What is an external customer for a college?

Answer 1

Your internal customers are all your colleagues who may need your assistance in order to serve their own customer. These include all of the following

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Staff in other departments - they may want to get information from you about a job that you complete

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Colleagues in your own department - they may need support from you to complete work that they are needing to do

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Supervisors - they could be needing you to complete something for the team

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Managers - they may request you for information

Your external customer will contact or speak to the organisation because they feel they can meet their needs, these could be in the form of goods or services. Businesses have to understand who their customers are and what they need.

New and existing customers - new customers are attracted by adverts but they need to have their expectations met in order to become regular customers. These regular customers may well expect to be greeted by name and that the staffs know their preferences.

Individuals and groups - many businesses have large groups that deal with their company. These customers may well expect to have special discounts and facilities to deal with them. Also families often have special needs that they need to be sorted eg changing facilities for their child.

Business Customers - these customers will have specific needs and will expect to have prompt and professional responses to their requirements. They may also want special deals, discounts for bulk buying and a good after-sales service.

Different cultures- foreign customers may require different needs. They often don't speak very good English and they will often have a different culture to English customers and have different expectations to what they expect.

Customers with special needs - businesses will often have customers with special needs as they have a disability, this could be mobility, deafness or sight problems. Therefore the business needs to ensure that they provide facilities that will provide them with support in the organisation.

Each of your customers will require a certain amount of needs and expectation provided.

A need in an essential requirement

An expectation is based on previous experience.

These needs and expectations may fall under the following:

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That they get accurate information about the product and that it is reliable. A reasonable customer will accept a minor error if it is sorted and does not cause them harm or inconvenience. They need a reasonable level of accuracy and reliability but they may expect more if the business has been very good in the past.

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All customers will expect to get up-to-date information and advice. This may need to be tailored to the needs of the individual.

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All businesses need to know the type of assistance and help that their customers might need and ensure that this is provided.

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Sometimes you may have a customer with a problem this should be sorted if possible by the member of staff or if not possible passed to the supervisor to sort.

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All organisations targets set by the business need to be met this may be answering the phone within a certain time frame.

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Visitors to the organisation need to know what to do in there is an emergency and all health and safety hazards need to be eliminated.