work for as well as someone who works for you.
As an example, the finance team may never deal with an external customer. However, the sales and service teams will. But they have plenty of internal customers. Finance must produce reports that are delivered on time, are accurate and reliable. They must process payments, pay the bills and importantly, ensure that everybody gets paid. However, they can’t achieve this unless they are provided with the correct information on time.
Although you might not work directly with external customers, you are likely working with somebody who is. An impact on internal customer service will inevitably impact paying customers.
Improving Internal CX in Salesforce?
When you start talking about Salesforce and CX, most people think about how to track customer metrics. Such as Service-Level Agreements (SLA), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Before you start looking at these things, you should first look at your internal processes as these processes impact the scores. Everybody will have more time to focus on customers if you can simplify processes, automate repetitive tasks and remove anything redundant. This will lead to SLA, CSAT and NPS improvements.
Start by thinking of your colleagues as customers. If you were to design and build something for external customers, what process would you follow? Why would that differ from an internal process? Look at what’s currently being done and where improvements could be made to figure out your next steps.
Mapping your CX journey
Customer journey mapping is an integral part of the process. You can understand the steps a customer makes throughout their lifecycle, as well as the key interactions they have with your business. It will give insight into the multiple touchpoints with a customer, the people involved, and the processes they must follow.
Journey mapping is not something a single person can do on their own. To have an accurate map, you must involve multiple people from different roles and levels of hierarchy. Don’t assume you know all the processes required to sell to and maintain customers.
The simplest way to start your map is to get a large blank wall, multiple coloured sticky notes and a pen. Get everybody to write down steps that they follow. Then, work as a team to place these steps into chronological order on the wall.
Bringing people together with a visual representation of business processes you can then ask, “Why is that task done?”, “Why is it done that way?” or, “Why can’t we report on this?”. These questions will inevitably lead to change.
Implementing change
Once changes have been identified, it is essential that these are explored with affected users. Sometimes a small change can have a massive impact. I have previously implemented a process that removed a single click for users. This resulted in a 40% increase in data completion.
Changes in Salesforce can be simple (It is easy to create a new field). However, you should consider the impact and look at how this aligns with you CX goals. Will that new field make life easier for one person, but increase work for multiple users?
Any change will affect users. Your internal customers must see this as a benefit to them. Otherwise, your change will not be adopted and could cause a negative impact on external customers. One of the simplest ways to achieve this is through User Acceptance Testing (UAT), listening to feedback and providing training.
The change lifecycle
Change is the only constant in life. Therefore, a constant review process should be set up. Regularly review your journeys. These may change over time due to company direction, new products or customer behaviours.
By having an internal customer experience mindset and applying it to those you work with, you can minimise friction, increase productivity, and positively impact the business.
Not sure where to get started? Why not get in touch?