What is customer focus in a QMS?
Are you aware of how important your customers are? More importantly, is everyone in the organisation aware of how important your customers are to your business? If the answer to this question is no, then you have something seriously wrong. It seems pretty obvious that any and all businesses would cease to exist without their customers, right?
Ensuring everyone is aware of the importance of customers means you are all singing off the same hymn sheet. In the world of ISO 9001:2015, the customer is at the centre of the management system.
Customer focus simply means putting your customers’ needs first and foremost. A Customer-focused business serves to create a company culture that champions customer relationships built on mutual trust. Do you have a process for measuring your customer focus efforts?
In today’s digital marketplace, your customers’ expectations have never been so high. This makes the competition to gain new customers and retain your existing customers really intensely.
If a customer has a bad experience it’s now so easy for them to switch brand loyalty to somewhere or someone new in an instant. This means that timely communications with your customers have never been more important. In a competitive marketplace, it would be a bad decision to compete on price alone. Of course, this is good for the customer as profits margins get reduced but paradoxically, the quality of customer service also gets reduced at the same time.
You are far better advised to compete on customer service as customer retention is a more successful business model than a price reduction. Take a look at price comparison sites, you can now make your choice of a service provider for a product such as broadband based upon a customer service rating as well as price.
As a customer, do you really want to wait 40 minutes before you can talk to a human on the telephone when an equivalent service provider has a guarantee to answer your call within 10 minutes?
How Can We Improve Our Customer Focus for Iso 9001?
If you are currently experiencing problems with your customer focus, the good news is that it can be fixed. You can do this first by placing yourself in the mindset of the customer and understanding what it is that they really want from you.
You might also ask yourself:
- Who are our customers (existing or potential)?
- What do they want from us?
- When do they want it?
- Why should they purchase from us?
- How are we communicating with them?
Are you making the mistake of thinking that customer focus exists purely within your customer service department?. A true customer-focused business must understand that customer service is the central driver of every theme and activity across the entire organisation. It is very easy to forget this during all of those daily operational type meetings that you are attending.
In any of those meetings, I’ll bet you can eventually trace the topic back to something that will affect the customer either positively or negatively. The important point that I’m trying to make here, is that everything you do or say should be ultimately focused on having a positive effect on the customer.
Customer Focus Requirements Of ISO 9001:2015
Customer focus was a requirement in the previous ISO 9001:2008 version of the standard, but it was a very brief reference that did not carry much weight or importance:
“Top management shall ensure that customer requirements are determined and met with the aim of enhancing customer satisfaction”
(ISO 9001:2008, ISO.org)
In the ISO 9001:2015 version of the standard, the requirement has been extended and gained the importance that it deserves. There are three requirements listed in clause 5.1.2 (a), (b) and (c). As with clause 5.1, top management must now ‘ensure’ that these requirements are met through their leadership and commitment.
It’s worth mentioning that, in common with many other requirements of the standard, these requirements are not stand alone. Other requirements such as those for communication found in clauses 7.4 and 8.2.1 for example are related. This means that the requirements for customer focus can and will be met by addressing other parts of the standard. Be sure to make a commitment to customer focus within your quality policy.
Let’s take a look at each of the requirements as listed in clauses 5.1.2 (a), (b) and (c):
“Top management shall demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to customer focus by ensuring that:”
- (a) Customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements are determined, understood and consistently met
Top management can ensure that this happens in a number of ways by providing resources for:
- Roles, responsibilities and authorities that are focused upon customer requirements.
- Providing the budget and facility for customer service, sales, communication and delivery activities.
- Assisting in the development, training and review of procedures for order requirements, developments for products and services etc.
This requirement also makes reference to regulatory requirements and as such, depending upon the nature of your product or service will be under the authority of your legal department. It would be beyond the scope of this writing to offer you legal advice. When considering statutes, regulations and the law, just make sure that your legal department has all the necessary documentation required.
Items that fall under this requirement could include:
- Material safety data sheets
- Fire safety for flammable products
- End-user safety requirements
- Safety labelling
- End-of-life disposal requirements
The responsibility for realising these requirements lies with top management however, these tasks can and will normally be delegated down to roles with the appropriate responsibilities and authority. Legal requirements that affect you will depend upon the context of your organisation.
