Hello All,

I wonder if you could help?

We have just had our 2nd surveillance visit and it went well, apart from the fact that the external auditor raised a non confomance regarding Customer Satisfaction. I have included his exact comment below...

'The organisation needs to review the methods used to define its perception of customer satisfaction, and to demonstrate such perception with effective data'.

We are an IT company that provides middleware software for the Health Service.

We are currently, using e-forums, have a support centre that customers contact with any issue, have user groups where customers are invited to come and discuss whatever they want with us, have a database that customers can suggest enhancements to the s/w and where we log bugs, 2 of our quality objectives are customer satisfaction related and we have a customer satisfaction survey due to be distributed to customers in the next 6 weeks.

The auditor still raised the non conformance, but when asked what he suggested we do in addition, he just said 'read the standard'! Which as you can imagine was rather unhelpful.

So I was wondering what everyone else is doing to monitor / measure customer satisfaction in their organisation and whether they would be willing to share any ideas with me?

I hope you can help.

Thanks
Kate.

Hello Kate

Sounds like you're in a high quality company with a good handle on its business. Welcome to The Cove. It's nice to see more high-end quality users who might join the community.

I guess the requirements of 8.2.1 can be pretty slippery. It's a little blurb of a requirement, and it was never very clear to me.

The standard requires us to monitor information relating to the customer's perception as to whether the organization has met customer requirements. The methods of obtaining and using this information need to be determined.

So, firstly, it isn't your perception of customer satisfaction.

ISO 9000 is basically about attaining customer satisfaction by managing business processes for continual improvement. While we are sure to measure customer satisfaction, section 8.2.1 requires us to monitor customer perception. Monitoring involves systematic checks on a periodic or continual basis.

For example, complaints are handled in section 7 under customer feedback. Monitoring in 8.2.1 means looking at the number of complaints, upward or downward trend, distribution of complaints by customer, location and nature of complaint. Monitoring compliments, complaints, sales statistics, survey results, market presence, and reported reputation of the company are some ways to monitor customer perception of your company's performance.

Here is a link to a similar thread: http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=16110

You will see in short order that I don't really know what I'm talking about or how to convey what would be known if I did.

One thing that seems relevant is to look for information about your company on the web. Reviews of your product would probably be a good source of information.

Another thing that seems promising is a coding system like that used by nurses and doctors as they keep track of their time. If key people are trained to monitor customer perception of your company's performance, they could have a simple way to report this information when found. The report could classify the details and reference the information source, and then this would feed into management reviews. Management review could look all the information over and rank the company on a scale of quality, as perceived by your customers.

What was the severity of nonconformance issued by the auditor? Was this a new auditor or one the company has seen before? How many auditors were involved in the audit, and what is the size of your company?

Again, welcome to The Cove

--Erik


Referencing David Hoyle's ISO 9000 Handbook (4th ed)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0750644516/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/102-8574301-5175355?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155

Hello All,

we have a customer satisfaction survey due to be distributed to customers in the next 6 weeks.
Kate.

kate,

why to make the explanation too long ?
you didnot distribute the surveys to yr customers and so yu didnot comply with the standard ?correct me if Im wrong?
you should send those surveys and determine a"hit ratio" ,make then the analysis , then it will be ok

hope this help

Thanks for your response Erik, I will check out the link.

We are only a small company - 24 employees in total, but we are basically market leaders in what we do here in the UK.

It was Minor Non Conformance, but it is something that has been picked up on before. I have 6 weeks to put the corrective action plan in. Which although sounds alot, I only get 1 day a week to work on ISO - I have 2 main roles within the comapny you see! Project Manager being my main one.

He was a relatively experienced auditor apparently and he was by himself from the auditing point of view, BUT he was accompanied by a genetleman from UKAS (the UK Accreditation Service - kinda like a governing body for ISO here in the UK), who was auditing him, so was being incredibly picky!

Thanks
Kate.

Welcome to the Cove, Kate! :bigwave:

Customer perception and satisfaction do not need to be measured by surveys alone. In fact, surveys tend to be "emotional" data...people fill in only when they are extremely pleased or extremely displeased with the product/service.

I suggest you scroll down to the bottom of this thread where you will find links to other discussions on the concept of customer satisfaction and perception.

Options to assess may include (but are not limited to...get creative!):

Surveys
Phone conversations
Customer visits
Customer Appreciation Day (they come to your place...or host a golf tournament...)


Your e-forum is a nice start, but it sounds (by my interpretation) to be a collector for negative feedback from the customer. Using other tools to gather information will also tell you what you're doing well and it's amazing how that can impact morale when the guys on the floor hear that they're doing something right! :)

Kate,
Get your Customer Satisfaction Survey out as soon as possible. Record whom, when etc. As results come in analysis them so that you you have something to work on. Set a deadline for responses and do a final analysis then. If necessary show that any negative comments have been taken on board through your Continual Improvement Programme. That should keep him happy. A short written procedure for this might also help.

