Determinants in Internal Customer Satisfaction- an Empirical study

Any modern economy gets its contribution mainly from three sectors. The service industry which forms the tertiary sector is now the leading contributor towards GDP of developed economies and most developing ones. This leaves this sector with maximum competition to deal with. The increased development of service sector makes its essential for the companies to go for betterment of service being rendered. “Placing employees ahead of customers” and treating “employees as customers” are key to attain better service quality and hence enhanced customer satisfaction with the latter leading to customer loyalty and eventually repeated purchase intention and most importantly a positive word of mouth. With every company striving hard to earn a place which is more sustainable in this highly vulnerable environment, little it can do to ignore the fact that employees are the backbone to attain the much needed competent advantage. This article has come out with an empirical study on the factors which impacts the employee satisfaction and has an indirect relationship towards satisfaction of customers. The study area was a leading retail store in Pondicherry region. The findings suggest that its empowerment and benefits (monetary and non-monetary) which has strong relationship with that of internal customer satisfaction. While training has a moderate relationship and supervisor relationship has a weak relationship with that of the internal customer satisfaction.