Internal Marketing
Internal marketing is the promotion
of a company’s objectives, as well as its products and services, to people
within the organization. The purpose of the promotion is increasing employee
engagement with the company’s goals and fostering brand advocacy among them.
Internal marketing is the promotion
of a company’s vision, mission, and culture to its employees with the objective
of gaining their support.
The companies that are the best at
internal marketing treat employees as internal customers who need to be
convinced of the company’s mission.
The
benefits of internal marketing are numerous:
Increased employee satisfaction and
engagement
Greater brand reach
More trusted marketing
Better customer service
Improved recruiting and employer
brand
Internal Marketing – Meaning
Internal Marketing (IM) is an on-going process that occurs
strictly within a company or organization whereby the functional process
aligns, motivates and empowers employees at all management levels to
consistently deliver a satisfying customer experience.
(i) IM functioning as a continual internal
‘up-skilling’ process.
(ii) Alignment of the organization’s purpose
with employee behaviour.
(iii) Employees internalizing the core values
of the organization.
(iv) Motivation,
reframing and empowerment of employee attitude.
(v) Inside-out
management approach.
(vi) Retaining a
positive customer experience throughout the business objectives.
Internal
Marketing refers to a marketing organisation’s efforts to motivate its
employees and generating a trust amongst them for the service firm. The service
marketer must ensure that it works in collaboration with its employees for the
well-being of the employees and also of the organization. The core to the success
of an organization is the confidence that its employees have in the vision and
strategy of the marketing activities for the fulfilment of not only the
organizational objectives but also of the individual objectives.
According
to Kotler and Armstrong, “Internal Marketing is orienting the service
delivery employees and other supporting service people to work as a team to
provide customer satisfaction.”
According
to Burkitt and Zealley, “The challenge
for internal marketing is not only to get the right messages across, but to
embed them in such a way that they both change and reinforce employee
behaviour.”
From
the above definitions, it may be inferred that Internal Marketing refers to the
process within a service organization to motivate and empower their employees
at all the hierarchical positions to consistently offer a quality and a
satisfying service experience to the consumers.
The
concept of Internal marketing originated from the idea of involving the
employees of the service organization in the service encounters to improve the
service quality by having a positive customer employee interaction. Internal
marketing is not only critical in-service organizations, even in manufacturing
organizations, quality service can act as a differentiating factor.
According
to Dunne and Barnes, Internal Marketing has two focuses.
Firstly, it
should be designed to complement the external marketing through increased
customer-employee interaction. The employees should be actively be involved in
the development of external marketing communication and promotional strategies.
Secondly, it should aim at
encouraging the internal staff so that they deliver the critical quality
dimensions of Productivity and efficiency.
The
term Internal marketing was coined by Berry in 1981 and defined it as “viewing
employees as internal customers, viewing jobs as internal products that satisfy
the needs and wants of these internal customers while addressing the objectives
of the organization”. It is felt that unless the internal employees are
convinced about the service that they market, they cannot generate sales. Only
if the employees are treated as internal customers and their needs and wants
are met, they become more committed and enthusiastic about the services they
market. Once the employee is satisfied with a service and has had a first-hand
experience of the same, he is likely to develop a positive perception about it
and offer an immediate feedback to the consumers query.
Examples of Internal Marketing
1.
Educating / Training employees on the company’s goal and values.
2.
Encouraging employees
3.
Nurturing communication and collaboration among employees
4.
Free education in school for teacher’s kids
5.
Free service to employee’s and their relatives.
Services
Marketing Triangle
The service marketing triangle
or the Service triangle as it is commonly called, underlines the relationships
between the various providers of services, and the customers who consume these
services.
As we know, relationships
are most important in the services sector. The service triangle outlines all
the relationships that exist between the company, the employees and the
customers.
a)
Internal Marketing (Organisation to Employees)
Internal Marketing is the most important dimension of Services marketing. The
employees of the organization should be involved in the development of the
external marketing and motivated to share the company’s vision so that they
enable the delivery of the promises of high service quality to the consumers.
Internal Marketing may include internal communication which makes use of a
number of channels or mediums to share information.
Another
important relationship in the service triangle is that between the company and
the employees. Imagine an Airline where the flight attendants themselves are
frustrated with the company. You, as a customer, will land up with the poorest
services.
Hence,
training employees, building value and trust, and empowering employees are some
of the ways that the company can make their employees a positive influencing
force for the customers.
b)
External Marketing (Organisation to Customers)
External Marketing refers to all the communication and promotions directed to
the prospective consumers with the intension to encourage the sale of a service
for the satisfaction of their needs and wants.
One
of the critical things is to communicate the service strategy to
the customers. Most of the E-commerce companies
are nowadays employed in convincing the customers to buy from their portal
only. For this buying, they are communicating various service advantages which
the customers have.
Communication
of the service strategy to
customers is important to build the trust of customers and hence to convert the
customers to be loyal to the company.
c)
Interactive Marketing (Employees to Customers) This
is the last dimension of Services Marketing which highlights the importance of
direct interaction of service employees with the potential consumers of the
services for the delivery of high-quality service. Services are typically
characterized by the interaction between the customers and service providers.
This is because the services are produced and consumed at the same time, hence
the interaction cannot be avoided between provider and consumer of the
services. Marketing of services have increasingly become interactive due to the
consumer’s access to technology driven modes, especially the Internet, for
being in touch with service provider.
The
employee to customer interaction is also known as the “moment of truth” or “critical
incidents”. A single customer can become dissatisfied with the way the employee
treated him. Or that single customer can buy a lot of material from the same
store, because the employee treated him or her like a king or queen.
That’s
the difference your employees can create when they interact with customers.
There are companies which are high in the customer satisfaction index, just
because their employees are well-trained and are empowered to take their own
decisions. More importantly, these employees are ingrained with the habit that
“Customer is king”.
Once
your employees start treating the customer as if they are really king, the
whole service triangle gets completed, and you will get the best results from
all processes employed.
No comments:
Post a Comment