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The internal customer model has served well, but has many
limitations and drawbacks. It can only take one so far. Now, we must
change the model. It is time to let customer mean customer.

An often overlooked aspect of service delivery in business‐to‐business settings is the issue of service quality among internal organizational units. Yet, in practice many organizational departments are service providers primarily to customers within the organization. For example, management information systems, human resources, and purchasing departments all share an important function supporting other employees as they perform their jobs. Managers of those internal service functions are becoming more concerned with delivering high levels of service quality to their internal customers. This article explores the dimensionality of customer service quality as perceived by a set of internal customers of an organizational buying unit, and examines the potential for segmentation of internal customers. Managerial implications and recommendations are presented to aid organizations desiring to improve internal service quality.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and consequences of the implementation of different customer feedback mechanisms with regard to their contribution to organisational learning that leads to service improvement.Design/methodology/approachA critical case organisation is chosen to explore the link between the implementation of customer feedback mechanisms and organisational learning from a middle management and employee perspective. Method triangulation is adopted, gathering qualitative and quantitative data.FindingsOrganisational learning in relation to service improvement is influenced by the interplay between the way data are gathered through customer feedback mechanisms and implemented at a branch or business unit level. The implementation depends on attitudes of middle management towards such mechanisms.Research limitations/implicationsFuture studies might investigate whether the findings can be replicated in other operational settings and triangulate the data with customer perceptions of service improvement.Practical implicationsCustomer feedback mechanisms at an organisational and business unit level need better integration. To gather customer feedback that enables more meaningful decision‐making to improve services, middle management needs to have a stronger involvement in the design and implementation of customer feedback mechanisms. Central efforts have to be placed on the support of middle management in the interpretation and use of data that is gathered through organisation‐wide feedback initiatives.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to extant knowledge by integrating the fields of service performance management practices, in this case the implementation of customer feedback mechanisms, and organisational learning.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how and when customers influence organizational climate and organizational health through their feedback. Based on affective events theory, the authors classify both positive and negative customer feedback (PCF and NCF) as affective work events. The authors expect that these events influence the positive affective climate of an organization and ultimately organizational health, and that the relationships are moderated by empowerment climate.Design/methodology/approach– Structural equation modeling was utilized to analyze survey data obtained from a sample of 178 board members, 80 HR representatives, and 10,953 employees from 80 independent organizations.Findings– The findings support the expected indirect effects. Furthermore, empowerment climate strengthened the impact of PCF on organizational health but does not affect the relationship between NCF and organizational health.Research limitations/implications– The cross-sectional design is a potential limitation of the study.Practical implications– Managers should be aware that customer feedback influences an organization's emotional climate and organizational health. Based on the results organizations might actively disseminate PCF and establish an empowerment climate. With regard to NCF, managers might consider the potential affective and health-related consequences for employees and organizations.Social implications– Customers are able to contribute to an organization's positive affective climate and to organizational health if they provide positive feedback to organizations.Originality/value– By providing first insights into the consequences of both PCF and NCF on organizational health, this study opens a new avenue for scientific inquiry of customer influences on employees at the organizational level.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to employ quality function deployment (QFD) method for translating internal customer needs and expectations into appropriate service specifications to perform existing process assessments in relation to quality characteristics for increasing internal customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach– The integration of SERVQUAL into QFD has been used to set the success factors to improve quality in the textile industry. One of the largest textile companies in Turkey provided the sample. A SERVQUAL-type of questionnaire was used and a total of 32,938 questionnaires were distributed both manually and online, 24,551 usable were received, comprising a response rate of 77.31 percent.Findings– Findings of the QFD application suggest internal customer focus as having the highest weight score of almost 12 percent improvement. In addition, improvements in technical requirements of politeness and process communication have a 9 percent impact each on internal customer satisfaction criteria.Research limitations/implications– QFD technique is able to provide companies with a better understanding of internal customer expectations and translate these into appropriate service specifications and perform existing process assessment.Originality/value– This paper is a first attempt that applies this integrative approach to a different type of industry, thus offering practical and applied information for professionals engaged in academia and as practitioners.

Complexity surrounding the holistic nature of customer experience has made measuring customer perceptions of interactive service experiences challenging. At the same time, advances in technology and changes in methods for collecting explicit customer feedback are generating increasing volumes of unstructured textual data, making it difficult for managers to analyze and interpret this information. Consequently, text mining, a method enabling automatic extraction of information from textual data, is gaining in popularity. However, this method has performed below expectations in terms of depth of analysis of customer experience feedback and accuracy. In this study, we advance linguistics-based text mining modeling to inform the process of developing an improved framework. The proposed framework incorporates important elements of customer experience, service methodologies, and theories such as cocreation processes, interactions, and context. This more holistic approach for analyzing feedback facilitates a deeper analysis of customer feedback experiences, by encompassing three value creation elements: activities, resources, and context (ARC). Empirical results show that the ARC framework facilitates the development of a text mining model for analysis of customer textual feedback that enables companies to assess the impact of interactive service processes on customer experiences. The proposed text mining model shows high accuracy levels and provides flexibility through training. As such, it can evolve to account for changing contexts over time and be deployed across different (service) business domains; we term it an "open learning" model. The ability to timely assess customer experience feedback represents a prerequisite for successful cocreation processes in a service environment. © The Author(s) 2014.