What is an internal customer and what is its character and examples?

Internal customer is a term used for employees of a company to emphasize the need to motivate the employees to accept and adopt ways of behaving which are in the overall interest of company as well as the employees. It is suggested that a company can perform better by marketing or selling to its employees the company's culture and doing ways of business, just as it markets its products to customer, sometimes called external customers to differentiate them from internal customers.

The concept of internal customer is useful in any type of business. However, is much more useful and more widely practiced in companies engaged in service business.