Internal customer service: Definition, best practices, and examples

Providing an outstanding customer experience (CX) is crucial to growing your business and standing out in the marketplace—and you should give your employees the same level of attention. Just as with customer service, you should have a dedicated internal service team that can answer employee questions, solve problems, and monitor feedback. Doing so creates a better employee experience (EX) and fosters happier, more productive workers.

How you treat your employees trickles down to your customer relationships and impacts the bottom line. If you aren’t familiar with internal customer service, here are a few things you should know.

Internal customers vs. external customers

Internal customers are individuals within an organization, including employees, managers, and any key stakeholders in the company. The HR department typically leads employee service management, with help from the IT department, if an employee has technical support questions. These teams can help internal customers with questions or information on:

• Corporate policies like employee handbooks and best practices

• Employee benefits like health insurance, retirement funds, and gym memberships

• Administrative documents like pay stubs, tax information, and expense reports

• HR functions such as employee onboarding, training, feedback, and offboarding

• Technology problems related to information security and device repair

External customers are those who purchase a company’s goods or services. These are the end users or clients who drive revenue and business growth. The customer service department or CX team manages customer service and can help with tasks like:

• Product FAQs like how-to guides, product specifications, and materials sourcing

• Troubleshooting issues about fixing a broken product or how to solve a known problem

• Returns, exchanges, cancellations, and other order modifications

• Feedback and feature requests to address customer complaints and foster product improvement

External customer service teams ensure customers can find the information they need and have a positive experience in every interaction. Internal teams do the same—the only difference is that they focus on employees.

Benefits of internal customer service

Creating an effective internal customer service strategy can bring your business a wealth of benefits. Here are a few of the most impactful.

Improves the employee experience

The employee experience is how employees feel about their job duties, workplace, and employer, which greatly influences employee satisfaction and turnover.

Businesses can create a positive EX by supporting employees and investing in internal customer service. When organizations treat employees as valued customers and provide the necessary tools, resources, and assistance they need, companies create a better employee experience journey
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Boosts productivity

Employees who can’t find the information they need can become frustrated and unproductive. Conversely, teams that can locate documents and communicate with their colleagues effectively can focus on their tasks without unnecessary downtime. Responsive internal customer service ensures all team members can work efficiently and find what they need without skipping a beat.

Increases employee satisfaction and loyalty

Employees who feel supported are more likely to stay with their employer long-term. Strong internal customer service creates a workplace where employees trust that somebody will address their concerns, requests, and challenges promptly. This environment boosts job satisfaction and reduces employee turnover, helping companies retain top talent and build positive workplace cultures.

Identifies training opportunities and process improvements

Businesses with effective internal customer service systems can track employee requests and common support tickets. This provides valuable insights into potential knowledge gaps in training processes and can highlight areas for process improvements. For example, if new hires keep asking questions about a specific area of onboarding, the HR team could modify training modules to focus more on that topic.

Ensures clear and efficient communication

Miscommunication can lead to downtime and workplace inefficiencies. Effective internal customer service ensures employees know where to go for help, receive timely responses, and have instant access to important information.

Secures your employee data

Businesses have a wealth of employee data like:

• Social Security numbers

• Payroll details

• Performance records

• Personal information

An internal customer service system can have security protocols and compliance measures to safeguard this information and ensure only authorized parties have access.

15 best practices for providing outstanding internal customer service

Now that we’ve discussed why internal customer service is important, here are 15 best practices for improving your processes.

1. Invest in AI and automation

AI and automation can significantly improve internal customer service by streamlining workflows and reducing wait times. For example, advanced chatbots like AI agents can provide 24/7 support to employees.

Beyond round-the-clock support, AI agents can:

• Connect to an organization’s backend systems to answer common questions.

• Surface relevant help center articles.

• Transfer the employee to a relevant HR or IT team member for further assistance.

AI agents can free up internal support teams to focus on more important tasks while giving internal customers the access they need to resolve their queries independently.

2. Embrace WFM

Workforce management (WFM) tools help businesses manage employees and resources, optimize productivity, and ensure the organization complies with laws and regulations. With tools like Zendesk, teams can track employee activity and use analytics to optimize team scheduling. Implementing these strategies leads to a more organized internal customer service operation and a more balanced workload for support teams.

