Entry Level Management Development Topic; Customer Service

When you discuss customer service in your training classes, do you talk about internal customer service? I do and so should you!

Sometimes we get bogged down with talking about how to provide superior customer service in the store directly our paying customers, and we forget that we have an entirely separate type of customer we manage in our stores.

Our internal customers! Surely we cannot forget that our external customers are important to our business, but our internal customers is where our priorities should lie. Our internal customers are the teams in the restaurants leading and executing operations along with our above store and franchise personnel.

I take an approach that Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson has to customer service. Branson said, "If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients." I built my Level 1 Manager Development Program workshop around this sentiment.

Do I still talk about the external customer? Absolutely! However, I spend more time talking about the internal customer.

Many of the new leaders that go through my Level 1 workshop have never held a management role before, so they may not think about the type of service they need to provide to their team. Even seasoned managers that go through my workshop walk away with a new perspective on leading in their stores.

Being part of the restaurant leadership team, they are now in-part responsible for ensuring that they are building a culture of providing phenomenal customer service not only to the external customer, but also the internal customer.

We touch on topics such as:

• fostering a positive work environment;
• the cleanliness and organization of your restaurant;
• being a team player;
• finding ways to help team members through stressful situations;
• supporting your team members in positive ways;
• being sympathetic and empathetic to your team members situations;
• assisting in training and recruiting new team members;
• mentoring newer team members;
• empowering team members and leaders to make positive changes;
• recognition and rewarding positive results;
• finding ways to take on more responsibility to assist your general manager such as food orders, inventory management, scheduling, task management, etc.

I firmly believe that if taking care of your employees is ingrained within the culture of the organization, the organization will be more successful. As a restaurant franchise, it starts with our entry level restaurant leaders.

If you're not teaching internal customer service to your new leaders, take this back to them. Employees tend to work for people, not for brands. Coach them to be a leader that someone wants to work with and for!