Archive for the ‘Customer Satisfaction’ Category
ISO 9001: Where applicable, provide training or take other actions to achieve the necessary competence (Section 6.2.2 b and c)
It is up to the organization to determine the appropriate method to satisfy this quality management system requirement. This can be in the form of on-the-job, job shadowing, mentoring, public seminars, educational courses or any other suitable method.
Follow-up to ensure the competency was effective
Following the training, a suitable evaluation of the employee’s competency level should be completed. The standard requires the organization to:
Evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken (ref. 6.2.2 c)
Again, the organization must determine the method that works best for their particular needs, ISO 9001 does not specify the how, just the what of the requirement. Verification of effectiveness could be as simple as repeating the competency rating process to ensure the gap has been closed. Other approaches might include:
- Special inspection of the employee’s work until the needed quality level is reached
- Written test following the training
- Formal certification process
- Supervisor follow-up 60 days (or so) following the training or intervention
- Formal performance review
ISO 9001 Customer Satisfaction How Do I Measure This?
ISO 9001:2008 requires that customer satisfaction is monitored but does not specify methods. You must decide how to satisfy this requirement in a way that makes since to your organization. What can you measure that will improve your customer satisfaction ratings and add value to your organization at the same time. Some measures you may consider are as follows:
1. Do you deliver on time?
2. Do you deliver in full?
3. What feedback do you get from sales or service engineers?
4. Are the key accounts growing?
5. Customer audits or report cards? If favourable, use them as evidence of customer satisfaction.
6. Direct feedback from the customer both positive and negative, track them. If enough customers are saying the same things about your company, you may want to put some measurement in place to resolve these issues. If they are saying something wonderful about you, make this a priority to provide this service to all your customers.
Remember, you are in business to grow and the best way to do this is to satisfy your customers. Focus on measurements that will result in setting you apart from your competition. Don’t give lip service to customer satisfaction because you will suffer a finding during your surveillance audit because you cannot produce evidence that you even know what your customers think of your performance. If you have a hard time determining what you should be measuring and analyzing, ask your customers what is important to them.
Supplier Quality Management Benefits, Responsibilities
There are benefits to creating strong relationships with suppliers from a customer’s perspective especially if a standalone supplier quality management function exists. Supplier measurement can take place, risk mitigation exercises (both reactive and proactive) can be accomplished and information and improvements can be shared for common gain. A supplier quality management function can create a community for all those involved , Account Managers, Supply chain Consultants, Supplier Performance Managers, in which they can integrate knowledge and deliver profit generating opportunities for both organizations through the exploration of additional, above and beyond current contract business opportunities .
Executive involvement is vital to the success of aligning the relevant strategic players to accomplish objectives and form the basis of building partnerships and ultimately unlocking value for both organizations. The Procurement functions should take the central role in coordinating supplier relationships, at the same time as owning and coordinating the process, authority and technology.
Auditing Your Suppliers And Assessing Risk
Supplier audits need to focus on the suppliers and quality management systems that are truly critical to the supply chain, and better utilize available expertise to ensure that performance requirements will be met. Why do we perform supplier audits/? Once we understood that the purpose is to ensure overall success of the supply chain, then an expansion of related audit issues is also required. Supplier quality system audits have contributed to spreading the word about the importance of quality, and the need for a management system that helps keep quality on every business’ agenda. It’s now time to expand the boundaries of our thinking to include other issues, such as risk, that allow a business to grow and prosper or fail.
Companies that do not utilize a strategy for managing supply chain risk may be exposed to potentially negative influences, including impact on procurement, manufacturing and time to market processes in supply chain.
It’s for these reasons that supply chain risk management is now an essential part of a company’s supply chain strategy. It is the only way companies can ensure risks are identified in the entire value chain and mitigated to deliver financial goals.
What Is The Role Of ISO 9001?
The objective of any standard, whether it relates to the manufacture of cars, airplanes, machinery, or the delivery of a service – transportation, hospitals, etc. – is the same. Standards are designed to promote, facilitate and enable consistency in a process or product; to provide assurance that the process or product output will meet requirements; to provide a uniform and predictable output every time a set of procedures are executed. Because standards assist buyers and consumers in establishing confidence levels in the products and services they procure, standards facilitate fair trade practices.
