st hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crysta

No matter where I work, regardless of the region of the country, there's one situation I encounter that virtually all businesses have in common -- some degree of internal conflict between sales, operations and administration.

Operations Manager: "Those sales guys are prima donnas. There's one -- Kevin -- who is the worst offender of all. He'll invariably blast into my office at the eleventh hour with an emergency delivery one of his customers absolutely has to have the next morning on a “first-out.” He is always armed with every reason imaginable as to why he couldn't give me more notice, but the bottom line is that he wants me to "bump" another customer's order and slide his customer in its place.

"I'm telling you, I've had it with him. Last week he got in my face once too often; we had it out. I told him that he could either get his orders phoned in and scheduled like all the other salespeople or his customer could just wait. I told him that his customers are no more important than the company’s other customers.

"Now, Kevin won't speak to me. He now communicates with me through a manager. You'd think that a man making a six-figure income would be organized enough to get his act together and plan ahead. I can't possibly do my job when every order he enters is an exception to the rule."

Salesperson: "Getting our operations manager to cooperate is the biggest hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crystal

l invariably blast into my office at the eleventh hour with an emergency delivery one of his customers absolutely has to have the next morning on a “first-out.” He is always armed with every reason imaginable as to why he couldn't give me more notice, but the bottom line is that he wants me to "bump" another customer's order and slide his customer in its place.

"I'm telling you, I've had it with him. Last week he got in my face once too often; we had it out. I told him that he could either get his orders phoned in and scheduled like all the other salespeople or his customer could just wait. I told him that his customers are no more important than the company’s other customers.

"Now, Kevin won't speak to me. He now communicates with me through a manager. You'd think that a man making a six-figure income would be organized enough to get his act together and plan ahead. I can't possibly do my job when every order he enters is an exception to the rule."

Salesperson: "Getting our operations manager to cooperate is the biggest hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crysta

n its place.

"I'm telling you, I've had it with him. Last week he got in my face once too often; we had it out. I told him that he could either get his orders phoned in and scheduled like all the other salespeople or his customer could just wait. I told him that his customers are no more important than the company’s other customers.

"Now, Kevin won't speak to me. He now communicates with me through a manager. You'd think that a man making a six-figure income would be organized enough to get his act together and plan ahead. I can't possibly do my job when every order he enters is an exception to the rule."

Salesperson: "Getting our operations manager to cooperate is the biggest hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crysta

w, Kevin won't speak to me. He now communicates with me through a manager. You'd think that a man making a six-figure income would be organized enough to get his act together and plan ahead. I can't possibly do my job when every order he enters is an exception to the rule."

Salesperson: "Getting our operations manager to cooperate is the biggest hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crysta

st hurdle I face every day. He has never grasped the concept of customer service. He does everything in his power to keep me from taking care of my customers' needs. Just last week he told me that I had to get on a schedule like everyone else or my customers could just wait.

"I do the best I can out there. He thinks I have some sort of crystal ball. How does he think I can anticipate my customers' needs when my customers can’t see any further ahead than the end of their nose? Flexibility is the key to success in this business and he's about as rigid as they come. I can't do my job unless he can do his."

Credit Manager: "These salespeople around here are like a bunch of grade school kids. They practically never fill out their credit applications properly. And when it comes to credits, we need a full-time person to correct their mistakes. Customers are forever refusing to pay invoices because they're priced differently from the prices they were quoted. "We could save a lot of money in our department if we didn't have to correct so much of the salespeople's work. They are the most disorganized bunch of guys I've ever had to deal with."

Sound familiar? Could this be your organization?

What's wrong in these companies and what's contributing to so much hostility is customer service-related. Not external customers, but internal customers.

The operations manager sees Kevin as a highly paid, but selfish and inconsiderate salesperson who totally disregards the systems the operations department has designed. Of course, the operations manager is partly correct. Kevin does appear to be a last minute sort of person who could benefit from some additional training in the basic principles of time management.<