Thank you for all your responses.

I explained to the auditor that we planned to get the survey out asap, but that didn't seem to matter and he gave the impression that the survey wasn't enough anyway.

Sorry - I'm probably just having a moan because I was annoyed with the attitude of the auditor! :mad:

I will check out the other threads on this topic, but any ideas or comments anyone might have would be great.

Thanks again.
Kate. :)

Let's focus on the word "perception"

My understanding of the intent of the Standard is the organization needs to make a decision about the customer's perception of the Quality and value of the products and services supplied by the organization, based on ANY sources of information (polls, surveys, interviews, etc.) and then to make and execute a "plan" to improve or maintain those perceptions.

I have a hunch the issue is that you don't have a process in place to analyze ANY of the customer perception data you receive to incorporate into a plan to improve or maintain that perception. Why not ask the auditor directly if that is what he expects?

Hello All,

I wonder if you could help?

We have just had our 2nd surveillance visit and it went well, apart from the fact that the external auditor raised a non confomance regarding Customer Satisfaction. I have included his exact comment below...

'The organisation needs to review the methods used to define its perception of customer satisfaction, and to demonstrate such perception with effective data'.

We are an IT company that provides middleware software for the Health Service.

We are currently, using e-forums, have a support centre that customers contact with any issue, have user groups where customers are invited to come and discuss whatever they want with us, have a database that customers can suggest enhancements to the s/w and where we log bugs, 2 of our quality objectives are customer satisfaction related and we have a customer satisfaction survey due to be distributed to customers in the next 6 weeks.

The auditor still raised the non conformance, but when asked what he suggested we do in addition, he just said 'read the standard'! Which as you can imagine was rather unhelpful.

So I was wondering what everyone else is doing to monitor / measure customer satisfaction in their organisation and whether they would be willing to share any ideas with me?

I hope you can help.

Thanks
Kate.

It looks like you have some things in place to collect data. Do you have documented evidence that you have looked at the data, and made some decisions on what to do to show continual improvement? This may be as simple as reporting the results in management review, and showing what actions you are going to take based on that review in the minutes (corrective or preventive actions, etc. and that the corrective and/or preventive actions are included in your CA/PA system)

One thing that I've found, sending out a customer survey is not always the most effecient/effective measurement. I think I read someplace that you can only count on about 12% response rate, and in my experience the ones who respond are typically those with a complaint.

I know that I am very bad about completing these surveys in my own life (those sent to me after I purchase something in my own personal life). If I am happy, I might mention it to the salesperson, but I rarely fill out the after market surveys. Case in point, the customer satisfaction survey sent to me after I bought my car last June is still sitting in my letter box on my desk at home. I was incredibly satisfied with the sales man, and I really like my car. Especially since my gas mileage is better than advertised :lmao: . I talked to the salesman who worked with me, and told him how pleased I was, but I never sat down and returned their survey.

I have also worked with auditors that have given me the old "read the standard" response. That does not fly with me anymore. I keep asking what exactly it is that does not meet the standard. Make them tell you something like "you say you will send out questionaires yearly, but you haven't done it." Or, "you have no record of having looked at the results of your data collection and taking corrective or preventive actions based on those results."

Collecting data is good, are you using it? Planning to do something is good, but are you timely in your execution? It appears that you are trying to use a variety of monitoring and measurement techniques, that is good. The only thing I hate worse than getting customer satisfaction surveys is getting supplier quality assurance surveys year after year.:lol:

Good luck, keep us posted.

I agree with what Wes, SteelMaiden and RCBeyette have said, but your auditor may also mean the following:

Your measure of customer satisfaction appear to mostly focus on dissatisfaction. You will only hear from those customers that have a complaint and actually make contact with you to report it. This means that you will not hear from satisfied customers or customers that are unhappy (possibly ready to drop your company) but will not directly contact you.

Your auditor may want you to recognize this and make some effort to capture feedback from these groups.

I use surveys and the responses are very helpful. I get more happy customer responses than unhappy customer responses (handwriten comments are optional on my survey). Most customers provide (in addition to the survey questions) real data, photos, personal comments / experiences, product/service suggestions, all of which is meaningful and useful feedback. It is rare that I get a "bad" survey - one that is "invalid" due to their comments contradicting the survey responses to the questions. I am in the aftermarket automotive industry so we are compared to a lot of other big names. I posted real data, my procedure, my surveys, etc. in the Benchmarking forum. My registrar, UL, tells me that my system is outstanding. My survey method works for my company.

'The organisation needs to review the methods used to define its perception of customer satisfaction, and to demonstrate such perception with effective data'. Not a particularly helpful non compliance as it doesn't say what was wrong! When the auditor comes back give him / her a non compliance! :biglaugh:

We are an IT company that provides middleware software for the Health Service.

