Great Service STARTS at Home

by Shane Vander Kooi –

Delivering World-Class Service to Each Other

We’ve all seen it, and we’ve all been proud of it: the incredible dedication our team shows to our external customers. When a customer has a problem, we drop everything. We listen, we communicate clearly, and we don’t stop until they have a solution. It’s a cornerstone of our reputation.

But what if we treated each other with that exact same level of care?

While our external customer service is top-notch, our internal customer service has room to grow. Internal customer service means viewing your colleagues—whether they are in the next office, on the production floor, or in a different department—as your customers. When we neglect this, it creates friction and delays. When we prioritize it, everything runs smoother.
To bring that world-class service indoors, we need to treat internal requests with the same urgency as a customer email. If you can’t provide a full answer right away, a quick acknowledgment letting your teammate know they are a priority goes a long way.
We also need to ensure our project handoffs are seamless. We would never give an external client half-finished work or vague updates, so we shouldn’t pass the baton to a coworker without giving them the full context they need to succeed.

Lead With Empathy. Serve With Respect.

Above all, this shift requires empathy and recognition. Every department faces its own unique pressures, so let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt and approach bottlenecks with curiosity rather than frustration. And when a teammate goes out of their way to help you hit a deadline, take a moment to say thank you.

When our internal gears are working in harmony, we can serve our external customers faster, smarter, and with fewer mistakes. Let’s challenge ourselves this month to bring our best customer service home.