There are benefits to conducting various types of satisfaction studies, including those that survey customers, association members, vendors, and partners.  We’ve often offered advice on implementing employee satisfaction research, as management often wants to know their staff’s attitudes and opinions on corporate policies, benefits, advancement opportunities, training and development options, supervisors, and the like.  Certainly, this is important information to drive effective programs aimed at improving employee engagement, performance, and retention.

But, as organizations strive to continually optimize processes for improved efficiencies and performance, they often overlook an area of the business, the internal service providers.  While employees in “back office” departments like legal, human resources, accounting, administrative support, and proposal development don’t typically come into direct contact with external customers, they serve others who do.  In fact, the quality of service provided by these departments is critical to the performance of those on the front lines with customers, not to mention the morale of everyone in the organization. (more…)