Clause 9.1.2 Customer Satisfaction (secrets)

Customer satisfaction is probably the most important clause of ISO9001:2015 but how much attention are you giving it? Read this article to get a full understanding of the clause 9.1.2 requirement. When you consider that the customer is at the heart of ISO 9001:2015, clause 9.1.2 customer satisfaction is surely the most important clause of the standard. Any business wouldn’t exist without its customers, and developing your customer service processes should be a number one priority for you. Trying to compete with competitors on price is ultimately a fool’s game, but you can compete on customer service. Having a winning customer service strategy will set you apart from your competition, enable you to retain your existing customers, and win new ones.

The standard requires you to monitor the needs and expectations of your customers, and although on the face of it this sounds quite simple, how many of you reading this can honestly say that you have dedicated processes in place for doing this? With so many channels available for customers to publicly air their complaints, it’s vital that you get this aspect of your business right, on time, all of the time. This is such a short clause in the standard that it is easy to pay scant attention to it, a mistake that many organisations make. As an auditor, I’m always disappointed when finding that processes for measuring and monitoring customers’ needs, expectations and perceptions sometimes don’t exist.

Monitor Customers Perceptions.

Perception: a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how things seem

(Cambridge dictionary)

A ‘belief or opinion’ is something quite intangible isn’t it? Your belief might be incorrect and your opinion might be biased or quite different from the next person. Trying to manage the intangibles is therefore going to be quite difficult. The problem is that a thought inside someone’s head might result in a Facebook post, be it a positive or negative post. And, as I’m sure you are aware, a post can escalate out to hundreds of thousands of viewers within hours. Your task is to nurture the positive perceptions of your customers and minimise negative perceptions.

Negative perceptions are easy to capture and I bet you are already doing it through your customer complaints process. However, are you extolling the same amount of effort into capturing the positive feedback from your customers? Online giants such as eBay and Amazon put the power to do this into the hands of their customers by enabling them to submit feedback reviews and scores. This works great until a product or service receives a string of negative feedback and suddenly, you find yourself in trouble. This type of approach is also open to fraud where positive/negative feedback posts and comments can be purchased online. Also, a competitor can purposely sabotage your product or service by submitting a barrage of negative feedback. You might set an objective to achieve a certain number of 5-star reviews per month.

You can try to fix things after the event has occurred but, this is adopting a ‘reactive’ approach whereas it’s much better to adopt a ‘proactive’ strategy. The old saying of ‘prevention is better than the cure’ rings very true here. Reacting to, and trying to fix negative publicity can be a costly exercise. Sometimes a simple negative sentence can have devastating effects on an organisation. For example, here in the UK, there was once a jewellery retailer called ‘Ratners’. The CEO of that company made, what he thought would be a humorous comment by referring to the company as ‘Crapners’. This intimated that they only sold worthless junk. As a result of this one single public comment, sales plummeted and the company soon ceased to exist. One has to question his competence at handling PR and he ought to have left the task of public communications to someone more qualified.

(read the story here)

Customers’ Needs and Expectations.

Meeting your customer’s needs (should) be straightforward, they place an order for a product or service and you deliver it, right? However, their expectation might be that the product was to be delivered by the next day, or that the service came with a certain percentage discount. These expectations might be known by you, or sometimes can only exist within the customer’s mind and you are innocently unaware of them. It’s quite easy to see from these examples how difficult it can be to know exactly what a customer’s expectations are. A customer’s needs are generally stated whereas their expectations might only exist in their mind.

Determine the Methods for Obtaining, Monitoring and Reviewing This Information.

Determining the method could be translated into meaning; developing a process, documenting it, integrating it into the management system, training and communicating it out. There is no requirement for you to develop a process and to document it but, with something so important I would recommend that you do so. It’s not enough to simply capture demographic detail such as age, gender, language and location etc. You need to develop ways by which you can analyse customer behaviour such as how they access and interact with information, and what influences them to make a certain purchase decision.

I think it’s best to use a variety of channels and methods to achieve this such as:

Feedback surveys; this is a fast and cost-effective way to capture the general perception of your customers. But, the use of surveys has been taken to the extremes and many customers are fed up with them. They are also very difficult to design unless you are a trained professional at doing this. Surveys and the data they produce need to be timely to be effective.

Surveys conducted only every six months will get poor responses and produce data of little use. Try to reduce the number of questions to a minimum so that users are not put off by the time it takes to complete it. Start by asking specific questions, such as: “What is your overall satisfaction with our product or service?” Or use text feedback questions such as: “Please share any additional comments or ways in which we might improve.”

What is the mechanism used for the survey data? Is it appropriate to your customer demographic? Not everyone has access to a computer or the internet. Would this alter the weighting and validity of the data set? Are you using a variety of channels to capture your survey data set such as by telephone, face-to-face, text messaging, online or through your standard purchasing app? The whole subject of surveys is very complicated and will take a great deal of thought and planning before implementing a process that will deliver valid data sets.

Google alerts; if you don’t already use Google alerts, this is a great tip. You can set up a Google alert so that any mention of your brand name anywhere on the internet will cause an alert that to be emailed to you by Google. Watch a YouTube video to learn how to set up a Google alert, it only takes approximately a minute to set up.

(Google alerts)

Read online reviews; a disgruntled customer will be very quick to post their annoyances to an online feedback portal. However, they are about 70% less likely to post a positive comment on what a great service or product you have provided. Is this a problem of human nature or simply assign of the times in which we live? Too many negative comments will be a bad thing if not dealt with quickly, but the occasional negative feedback can provide you with opportunities for improvement. You need to keep a tight focus on your public feedback portals.