We are currently, using e-forums, have a support centre that customers contact with any issue, have user groups where customers are invited to come and discuss whatever they want with us, have a database that customers can suggest enhancements to the s/w and where we log bugs, 2 of our quality objectives are customer satisfaction related and we have a customer satisfaction survey due to be distributed to customers in the next 6 weeks. Reading in to the non compliance the issue may be that all this customer facing stuff may not be distilled into a measure that you can say "It's getting better" or "It's getting worse", a bit of a stretch as far as the standard goes but the principle is right - out of all this work you should be able to say that what you are doing is heling customer satisfaction or it needs work.

The auditor still raised the non conformance, but when asked what he suggested we do in addition, he just said 'read the standard'! Which as you can imagine was rather unhelpful. Agreed - unhelpful in the extreme. I can point you towards a certification body more interested in satisfying their customers if you wish! :D

So I was wondering what everyone else is doing to monitor / measure customer satisfaction in their organisation and whether they would be willing to share any ideas with me? Looks like what you are doing is a long way towards it. Maybe a bit of work on presenting it as data / trends

Everyone seems to think that customer satisfaction has to be measured by survey's. This is not nessessarily the case. Some customers, like the government, probably wouldn't respond to an actual survey if you paid them, which you can't even try since that would be considered a bribe. In cases like these, consider having management interact with the management of your primary customers and write down the customers responses and assign a rating of 1 to 10 based on those responses.
Keep it simple (the stuff the big guys talk about): cost value, responsivness, staff impressions, delivery schedule, etc This data, when added and evaluated with other data such as that from users, emails, real survey's (which are almost always, statistically speaking, completed only by those with a cripe), can really be helpful esp when management is honest. We actually had management assign a 7 about 4 years ago on schedule. Anything 8 or below requires investigation and approprate action.

Everyone seems to think that customer satisfaction has to be measured by survey's. This is not nessessarily the case.
Yes, you are right. We obtain our OEM's and Distributors satisfaction/perception with a survey or a telephone conversation. But the only way to get the data from the end-user (the persons who use our product), is with a survey.

Should one use surveys? it all depends upon who your customer is and if they are reachable.

Yes, you are right. We obtain our OEM's and Distributors satisfaction/perception with a survey or a telephone conversation. But the only way to get the data from the end-user (the persons who use our product), is with a survey.

Should one use surveys? it all depends upon who your customer is and if they are reachable.


There are always cases were the customer is a mediator or broker for the user. In many of these instances, the user can't be contacted directly, which adds a whole new level of fun. Sometimes customer will have to be separated from user and addressed differently.

Seriously, take feedback from any and all sources, but most importantly review, trend, check, etc any data you do get your mits on!

There are always cases were the customer is a mediator or broker for the user. In many of these instances, the user can't be contacted directly, which adds a whole new level of fun. Sometimes customer will have to be separated from user and addressed differently.

Seriously, take feedback from any and all sources, but most importantly review, trend, check, etc any data you do get your mits on!The issue of an official TC176 INTERPRETATION. (http://www.tc176.org/pdf/rfi034_8_2_1final.pdf)



ISO 10020 Customer Satisfaction Monitoring and Measurement

The issue of an official TC176 INTERPRETATION. (http://www.tc176.org/pdf/rfi034_8_2_1final.pdf)




ISO 10020 Customer Satisfaction Monitoring and Measurement

How on earth does this interpretation
Request: ISO 9001:2000 Clause(s:) 8.2.1 In the situation described in the background information, does the standard require an organization to consider also the end user as a customer for monitoring satisfaction?
Background: An organization designs and manufactures a product to its own specifications and sells it to end users through a distribution chain. It is not technically modified between the organization and the end user. The end user can identify the organization through the use of a brand name or a trademark. The organization has contracts with distributors, which in turn sell to stores where end users buy the product.
Interpretation: Yes
have ANY pertinence to the original poster's query?
How should an auditor view an organization which says, flatly, "We see no value in expending funds or other resources to survey or interrogate ANY customers anywhere in the supply chain because we are content that our current method of monitoring unsolicited complaints and compliments gives us all the information we need to determine the "perception" of our customers regarding the quality or value of our goods and services."

Hello all

As one of the measurements of the performance of the quality management system, the organization shall monitor information relating to customer perception as to whether the organization has met customer requirements. The methods for obtaining and using this information shall be determined.

When ISO TC 176 answered a question abuot 8.2.1, which you so kindly provided Sidney, they clarified some specifics about the definition of customer. That's interesting, but how is 8.2.1 implemented, what are some examples for different industries?

There has been good discussion about this on the forum before. There are some good tricks out there.

