Posts Tagged ‘customer needs’
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.
Calibration, What’s Missing from Your System?
Quality management system standards homogeneously have requirements for controlling the devices used to measure, verify, test, and accept product and monitor the processes used to achieve specified results. As a third party auditor it has come to my attention that everyone seems to miss something. It’s almost unavoidable. Perchance it’s because this process is by and large referred to as “calibration” and the rational image it invokes is associated primarily with things like micrometers, depth gages, and comparators. The process is often much more complex, addressing apt consideration for gages, thermostats, software, jigs, timers, known-good-samples – a multiple of devices for measuring product or process. Controlling monitoring and measuring devices must, therefore, include multiple aspects.
Some areas which you should consider when setting up your system should included:
*Identifying which devices need to be calibrated and which do not (you decide based on your quality criteria and your customer requirements).
* Defining the frequencies needed to insure calibration is well controlled
* Indicating the status of equipment; calibrated or out of calibration
* Determining alternate methods of “control”
* Determining what to include in the procedure
* How will you handle certificates of calibration
* Will you use outsourced calibration services and how will you control this if you do
* Defining storage and preservation criteria in your process
* Defining recall programs and contingency plans
ISO 9001 And Corrective Action
A corrective action is a change implemented to address a weakness identified in a quality management system. Normally corrective actions are implemented in response to a customer complaint, internal nonconformities, nonconformities identified during an internal audit or adverse trends in product and process monitoring such as would be identified by In-coming, in process and final inspection.
In order to implement a corrective action one must first determine root cause. Root cause analysis is a type of problem solving aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of root cause analysis is based on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be minimized. However, it is recognized that complete prevention of recurrence by a single action is not always possible. Therefore, root cause analysis is often considered to be a repetitive process, and is frequently viewed as a tool of continuous improvement.
Root cause analysis, initially is a reactive method of problem detection and resolving. This means that the analysis is done after an event has occurred. Expertise in root cause analysis can become a pro-active method. This means that root cause analysis is able to predict the possibility of an event even before it could occur.
Customer Relationship Management Software
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a customer-centric business strategy with the goal of maximizing profitability, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Technologies that support this business management system purpose include the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information. Functions that support this business purpose include sales, marketing, customer service, training, professional development, performance management, human resource development, and compensation. Technology to support CRM initiatives must be integrated as part of an overall customer-centric strategy. Many CRM initiatives have failed because implementation was limited to software installation without alignment to a customer-centric strategy. This is why CIS Continuous Improvement Software excels in CRM. All of these CRM requirements are totally integrated into one CRM Solution including the Cross-Platform Communication capability of CIS!
Your CIS consultant can show you how to improve communication both internally and with your customers and suppliers any time, anywhere.
How Do You Demonstrate Compliance to AS9100?
More than 60 percent of IAQG members have implemented the AS9100 standard internally and are flowing it down to their suppliers. Most members will require suppliers to comply to the updated version of AS9100 (which is aligned to ISO 9001:2008 and supercedes older ISO 9000 standards). This is consistent with the transition from the old ISO 9001 standard to the new version.
Organizations within the industry differ in their compliance to AS9100 verification requirements. Some use their own external auditors to verify suppliers’ quality management systems. Others share the results of their quality system audits with suppliers in the industry. Most provide suppliers with copies of external audits. Most permit suppliers to share the audit results with other customers, too.
The industry is using the results of third-party registrars as a means of demonstrating a quality management system’s compliance to AS9100. The Americas Aerospace Quality Group, working with the Registrar Accreditation Board, has established a process and requirements for auditors performing audits to AS9100 and registrars granting supplemental registrations. The process includes additional AS9100 training and practical experience and ensures that auditors are competent and that registrars are experienced in the industry. The AAQG has created a Registrar Management Committee to oversee this important function. Its methodology is defined in SAE AIR5359. Europe and Asia are developing equivalent methods.
Quality Management Principle (# 3 Involvement of people)
People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization’s benefit.