Face-to-Face; use the opportunity to attend public exhibition events where brands are presented to the public on display stands and customers are greeted by the brand representatives. Customer’s really like being able to interact with real human beings rather than automated, online assistant chatbots. Online assistance should only ever be performed by using ‘live chat’ or better still, with a telephone conversation. Provide discounts or free samples on the day to attract new customers and talk to them so that you can gather their needs and expectations first-hand. The closer you can get to your customers the stronger you will be able to develop your brand with their perceptions and buying habits.

Company values; if you can align your company values with those of your chosen demographic, you can make a significant increase in customer loyalty and sales. Are your products made from 100% recyclable materials? Have you changed your delivery fleet to all-electric? Do you encourage gender-neutral job applicants? These issues and many more will appeal to a great many customers and might be important to your particular brand alignment.

How To Build Positive Customer Perception

Customer feedback; respond quickly to customer feedback and let them know how grateful you are for them submitting their feedback. If their feedback results in a positive change to a process, thank them and maybe send them a discount voucher.

Demographics; you can’t appeal to everyone, understand exactly who your audience is and concentrate your customer service efforts on them. Make your audience feel appreciated by sending a thank you email after each purchase.

Perception; make your customers feel good about the purchase of a product or service, and they will spread the word. Of course, the opposite is also true. A customer’s perception is how they feel emotionally about your brand. Try to design creative ways in which you can positively affect your customer’s perceptions.

Culture; strive to ensure that everyone in your organisation understands the importance of customer service. This will involve education, training and communication for all staff. Each employee should be aware of how their role will affect the customer in some way or another. Educate them to ensure that everything they do should have a positive effect on a customer.

Consistency; strive to build consistency in your interactions with your customers. If you send an order confirmation email, do it every time. If you use guaranteed next-day deliveries, do this every time. If you send a post-purchase thank you email, do this every time. This is the ‘safe buying’ concept, customers feel safe with your brand when they know exactly what they will get from you. You go to MacDonald’s or book a night stay with Premier Inn because you know exactly what you will get.

Communication Silos; strive to ensure that all information regarding a customer purchase is available to be shared across all departments. Don’t let information be held within a single department where it can’t be accessed by other departments. Lack of interdepartmental communications is a very common cause of customer frustrations. Trying to change customers’ perceptions must always begin with an introspective evaluation of who you are as an organisation.

You must first question exactly who you are and what you do. Are you running your organisation ethically in how you employ and treat your own staff? Do you reward your staff for their efforts when they perform above the expected minimum? Do you only pay the minimum wage, or the national living wage (UK)? Do you source your materials from ethical sources etc? If the answers to these questions are all positive, then shout them from the rooftops and change your customer’s perceptions about you.

Analysing Perceptions and Feedback.

The management system systems have a built-in mechanism for the analysis of customers’ perceptions and feedback, it’s called ‘management review’ (9.3). In fact, one of the required agenda items for management review is:

• Customer satisfaction and feedback from relevant interested parties.
  
  

This, of course, is one of the 136 instances of the word ‘shall’ in the ISO 9001:2015 management system. In management systems, the word ‘shall’ equates to the word ‘must’.

A great many organisations misinterpret the requirement for management review by assuming that it refers to only the ‘annual’ management review. Let’s not forget, modern management systems authored to the high-level structure are non-prescriptive. You are required by clause 9.3 to have a management review but the frequency between reviews is entirely up to you. You are not even required to call them management reviews, call them ‘a happy gathering’ if that suits you. Your daily, weekly or monthly meetings can be referred to as management reviews.

You can analyse customers’ perceptions and feedback at any time and during any meeting you like, but take my advice; be sure to do it often! In fact, I would go further than that and say to make it one of your number one priorities. We operate our businesses in such a fast-paced environment now it’s so easy to lose customers to competitors who are getting their customer service processes consistently right. How easy is it for a customer to switch from Uber Eats over to Just Eat because their food arrived cold or much later than expected?

A Shared Responsibility.

Customer’s feedback, perceptions or complaints must not be the sole responsibility of a particular department such as one that might be named ‘quality assurance’. At the very least, persons who manage the corrective actions process should be regularly involved. If a customer complaint comes in, the corrective actions team should work swiftly to investigate and implement a corrective action that fixes the issue. If the complaint was concerning delivery times, then managers from the logistics department will naturally be involved in the corrective actions process.

Many organisations have a live display board that communicates how many accidents have occurred by month to date. Their mission with this display is to have a proud reading of zero. I’ve never audited an organisation where a similar board was used to communicate the number of customer complaints. Does this mean that customer complaints are not taken as seriously? Or is it because customer complaints (in most situations) are not governed by breaches of the legislation. I would advise making it your mission to reduce customer complaints to zero and advertising the fact both internally and externally. By doing this internally using a display board, you will be communicating that customer service is every person’s responsibility. do you have a commitment to customer focus within your policy?

ISO 14001:2015

There is no equivalent clause in this standard.

ISO 45001:2018

There is no equivalent clause in this standard.

For Auditors:

• Check for a process that monitors customer’s perceptions
• Check for roles, responsibilities and authorities concerning the process
• Check for methods in obtaining customer feedback.
• Check how customer feedback data is analysed and used to contribute to continual improvement.
• Check that customer satisfaction and feedback is an agenda for management review.
• Check any actions raised during management review have been resolved and the management system has been updated to reflect this.

Some further questions that I will be answering in future articles include:

• How is ISO 9001 used to measure customer satisfaction?
• Which ISO standard addresses customer satisfaction?
• What do you know about customer satisfaction?
• How is ISO customer satisfaction measured?
• How are customer requirements established?
• What is a customer in the QMS?
• What is an example of good customer service?
• What is an example of bad customer service?