Relationship Creation with the Internal Market of an Organization

Human resources or workforce have been treasures of an organization for many decades. Therefore, this topic focuses on how to initiate and maintain good and long-term relationships with company employees which is known as the internal market. Company employees have significant impacts on business operations of a manufacturing company and its customer relationship management’s plans and programs. According to lots of evidence of the research findings, it was found that employees who felt satisfied with job were likely to serve customers well. Moreover, satisfied employees can perform their work with effectiveness and efficiency. Obviously, a company’s services, operations, and reputation are outcomes of job satisfaction of organizational employees.

To design programs for relationship creation with the internal market-company employees must be based on three assumptions. Firstly, behaviors and attitudes of company employees affect relationships between company employees and customers. Secondly, employees, who are satisfied with work, provide customers with good quality of services and have effectiveness and efficiency at work. Moreover, the satisfied employees have efforts to build personalized relationships with their customers, to understand customer requirements, and to prevent customer dissatisfaction or prevent customers turning to competitors’ products and services. Eventually, the overall satisfaction of customers will increase. Lastly, front-line staffs and back-office staffs must work together as supportive team players (Grönroos, 1981).

According to Grönroos (1981), in service businesses like hotels, front-line staffs in Sales and Catering who have service spirits can generate customer satisfaction, customer impression, and a good image of a hotel. However, when arriving for an appointment, customers do not receive professional services of guest rooms and catering arrangement from the hotel staffs. For example, the hotel staffs talk to customers without politeness or cannot respond to customer requirements. As a consequence, customers think that the hotel lures them to buy guest rooms and catering services. Thus, building good relationships with an internal marketing group can be viewed as sciences and arts that are brought into executives’ application, and mixed with work operations and culture of organizational employees at every level.

Internal Marketing for Service Businesses in the study by Peck et al. (1999) point out that a service business has an ability to integrate knowledge, experiences, special expertise, and discretion of human resources of a company at the executive level and the operational level for creating its core competency in marketing. The key tools that enable a company create its core marketing competencies include internal communications like letters, internal news, video conferences, brochures, TV shows for internal activities of a company, and creation of teamworking networks under leaderships of company executives who use discretion to judge important issues within a company.

Besides, combination of services and work processes, customer administration and customer-employee contact, personnel administration, an ability in market access and the amount of time spent for it, management of intangible features of services, and creation of service differentiation depend on creation of good relationships with an internal marketing group.

Building good relationships with an internal marketing group essentially starts from the process of recruitment by recruiting job candidates who have adequate knowledge and abilities relevant to job positions. This means their qualifications and working experiences must be compatible with job descriptions of job vacancies. After the procedures of recruitment and selection, it is time for training that new employees must be educated to understand their responsibilities and duties and to improve their potential at work. Dictation or chain of command and division of work in a company must be unambiguous and fair. Creating systems of work motivation must be compatible with differences of work motivators and requirements of individual employees. Furthermore, work assessment has to be suitable for working conditions and be able to measure effectiveness and efficiency at work simultaneously when comparing with organizational objectives.

Obviously, all the previous process concerning human resources management does not exist properly if the human resources department cannot play a strategic and professional role in an organization.

References

Thai reference

ชื่นจิตต์ แจ้งเจนกิจ. (2543). IMC&Marketing Communication: กลยุทธ์สื่อสารการตลาด. กรุงเทพมหานคร: ทิปปิ้งพอยท์เพรส.

Foreign references

Grönroos, C. (1981), “Internal marketing — an integral part of marketing theory”, in Donnelly, J.H. and George, W.R. (Eds), Marketing of Services, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 236–8.

Helen, P., Adrian, P., Martin, C., & Moira, C. (1999). Relationship Marketing: Strategy and implementation, Bullerworth-Heinemmann: Oxford Press.