The Treatment of Internal and External Customers1

The Treatment of Internal and External CustomersBy Allen CookPost University

I read the first part of Robert Jablonskis article titled Customer Focus (1992), and within it, it told the defining factors of what makes internal customers. Now before reading this I did not even know that an organization could even have internal customers. I always thought of everyone as just customers. Now, I see clearly. Within my own organization, the US Army, everyone is considered to be an internal customer. And as such we also only have one external customer, the American People. Now of course one could make an excuse that we travel the world and help out other countries, and as such could they also not be listed as external customers? Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because they are asking for help. And no, because it boils down to the politicians asking one question What is in it for me (USA)?Now I mentioned we only have one customer, and as such everyone else would be listed as a supplier to meet the needs of our different missions. Which result in the end goal of us achieving our mission to safeguard the American People. For those of us that serve, we see the individual who puts forth the effort to accomplish the mission by all means as a person of quality. This is how there is a quality product, by those that put forth their all into the mission. For those that do this, we reward them with more responsibility, such as being in charge of other servicemembers. Another way to reward them is to assign them into positions of trust within each of the smaller organizations. By putting these individuals into these positions we are showing the lower ranking Soldiers what it means to be a leader and do the right thing at all times. By putting good leaders into positions of responsibility we are allowing them to guide and mentor the lower ranking Soldiers into becoming leaders as well. And thus we continue the tradition of mentoring and leading individuals of quality.