Key benefits:
- Motivated, committed and involved people within the organization.
- Innovation and creativity in furthering the organization’s objectives.
- People being accountable for their own performance.
- People eager to participate in and contribute to continual improvement.
Applying the principle of involvement of people typically leads to:
- People understanding the importance of their contribution and role in the business management system.
- People identifying constraints to their performance.
- People accepting ownership of problems and their responsibility for solving them.
- People evaluating their performance against their personal goals and objectives.
- People actively seeking opportunities to enhance their competence, knowledge and experience.
- People freely sharing knowledge and experience.
- People openly discussing problems and issues.
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).
Auditing Your Quality Policy
The quality policy and its effective deployment can only be assessed based on the overall results of the audit.
Audit methods should include:
- Interviewing Top Management to understand their approach and commitment to quality.
- Evaluating, through the records of management review, the commitment and involvement of Top Management in the establishment, implementation, monitoring and updating of the quality policy.
- Determine whether Management has effectively “translated” the quality policy into understandable words and guidelines at all levels of the organization, with corresponding objectives at each applicable function / level.
- Conducting interviews with personnel to verify if they have the required awareness, understanding and knowledge of the way the organization’s quality policy as it relates to their own job, apart from the terms used by such people to express their understanding. Do they know how their job effects the quality of the products and ultimately customer satisfaction?
- Look for evidence of effective distribution of the quality policy by appropriate communication.
Food safety reform
Recent events could be conspiring to bring food safety reform closer.
Take a string of food borne illness outbreaks and product recalls, from the salmonella in peppers that sickened 407 last year and killed two, to salmonella in peanut products this year, which led to at least 691 illnesses and nine deaths. Add spinach, pistachios, and most recently alfalfa sprouts, and you have the recipe for some shocking statistics: About one in four Americans is sickened by food borne disease each year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die. Since the early 90s, food borne illness outbreaks have more than tripled to nearly 350 a year.
The peanut product outbreak in particular led to a flurry of activity; legislation was proposed at both a state and federal level, including the bipartisan FDAFood Safety Modernization Act, and finally it sounded like everyone was speaking with one voice. All the main players were lined up asking for more or less the same things: FDA power to order mandatory recalls; more inspections; greater transparency from manufacturers.
The FDA’s lack of authority to issue recalls has often been cited as one of the department’s greatest weaknesses, forcing it to rely on the cooperation of food companies. It is hard to believe that anyone would refuse to withdraw a potentially deadly product with their company’s name on, but it happens. Where are we headed with food safety and what will it take to get the powers that be to make real progress toward safer food.
Building Postive Customer Relationships
Building positive customer relations means a lot more today. It is not good enough to just say “hello” when someone calls or stops by the office. While recognition is a good thing, it doesn’t take the place of meeting the customer’s expectations. Is your company meeting those expectations?
Customers and inquiring, prospective customers have higher service expectations today than ever before. When developing a quality management system the quality policy usually proclaims “We strive to meet or exceed our customers’ needs” but do our actions really show that? Do we set ourselves up to fail by not putting the processes in place to actually accomplish what we set out to accomplish “Customer Satisfaction”? The market-and your competition-have educated the business world and the individual consumer to expect more.
The market has changed, it is now a global market, and customers have been educated, often by your competition, to expect and even demand more and faster service, no matter how they define “service.” If your company is not aware of these customer expectations, you are likely losing business to others who understand this new customer dynamic.
For those companies who wish to separate themselves from their competitors, there are several customer satisfaction techniques that you can use to get improved results:
Communicate, Communicate, And Communicate
Train Everyone to Properly Interface with Your Customers’
Don’t Shoot Yourself In The Foot By Having Administration Or Operational Personnel Communicate The Wrong Message
Positive Attitude – can you guarantee that every one of your personnel communicates a positive image about themselves and your company? People will quickly pick up on a negative attitude. It can turn off a customer faster than anything else you do.