Total Quality Management and Internal Customers: Measuring Internal Service Quality

Abstract

An important tenet of Total Quality Management holds that each employee should treat other organization members with whom she interacts as valued customers. To know if such internal service efforts are successful, managers need a means by which internal service quality can be measured. This exploratory study of internal customers employs marketing research methods that, traditionally, have been applied to final consumers. The setting is the corporate purchasing department of Alcon Laboratories, Inc., a large pharmaceutical manufacturing firm. The ninety-seven participants were all internal customers of the corporate purchasing department. Their jobs ranged from R&D scientists, to secretaries, to promotion specialists, to manufacturing planners. We sought answers to two questions: 1) What do internal users want from the purchasing department?; and 2) Do they think they are getting it? In answer to the first question, we found six types of service requirements of purchasing’s internal customers. To answer the second question, we developed a diagnostic tool that measures internal users’ perceptions of the purchasing department’s performance. Managerial and research implications of the study are discussed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David W. Finn

David W. Finn, (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts-Amherst) is assistant professor of marketing at Texas Christian University. His research interests emphasize the dynamics of serving internal customers and measuring internal service quality. His work has appeared in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of The Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Health Care Marketing, and the Journal of The Market Research Society.

Julie Baker

Julie Baker, (Ph.D., Texas A & M University) is assistant professor of marketing The University of Texas at Arlington.Her research interests include the store/service environment, internal marketing, and product/service quality. She has published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing, the Journal of Retailing, and the Journal of The Academy of Marketing Science.

Greg W. Marshall

Greg W. Marshall, (Ph.D., Oklahoma State University) is assistant professor of marketing at The University of South Florida. His current research interests include marketing’s role in quality improvement initiatives, salesforce, selection, performance, and evaluation, and marketing management decision making. His employment experience includes consumer products sales, sales management, and product management. He has published in the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Psychology & Marketing, and various conference proceedings

Roy Anderson

Roy Anderson, C.P.M., is director of corporate purchasing for Alcon Laboratories, Inc. Summer