“Top management shall demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to customer focus by ensuring that:”
- (b) The risks and opportunities that can affect conformity of products and services and the ability to enhance customer satisfaction are determined and addressed.
What Is Risk-Based Thinking In ISO 9001:2015
One of the major changes to ISO 9001:2015, when compared to the previous version, is the concept of risk-based thinking. As one can clearly see, this requirement relates directly to risks and opportunities and is a new requirement. As we are currently discussing customer focus then we are clearly mentioning the risks and opportunities as they relate to the customer.
The concept of risk is integral to all clauses of the standard and so it would be quite right to state that this requirement is related to all other clauses. However, if we wanted to be more specific then it is directly related to clause 6.1 which requires you to make plans to address risks and opportunities. This is a top management function and should be regularly assessed at management review. The internal audit process should be used to identify if risks and opportunities are being managed effectively. A management review is a good place to discuss, review, evaluate and identify the resources required for your action plans that deal with risks and opportunities.
“Top management shall demonstrate leadership and commitment with respect to customer focus by ensuring that”
- (c) The focus on enhancing customer satisfaction is maintained.
A rather official-sounding way of saying “don’t take your eye off the ball” wouldn’t you agree? Are you talking directly to your customers or gathering data in relation to their satisfaction?
I know that it’s quite difficult to get your customers to complete questionnaires these days but that’s mostly because they are usually too long and complicated.
How Can We Gather Customer Feedback in ISO 9001:2015?
Try to pare down the number of questions to their bare minimum and only include what is essential in relation to their buying experience such as;
- Were you pleased with your product or service order?
- What might we do better next time?
- Would you recommend us to a friend?
- Why would you buy from someone else?
It goes without saying that you can’t ignore the response data from this type of survey. The output from this type of questionnaire should be used as one of the most important inputs to management review. Don’t forget, the skeleton that supports ISO 9001:2015 and all modern management systems in “continuous improvement” and reacting to customer feedback is the main driver for this concept.
How Can We Ensure Customer Loyalty?
Your customer loyalty is the foundation of your business and is founded on the promise that you will put them at the forefront of everything that you do. Brand loyalty is based largely on trust as opposed to only being based on price. Of course, there will always be that section of the demographic that bases their purchase solely upon price. However, repeated surveys have shown that customer service is a far greater influence on customer loyalty than price.
One of the main drivers for customers switching to another brand is when they have a bad purchasing experience. What’s quite revealing is that most customers will now switch brands after having only a single bad experience. This should drive home the fact that you don’t get a second chance in today’s competitive marketplace. You must strive to get things right in terms of customer experience the first time, every time.
This doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money, it simply means having a set of robust customer service procedures. Procedures that are dynamic and are built upon direct user experience feedback. Procedures that are timely, up to date and reviewed regularly instead of annually. Procedures that are well resourced, trained out and communicated to the entire workforce to ensure that they are understood and enacted upon by everyone.
Please remember, nobody is perfect, even the largest of organisations with huge budgets and customer service departments get this wrong. Think about the last time you were on the telephone with one of these large companies only to put the phone down in frustration at no one answering. Don’t be that company! Do everything you can to put the customer first and foremost above everything that you do. Be sure to set some quality objectives that are driving your customer focus efforts.
Clause 5.1.2 requirements for ISO 14001:2015 & ISO 45001:2018
There are no customer focus clause requirements for these standards.
For Auditors
- Investigate how the legal requirements for the product or service are maintained.
- Investigate if a PESTLE analysis was performed and how this links to clauses 6.1, 9.3. and 10.3
- Investigate the customer communication process, the customer feedback process and these are fed through to clauses 9.3. and 10.3.
- Investigate any customer complaints and how they were managed in relation to clause 10.2
Some questions that I will answer in more detail in future articles include:
- What is the key focus in the new standard ISO 9001 2015?
- What is the engagement of people in ISO 9001?
- What customer focus examples in a QMS?
- What is the customer orientation?
- What is customer perception quality?
- What is customer service satisfaction in a QMS?
References: www.iso.org
ISO 9000:2015
ISO 9002:2015
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