A key purpose for businesses to achieve the ISO 9001 standard for quality management is to increase the satisfaction of customers. There are many other purposes like increasing operational efficiency, reducing errors or mistakes, ensuring conformity to legal and statutory regulations, and continual product improvement. However, customer satisfaction is one of the prime goals behind getting the ISO 9001 certification. It assures customers that the products/services are thoroughly monitored throughout their production stages and are checked to ensure that they cater to their requirements or expectations. Also, customer satisfaction is totally guaranteed with the implementation of ISO 9001 because it includes a key clause about it. This blog provides you with all the crucial details of clause 9.1.2 of the standard which underlines the key requirements for customer satisfaction. Take a look.
All About Clause 9.1.2 of ISO 9001: Customer Satisfaction Requirements
Aim of the Clause
The motive behind including this clause in the standard is to mandate organisations to have a systematic approach to addressing customer needs. There should be proper methods and practices to measure their needs, satisfaction level, and expectations from your products/services. The most common methods that can be deployed are surveys (online and offline), feedback forms, rating of products/services, and Google reviews.
Also, the clause does not define customers only as the end-users of your product or services. Customers also imply any distributors or middlemen who market and sell your products/services and businesses who use them in making their own products/services. Therefore, catering to the requirements of all types of customers and satisfying them fully is the aim of this clause.
Key Steps for Meeting the Clause
To meet the requirements of clause 9.1.2, your organisation needs to follow the following steps.
- Step 1- Identifying the indicators of customer satisfaction
- Step 2- Determining appropriate methods for collecting data from customers
- Step 3- Finding effective ways to document the customer satisfaction data correctly
- Step 4- Frequent reviewing and analysis of the documented data
- Step 5- Creating solutions and a corrective action plan for improving customer satisfaction
- Step 6- Defining responsibilities of the employees to execute the actions and solutions
- Step 7- Conducting management reviews and following up the actions
Examples of Customer Satisfaction Indicators
While it is truly a tricky task to identify and decide the key indicators for measuring customer satisfaction, here are some common examples of the indicators:
- Customer complaints
- Delivery time
- New customer acquisition
- Pricing and market competitiveness
- Queries/responses to customer support services
- Average orders
Strategy to Collect Feedback from the Customers
While collecting feedback from the customers regularly is an integral requirement of the clause, businesses need a clear and ethical strategy to do that. You can develop your strategy for collecting feedback with the following steps:
- Identification of the target groups of customers
- Make your staff aware of the data that you need to collect and determine what methods/tools are needed to do so
- Select the persons who will be responsible for collecting the data
- Determine the methods to analyse the collected data sets and who will analyse
- Create reports and record the outcomes/results of the analysis
Once you have successfully collected the data, you need to decide how to use the findings of the analysis to improve your products/services.
Bottom Line
When satisfying the customers is the top priority of your business, ISO 9001 is the first key step! Achieving the standard not only assures the satisfaction of your customers but also result in a lot of continual actions that further improve the quality of products or services. Clause 9.1.2 of the standard clearly provides guidelines for evaluating customer satisfaction and meeting the specific expectations of your customers. Therefore, you must adhere to all details of the clause to develop the best ways for increasing customer satisfaction.
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Also Read: 5 Benefits of an Integrated Management System: Why Have It in Your Business
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