In the consumer model, modern business practices recognize employees and co-workers as customers as well, which means incorporating customer service skills, such as active listening and empathy, into all areas of work across the organization. A good customer service mindset comes from putting ourselves in the customer’s shoes, listening carefully, building empathy, and giving them convenient assistance.

Employees with a customer service mindset are constantly providing value to the internal customers, investing in customers’ goals, and are committed to assisting their co-workers. This approach is centered on short-term and long-term customer success, whether it’s finding a solution to a problem, providing ideation, or friendly and helpful service. 

Implementing a customer service mindset can help in the organization’s transformation by increasing efficiency, goodwill, and revenue generation while also strengthening teamwork. It will help ensure that internal customers feel valued every time they interact with other teams if this is part of your team culture. 

Let’s look at how to interact with remote co-workers as our internal customers in order to improve job satisfaction and productivity. 

Customer Categories 

There are two categories of customers: external customers and internal customers. External customers are those who purchase goods or services from a business. Internal customers are the people who work together inside a company, including employees, stakeholders, and shareholders.  

To serve your internal customers better, you need to develop a customer service mindset. This means that you have to implement excellent customer service to both external and internal customers. Some of the principles of customer service include empathic listening, increasing knowledge, and follow-up. 

Empathic Listening 

When a customer presents a concern or an issue, you must use active listening skills. Active listening means you hear what the customer is saying. Repeat their concern or issue in your own words and clearly explain how you can help. 

Active listening helps you develop understanding and it builds a bond of empathy between you and the person you’re talking to. People respond to this, even if they can’t exactly put into words what it is they’re responding to. 

Empathy is defined as the psychological identification with another person or the vicarious experiencing of feelings, thoughts, or attitudes. This means putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and identifying their challenges and problems.  

Doing this in a remote workplace allows you to see things from their point of view and positively alters how you react to and interact with others. 

Increase Knowledge and Excellence 

It would help if you continuously worked on gaining more knowledge and understanding about your company’s services, procedures, culture, and policies. You also need to come up with innovative ideas about providing excellent customer service. Expanding your knowledge will help your internal customers’ trust and strengthen your expertise. You’ll also have a more extensive set of tools to draw from when solving problems. 

Ralph Marston, author of The Daily Motivator says, “Excellence is not a skill, it is an attitude.” In other words, you likely won’t be perfect in all that you attempt. However, if you do the very best you can when performing a task and pay attention to details, you will likely achieve excellence. Bringing this idea to your remote interactions with internal customers will make you stand out as someone who cares about what you do and how you do it. 

Follow Up 

Once you have provided your customer with their requested service, it’s a good idea to follow-up with the customer some time afterwards. The period between providing service and follow-up depends on the situation. It might be that same day, or it may mean a call or email days later. You can implement asynchronous communication to follow-up with your remote co-worker to ensure that the internal customer remains satisfied with your solution. 

Key Takeaways 

The end goal of a customer service mindset internally in an organization is to build a positive reputation for yourself. You want your internal customers to have a great experience, so that they will be happy to work with you again and provide glowing reviews to you and your team without hesitation. 

The customer service mindset isn’t just solving problems for internal customers. It’s about creating a delightful experience that develops a long-term feedback process and excellent teamwork. Doing so fosters internal customer success as well as low turnover rates, especially in remote work.