Without satisfied customers, an organization’s future is at risk! To keep customers satisfied, the organization needs to meet and/or exceed their requirements. The ISO 9001 standard provides a universally recognized, tried and tested framework for taking a systematic approach to managing the organization’s processes, so that they consistently turn out product that satisfies customers’ expectation.
So, who shall survive the resent economic down turn, and who will succumb to it? Small businesses are in a unique situation to position themselves for the future. Obtaining certification need not be a costly time consuming process. There are many business consulting firms available today that are uniquely equipped to provide the newest and lest expense tools and guidance to help an organization of any size obtain certification. So if you believe that ISO 9001 is something that can help your company meet the changes of today’s world, you don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there, and don’t let anyone tell you that you do.
CIS: Continuous Improvement Software
CIS is a program that helps businesses of all sizes with managing the elements of their organization, and ensuring the business complies with ISO 9001, NADCAP, and FAA requirements. It’s a good idea for all businesses to have a CIS consultant, whether an appointed employee, or an outside auditor. CIS training is available from several sources online, and with this training, an individual can become CIS certified and able to approve businesses under CIS standards. Having a CIS consultant at the company with certifications is an invaluable resource. With CIS in place, it’s much easier to achieve full market potential, and ensure the business runs smooth at all times and isn’t diverting funds to costs that don’t make a whole lot of sense. CIS makes sense because it’s paperless, and doesn’t require a whole lot of resources or time with an experienced CIS technician at the helm.
Sending an employee, or spending money on a CIS training seminar is a great idea that will come back to the employer tenfold. There’s no end to what businesses can accomplish when they’re running at max efficiency due to well implemented CIS.
Quality Management Principle (# 7 Factual approach to decision making )
Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information
Key benefits:
- Informed decisions.
- An increased ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of past decisions through reference to factual records.
- Increased ability to review, challenge and change opinions and decisions.
Applying the principle of factual approach to decision making typically leads to:
- Ensuring that data and information are sufficiently accurate and reliable.
- Making data accessible to those who need it.
- Analysing data and information using valid methods.
- Making decisions and taking action based on factual analysis, balanced with experience and intuition.
- Stronger quality management systems
Quality Management Principle (#1 Customer Focus)
Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.
Key benefits:
- Increased revenue and market share obtained through flexible and fast responses to market opportunities.
- Increased effectiveness in the use of the organization’s resources to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Improved customer loyalty leading to repeat business.
Applying the principle of customer focus typically leads to:
- Researching and understanding customer needs and expectations.
- Ensuring that the objectives of the organization are linked to customer needs and expectations.
- Communicating customer needs and expectations throughout the organization.
- Measuring customer satisfaction and acting on the results.
- Systematically managing customer relationships.
- Ensuring a balanced approach between satisfying customers and other interested parties (such as owners, employees, suppliers, financiers, local communities and society as a whole).
Food Safety Supplier Audits
The National Food Processors Association (NFPA) has announced plans to launch a new Food Safety and Quality Systems Supplier Audit Program as a means of coordinating the audits of food manufacturing facilities and their suppliers.
NFPA developed the program after learning that some suppliers undergo as many as 20 audits or more for their facilities, each with different forms and standards. Scheduled for phased implementation next year, the voluntary program will provide a means for companies to apply uniform, industry-wide standards to suppliers rather than standards and requirements of their own. As a result, a single NFPA audit could conceivably satisfy the requirements for several processors, thereby eliminating the need for duplicate audits.
A 26-company task force of NFPA members, including Pillsbury and Kraft, designed the basic elements of the program, including audit standards and auditor expertise. NFPA noted that the program will judge the adequacy and performance in the areas of “quality-related management responsibility and prerequisite programs, HACCP-based food safety programs, production controls, quality management systems and regulatory considerations.”
Forming Lasting Customer Relationships
Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.
If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue.
How do you go about forming such a relationship? By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”