3. Give employees more than one way to reach out

As with customers, an omnichannel approach ensures you can accommodate a wide range of needs and preferences. Your employees can choose the channel that works best for them, and you can meet them where they are—whether that’s via email, an internal help center, or even a Slack integration for support requests.

4. Adequately staff your help desk

Both external and internal customers want fast responses. To improve your first reply time, you need enough people on your team to handle the volume of requests you receive; this is where WFM strategies like staffing forecasts can help.

Additionally, AI agents can help HR and IT teams scale and provide immediate responses even when the workforce grows. Strategies like these help staff your help desk and ensure customers and employees get fast, accurate answers.

5. Share knowledge and resources in one place

Another way to stem the tide of incoming requests is to make company knowledge available via an internal
knowledge base. These libraries of information can consist of troubleshooting guides, onboarding documents, FAQs, product information, and more that can foster employee self-service and help them find answers independently.

6. Keep employees in the loop

Internal support teams need to keep employees updated on the status of their individual queries and give important organizational updates. Internal ticketing systems allow teams to use business rules to automatically notify employees of the status of their requests and next steps.

Additionally, organizations should give regular updates on IT system maintenance, policy changes, or new HR initiatives to inform employees proactively.

7. Understand employee viewpoints

Employees can become frustrated when a device isn’t working or can’t find the information they need—just like customers. In these cases, ensure your internal support team possesses customer service skills like empathy to understand employees without taking the situation personally.

8. Monitor feedback

Despite your best efforts, there are bound to be moments when your internal service falls short of employee expectations—but this presents a good learning opportunity for your team. Consider automatically sending service satisfaction surveys when a ticket is closed. When you receive negative feedback, follow up on the issue to make sure it’s fully resolved and share how you will do better next time.

9. Acknowledge every question

Not every problem has an easy solution, but your employees deserve to be acknowledged. Leaving employees on read can send a message that you’re not listening or have something to hide; a simple confirmation email or AI agent response can let employees know their request is being processed. Be transparent about what you can and can’t do to improve trust and satisfaction.

10. Use data to identify opportunities for improvement

Internal service teams should use ticket data and performance stats to identify opportunities for improvement. Help desk metrics like ticket volume, distribution, and response time can help teams pinpoint and correct troubling trends. For example, if a topic comes up repeatedly in your internal support tickets, that could be a sign that you should write an article about it for your help center.

11. Curate the right tools for your tech stack

Choosing the right technology is a help desk best practice that helps businesses conduct effective internal customer service. A ticketing system can help you organize requests and create workflows, while AI agents can provide round-the-clock support for your employees. Additionally, look for options like Zendesk to assist with employee benefit management, onboarding and offboarding, and other crucial HR tasks.

12. Make employee service part of your talent strategy

Developing your internal customer service is a concrete, actionable step to show your employees that you have their backs and want to help them succeed. This improves the EX, creates a better work experience for your employees, and helps to attract and retain top talent.

13. Engage in regular employee training

Teams can use several data points, such as help desk metrics, common support ticket queries, and employee performance data, to identify areas for improvement. Use that information to conduct regular employee training sessions to improve their skills and help them operate autonomously, reducing the frequency with which they will need to reach out to your internal service team.

14. Look for quality of life improvements

Beyond tools and processes, organizations should seek opportunities to make day-to-day life easier for employees. You can start by streamlining PTO requests, investing in helpful tools, or upgrading your office amenities if you have an in-person workforce. These simple changes can improve the EX and add to your internal customer service.

15. Set the right expectations

Just as external teams have customer service SLAs, internal teams should develop a similar framework to set proper expectations with employees. Clear communication can help internal customers understand service response times and request procedures, and it helps prevent misunderstandings.

Examples of internal customer service

Teams can conduct internal customer service with the tools and techniques we discussed above—and you can put those tips into action with the following examples:

• Set up an email address where employees can send questions to your support team, such as techsupport@companyname.com or hr@companyname.com.

• Invest in help center software where employees can search for answers to common questions and find up-to-date information about benefits and policies.

• Build a web form where employees can describe their issues and/or choose from a drop-down menu to indicate what type of issue they’re having.

• Set up an AI agent that can serve employees with relevant resources automatically—and if they don’t find what they need, they can ask to speak to a team member directly.

• Provide a phone number where employees can call and ask to be routed to a particular team, such as IT, HR, or Accounting.

Actions like the above can help employees find what they need and improve the EX.