{"id":5952,"date":"2026-08-27T05:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T03:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/?p=5952"},"modified":"2026-07-23T09:41:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:41:26","slug":"just-internal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/just-internal\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Just Internal” Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last participant just walked out of the seminar room and in under two hours the HR team arrives for their workshop. Thomas has to hurry. Everything needs to be cleared away, the seating rearranged, the workstations set up fresh. Maria, who usually supports him, called in sick at the last minute. A virus got her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Slightly sweaty from hauling chairs, flip charts, and pin boards, he runs through the checklist one last time, point by point. As always, no detail escapes Thomas. He is carefully aligning the last water glasses when Valerie, his boss, sticks her head through the door. “Nice work, thanks Thomas. But you didn’t have to go to all that trouble. It’s just an internal seminar.”<\/p>\n

That’s the moment things stop making sense to him.<\/p>\n

The concept of the internal customer may sound old-fashioned. It does, after all, date back to the nineties. Still, the idea holds up. When everyone who receives a service is taken as seriously as a paying customer, quality rises. Better service quality leads to happier employees, which leads to happier external customers, which leads to higher profitability. Simple. At least by the textbook.<\/p>\n

Despite the logic, the approach has a flaw. Customers can switch providers. Colleagues can’t. Suppliers don’t have to serve every customer. Colleagues do. In short, there is no real market.<\/p>\n

A little later, practice beats theory. Thomas is closing the windows and heading for the door when Sabine, the assistant to the head of HR, appears in front of him. She thanks him for the setup and asks for a last-minute change. For Thomas, it goes without saying that he’ll take care of it. For Sabine, it’s just as obvious that she’ll pitch in so they can get it done together. What Thomas and Sabine do right by instinct comes down to three principles.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Partnership instead of placing orders<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Sabine could have dropped her change request as a work order: “Please rearrange by 2 p.m.” Instead, she rolls up her sleeves. That’s exactly what separates internal collaboration from a customer relationship. The external customer gets to order and wait. The internal partner thinks ahead and pitches in, wherever possible<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The external customer as a shared compass<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Thomas sets up the room for the HR team, and indirectly for the people this HR team is meant to enable. Every internal service ends up, directly or indirectly, with the paying customer. When departments clash, the decision shouldn’t come down to hierarchy or volume, but to one question: which option serves the external customer better? That takes the politics out of a surprising number of discussions.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. A shared language and mutual commitments<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        If nobody has clarified what standard applies internally, everyone decides based on their mood that day. You don’t need endless service catalogs for every little thing. You need a few clear commitments, in both directions. The recipient has duties too: ask in time, provide complete information, give feedback.<\/p>\n

        As for Thomas, tomorrow he’ll be aligning every water glass again. Not because anyone is watching. But because in his world, “just internal” doesn’t exist.<\/p>\n

        Warm regards, Ralph<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The last participant just walked out of the seminar room and in under two hours the HR team arrives for their workshop. Thomas has to hurry. Everything needs to be cleared away, the seating rearranged, the workstations set up fresh. Maria, who usually supports him, called in sick at the last minute. A virus got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5952"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5955,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5952\/revisions\/5955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandhub.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}