1999 brooks lings botschen -internal marketing and customer driven wavefronts

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support departments, where a variety of internal customer issues need to be resolved, none of

which are likely to be identical. Leadership is important in these cases as the problems may

not necessarily be solved by the workers in the support function and direction from the

manager is necessary.

The service quality measures indicated in table III show that an average increase of 80% in

external service quality was observed over the six-month period. The internal service quality

improved most markedly in the interactions between value adding departments and those

closest to the customer. For example the V → V interactions (4,5,6 and 10) show

improvements of over 20%.

(The large negative step change in interaction 7 is explained by an employee being made

redundant.)

Interactions related to the sales department, which has close contact with the external

customer at the first stages of the service experience, improved on average by over 30%, (see

table III.) and interactions related to the operations of the business, the latter stages of the

customer service experience, increased by a similar amount. Improvements in these areas,

and the corresponding improvement in the measured external service quality, supports the

view that external customers communicate their service quality requirements most effectively

to the internal suppliers which are closest to them and proposition 3 which suggests that in

the course of the internal marketing campaign the service expectations of these internal

customers will increase more than the service expecations of internal customers who are

more distanced from the external customer. This is further supported by the fact that the

expectations component of the service quality gap for interactions involving direct contact

with the external customer show a significant increase over the period of the internal



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marketing campaign indicating that these internal customers are making more demands of

their internal suppliers.

Interactions which are the furthest from the external customer do not show increased service

expectations for the internal customer.

The aims of this research were to identify any differences between the dimensions used by

the internal customer, when assessing the quality of the service which they receive, those

used by the external customer identified by Parasuraman et al. [1988], and also to identify

any differences in internal service quality dimensions used by different types of internal

customers.

The research undertaken indicates that the internal and external customers do use different

service quality dimensions when assessing service quality. Proposition 2 is supported.

Internal customers which are involved in the direct creation of value for the external customer

also appear to use different service quality dimensions to those used by support functions.

Proposition 1 is supported.

The evidence, both quantitative, as presented and qualitative as observed, indicates that the

main driver for internal service quality appears to be the external customer, who makes

demands on the customer contact personnel. These internal customers then make demands of

other departments in the value chain and support functions, evidenced by increased service

expectations. Service quality then follows increased expectation. The internal customers who

are not in contact with the external customer show low levels of service quality and no

increase in expectation. This implies that an internal service quality wavefront, driven by the

external customer, moves through the organisation backward along the value chain and out

towards the support functions.



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The ramifications of this mean attempting to improve service quality by concentrating on

customer facing staff only, as proposed by several authors, [see for example Grönroos, 1985;

George, 1990 and Wilson, 1991], is inappropriate .If this were the case then internal suppliers

would not have been motivated to increase their internal service quality as they have.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY AND DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

As mentioned in the discussion of the background to internal marketing there are several

approaches to the topic. This study has concentrated on, and further developed, the internal

customer model of internal marketing as discussed by Bekkers and Van Haastrecht [1993].

Other approaches to internal marketing such as that proposed by Piercy [1995] as the

promotion of a strategy or plan, or that proposed by Berry and Parasuraman [1991] as

designing better job products to meet the needs of employees are not the focus of this

research. It is possible that this model could be adapted for use in these cases but this has not

been demonstrated.

The model described here also does not take into account the effects of informal

communications and work- flow through the organisation. There are almost certainly some

informal pathways which exist within all organisations although the effect of these on the

internal marketing and service quality measurements are not examined in this study.

The use of a single case based approach to this research, whilst having the advantagesdiscussed earlier, prevents any generalisation of these results to the larger population. This

study was centred around one organisation within the services sector and it is possible that

there are differences in internal marketing application both between organisations within the

same industry sector and organisations in different industry sectors. As mentioned earlier in

this paper the service element attached to many tangible products can be substantial and



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further research should investigate the applicability of a model such as this in a

manufacturing situation.

The testing of the modified internal customer model of internal marketing developed in thisarticle and described indicates that this may be a useful approach to enhancing service

quality. However the testing of this model is at its first stages and more extensive testing of

the model is required. Further quantitative research needs to be undertaken to establish the

validity of the observations reported in this study and different companies in different sectors

will need to be examined to establish if the model can be generalised to the population. Also

those dimensions of internal service quality identified within this company will also have to

be tested in different contexts to test if they are consistent within all companies.

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Fig. 1 Internal customer map

PA Group MD

SalesDirector

Gen. Manager FinancialDept.

SalesManager

Install Manager

Salesforce Sales QCSales Order Processing

Engineeringco-ordinator Engineers

ITSupport

CashCollection Serviceline Accounts Stores Refurbish

(1)

(2)

(3)(4) (5) (6)

(7)(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16) (17)

(18)

(19)

(20)

(21)

(22) (23)

SupportFunctions

Value Chain Functions

SupportFunctions

Customer contact

Customer contact



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Interaction Code Supplier Customer Interaction1 Sales Manager Sales Director S→ S2 National Sales Sales Director V→ S3 Sales Manager Salesforce S→ V4 Salesforce Sales Quality Control V→ V5 Sales Quality Control Sales Order Processing V→ V6 Sales Order Processing Co-ordinator V→ V7 Serviceline Co-ordinator V→ V8 Stores Co-ordinator S→ V9 Co-ordinator Install Manager V→ S10 Co-ordinator Engineers V→ V11 Install Managers Finance Department S→ S12 Finance Department Group MD S→ S13 PA Group MD S→ S14 IT Install Managers S→ S15 Install Managers Group MD

S→

S16 Sales Order Processing Cash Collection V→ V17 Serviceline Install Managers V→ S18 Install Managers Engineers S→ V19 General Managers Group MD S→ S20 Serviceline Manager Group MD S→ S21 Sales Director Group MD S→ S22 Stores Manager Install Manager S→ S23 Refurbishment Install Manager S→ S

S = Support function customer or supplier.

V = Value adding function customer or supplier.

Table I List of Internal customers and suppliers



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Dimension Interaction type

S→ V V → V V → S S → S External

† Tangibles No No No No Yes

† Security No No No No Yes

Reliability Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Responsiveness Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Competence Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Courtesy Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Access Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Communication Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Understanding the Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

‡ Proactive decision making Yes Yes Yes Yes NoCredibility Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

‡ Leadership Yes No No Yes No

‡ Attention to Detail Yes Yes Yes No No

‡ dimensions important to the internal customer but not to the external customer.

† dimensions important to the external customer but not to the internal customer.

Table. II Internal and external service quality dimensions

Interaction Code % Change in T-test significant



internal service

quality

at (10%)

1 sales -25.41 Yes2 sales -8.63 No

3 sales 122.36 Yes

4 sales 14.27 Yes

5 sales 29.93 Yes

6 sales 25.6 Yes

7 -503.08 Yes

8 46.52 Yes

9 operations 84.74 Yes10 operations 26.21 Yes

11 US Us

12 -5.4 No

13 8.82 No

14 operations 67.42 Yes

15 operations 9.54 No

16 3.06 No


18 operations -1.26 No

19 29.4 No

20 0 No

21 -24.74 Yes

22 operations -1.9 No


External Customer 80.23 Yes

sales = interactions related to the sales department

operations = interactions related to the operations of the business

Table III. Change in service quality over 6-month study period

1999 brooks lings botschen -internal marketing and customer driven wavefronts

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