I think the customer survey vehicle is totally sufficient. Consciencious users have taken the time to use the customer survey as a way to monitor customer perceptions, making them neat and efficient, taking them to the customer themselves, helping them fill it out, etc. This is traditional and sufficient for manufacturers in supply chains. As long as the results are obtained and used in a formalized way as a measure of the management system's performance, you're in agreement with 8.2.1 as far as I can see it.

When moving outside of manufacturing and supply chains, the traditional customer survey is a little card with five questions on it that comes in the bottom of every box. Sales runs high here, and the customers are a little different. This is where the talent comes in.

Monitor information about the customer's opinion of your product. It sounds simple but probably needs the time of a the right salesperson to make it really shine.

I can't think of any very simple system outside of customer surveys, and I'd really like to read ISO 10020.

What have I become?

"We see no value in expending funds or other resources to survey or interrogate ANY customers anywhere in the supply chain because we are content that our current method of monitoring unsolicited complaints and compliments gives us all the information we need to determine the "perception" of our customers regarding the quality or value of our goods and services."

ROFLMAO

:applause:

Hello All,

Thank you so much for all your help and advice - there is so much useful stuff here that I need to look through and think about.

I have to say that I am quite overwhelmed by the help that is offered from this forum. I am a member of another forum for ISO 27001:2005 and it is no way near as helpful (probably because of the lack of users I guess!). Anyway, this is off topic, so I will pull myself back in! :D

I will keep you all updated wth progress - I have called a management meeting tomorrow to see if I can get them all thinking in the same direction and get some decent suggestions and responses from them, I then have to submit my corrective action plan to the auditor (he is not coming back to the company thank goodness!) within the next 5 weeks.

Thanks again.
Kate.

Kate
In my last company I produce a simple sheet, NOT to be sent to the customer, to be filled in by any member of staff when the opportunity arose whilst talking to a cutomer. Along the lines of "By the way, while we're chatting, do you mind if I ask a couple of questions about our comapny performance......." fill the form in, analyse and file the results on a regular basis.
Paul

Hello everyone (this is a great site, really :magic: )

We are not a certified company, and we are never audited, but we seek certification.
In the customer perception I put complains, surveys, expectations, suggestions and SALES!
I have mixed that all together in a Satisfaction Index to be monitored.

I also wrote a Customer Perception Management Procedure (calculeted for every Q). It's not a very reactive index, but it's a start :rolleyes:

(I have all that in portuguese... Other way I could upload it, for you all to see):o

We have tried customer survey mailouts as well as emails over the last few years and have found that overall it is very difficult to get anything back.

A few weeks ago I had a brainstorm and decided to try the fax machine method of contacting customers with the request for completion of our survey. I included a pleasant cover letter detailing the purpose of the survey and how the results are used within our QMS.

It worked!!! ;) Within a few days we had already received several surveys back from our customers via return fax, more than the total received back via mail and email for the entire year previous.

Now I am really stumped by the psychology behind what it is about a "fax" that would make customers more inclined to reply :) .

At one beverage distribution organization, that has at least 5000 direct customers, we use the survey method.
At the beginning of this experience, we used our sales people to ask the questions. Two times a year, when they visit a customer, they ask question in order to fill the survey of the customer’s satisfaction.
Problem with this solution was that our sales people are so friendly with their normal customer, that the results we got were very tendentious.
After that we started sending the surveys by mail, but the number survey received were not more that 10% of those that were sent...

Now there’s a new experience. We are sending one quality manager to ask some prepared question to the most important customers. Approximately 10% of all customers represent more than 90% of sales. This way those 10% are the ones that are being under tight satisfaction survey.
The satisfaction survey of all the other customers is being made just by constant measurement of their quantity of products bought. We use a kind of control chart that has one lower limit. If this limit is reached it gives us the information that we might have problems with that customer...:bonk:

Hello All,

I was wondering what everyone else is doing to monitor / measure customer satisfaction in their organisation and whether they would be willing to share any ideas with me?


Kate,

I'd be less than impressed (to put it mildly!) with an auditor who just said 'read the Standard' in response to your question. Talk about having the hide to raise customer satisfaction as an issue... and then demonstrate by action that he doesn't seem to have a clue about it himself. Not untypical of some auditors, alas (the not very good ones).

There's a Handbook called 'Customer Satisfaction Measurement' released in July 04 which you might find useful - it's quite readable, straightforward language and generally good. Gives a number of examples.

One of the things it did that I liked was that he points out that the old 'once a year' survey is a/not necessarily the best let alone the only way and b/there's plenty of other methods of keeping in touch with what customers think of you, whether you've met their needs and their expectations.

Details:
HB 251-2004 : Customer Satisfaction Measurement - A handbook for users of AS/NZS ISO 9001:2000

While it was developed & released in Australia, IMO it's not country-specific.
Available electronically via Standards Australia (http://www.saiglobal.com/shop/Script/search.asp). Search on HB 251 to find it.