DEVELOPING INTERNAL COMMUNICATION FOR MANAGING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS Work-in-progress Paper for the 2008 IMP Conference, Uppsala Harri Ryynänen Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Technology Management Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. Box 20, 53851 Lappeenranta, Finland Tel. + 358 - 5 - 621 6677, Fax. + 358 - 5 - 621 6699 harri.ryynanen@lut.fi Anne Jalkala Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Technology Management Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. Box 20, 53851 Lappeenranta, Finland Tel. + 358 - 5 - 621 6675, Fax. + 358 - 5 - 621 6699 anne.jalkala@lut.fi Risto T. Salminen Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Technology Management Lappeenranta University of Technology Olli Pekkarinen Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Technology Management Lappeenranta University of Technology Keywords: Internal communication, customer relationships, industrial marketing, social network analysis Abstract This paper focuses on examining an industrial supplier’s internal communication when interacting with customers. We briefly review the existing literature related to internal communication and discuss its role in interacting with customers. To illustrate the complex nature of internal communication, we present a case of communicating customer-related information in the early phases of a customer relationship in a complex matrix organization company delivering material handling solutions for logistics operators. We end with a framework mapping the communication flows between different units in the supplier and customer organizations and discuss the preliminary implications regarding the identified complex nature of internal communication. In the following phases of the research process we will apply social network analysis to study the communication flows between different organizational actors at both interpersonal and inter-functional levels.