When you didn’t realize you were a Service Provider

So many people within all organizations provide ‘services’ to another group within the same organization. And yet they don’t seem to realize that is what they do – provide service.

They believe what they are doing is just running a part of a process, or providing data for some further consolidation or manipulation, or helping other people ‘do their job’. They perceive their role is to simply keep the organization going.

And yet, many of the people who receive the output from these people and their teams, are very grateful for the level and quality of service they offer to them. Others know this is what they receive.

So, let’s be clear and straightforward about one thing.

If you offer something to another person, team or department within the organization, you are providing them with a ‘service’ – it’s that simple.

It doesn’t matter that you are not on the front-line serving external customers directly. You have internal ‘customers’ to whom your level and quality of service are often equally as important. After all, if you don’t serve them well, then they in turn will not be enabled well enough to serve the company’s customers, or patients, or clients, or partners, or whatever label you give them in your organization.

So when understood from this perspective, it’s easy to see that the management and continual improvement of service provision throughout the enterprise, is a significant activity and one which every participant should be, and usually is, engaged in, whether they know it or not.

Whether you work in Finance, HR, Legal, Catering, Facilities, Operations, Warehousing, Logistics, Solutioning, Engineering, Product Development, Marketing, Procurement, Customer Support, Sales, General Management, Software Development, IT, Security, Service, Project Management, Procurement or any other team within, let me tell you that, YOU ARE A SERVICE PROVIDER.

And now that we have established that basic understanding, if you offer your service provision on a regular basis, then there is an onus on you to continually improve the quality of this service.

After all, everybody likes to improve what they do, both for themselves and also for those they ‘serve’.

Next time we may look at just how this can be achieved.

Remember; It’s All About Service!