The Huffman Trucking scenario highlights two issues that other companies have also faced-the need for an internal marketing program and the need for a customer-centric culture. Huffman's CEO rightly determined that the company needed to put the customer at the center of all of its business decisions and create an internal marketing culture to support customer service. Two companies whose experience reflects these issues are Hampton Inn and Ito-Yokado.
Hampton Inn decided, as Huffman Trucking did, that it wanted to develop an internal marketing program across its chain of hotels. The company wanted employees to be empowered to deliver superior customer service to its customers at every point in a customer's stay. Since the typical customer encounters a variety of Hampton Inn employees during the course of a stay, this meant that the internal marketing program had to ensure that every employee in the organization, regardless of position, needed to be reached with the internal marketing program's message and empowered to take the appropriate action with respect to customer service.
The internal marketing program emphasized that "Every employee in every position at nearly 1,300 Hampton Inn percent unconditional satisfaction service guarantee" consisting of a free night's stay, no manager approval needed (Drake, Gulman, & Roberts, 2005, p. 22). The underlying message of the internal marketing program was that every employee was responsible for delivering superior customer service at the point of contact with the customer. This meant that if a customer stopped an employee on his or her way to his or her lunch break and asked where the restrooms were, the employee needed to understand that serving the customer was a higher priority than when his or her lunch break started. Likewise, if a customer had any kind of problem, it was the Hampton Inn employee's responsibility to help the customer resolve it. Usin...