That is a different perspective than I had coming into this - that makes a lot of real-world sense in terms of representing what really is going down - thank you! I will definitely keep this in mind!
Customer Satisfaction
- Thread starter Sinead C
- Start date
Keep it simple and provable! I will definitely keep that in mind - It is so easy to overengineer some of these things - Thank you for the reminder of that!
Wow - I had not considered that; I will look into ISO 10004 that thank you!
Kronos147
Trusted Information Resource
The requirement per 9.1.2 includes: "The organization shall determine the methods for obtaining, monitoring, and reviewing this information."
You may not like the math, however, it is verifiable, it is objective.
It has been determined.
Requirements also include: "Information to be monitored and used for the evaluation of customer satisfaction shall include, but is not limited to, product and service conformity, on- time delivery performance,..."
The math example is reviewing product and service conformity, as well as on-time delivery. Taken with Customer Satisfaction, those are the only metrics specifically spelled out by the standard.
Thinking leads to subjective results. I am not sure why that would be better.
Thinking still matters.
Picture a pandemic. Supply chains wobble. A hospital used to order 100 Gizmos and file complaints on 2 percent. Now they order 200 and staff are slammed. Broken units get tossed in a bin and nobody files paperwork. Complaints drop to near zero while real failures rise. The metric looks great
If I saw that, I would not celebrate. I would investigate. Send sales or service to the site and ask what they are actually seeing. If they report a box of discarded units and a 10 percent failure rate, the complaint metric is no longer measuring product performance. It measures customer's capacity to complain.
And it is not just pandemics. Normal business changes can swing complaint counts
Staff turnover
Training changes
Workflow changes
Budget pressure
New IT restrictions
Facility moves
When the data shows a sudden, unprecedented shift, it warrants thinking to explain what changed and whether the metric still means what we think it means.
In your opinion Do you think your thinking and Kronos thinking are both correct but serve to have different outcomes? It seems both are defendable in an audit citing 9.1.2 but 1 way is to force the KPI to provide genuine feedback regardless of external factors while the other satiates the standard and the company may rely more on POC awareness of active true customer satisfaction?
Critical thinking is always needed. Biased, blinkered ‘thinking’ (which is really only remembering something that you have seen or experienced a lot of in isolation of other things that have occurred) is only coincidentally ever ‘right’.
Sure any old math or survey can satisfy an auditor, because it is typical and it does effect minimal compliance to the standard. And if all you want is mere compliance to a minimum quality standard, go for it.
Understanding Customer Satisfaction is hard. It takes effort. And yes it takes critical thinking to sift through the conflicting messages. A number is not knowledge. Context matters.
Can you have both? Maybe, but not in my experience. That is because those who are proponents of minimal or easy compliance do it because they don’t understand and therefore can’t defend true quality efforts. These are typically opposing forces. But since I haven’t seen everything I am open to the rare occurrence actually happening.
Sure any old math or survey can satisfy an auditor, because it is typical and it does effect minimal compliance to the standard. And if all you want is mere compliance to a minimum quality standard, go for it.
Understanding Customer Satisfaction is hard. It takes effort. And yes it takes critical thinking to sift through the conflicting messages. A number is not knowledge. Context matters.
Can you have both? Maybe, but not in my experience. That is because those who are proponents of minimal or easy compliance do it because they don’t understand and therefore can’t defend true quality efforts. These are typically opposing forces. But since I haven’t seen everything I am open to the rare occurrence actually happening.
Kronos thinking says the smoke alarm is code compliant. It is wired, tested monthly, and logged. If it does not go off, the house must be fine. From an audit standpoint, that is defensible.
But businesses dont exist to pass audits. They exist to make customers happy and generate revenue at the same time.
Thinking says wait a second, I smell smoke. Maybe the battery is dead, maybe the fire is slow and smoldering, maybe the alarm is in the wrong room. Before declaring the house safe, I check the kitchen.
Just measuring KPI assumes all your customers are obeying the "If it has a problem I file a complaint" They don't all do that. In the last week Ive noticed buggy behavior in my iPhone, my laptop and an item I bought in clamshell packaging. I could have cut my hands trying to open it even with real tools. I complained zero times. Some customers tolerate poor performance and just live with it or they silently look for another solution.
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Kronos147
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This is a good point. I would propose that whoever is not 'thinking' and 'questioning the smoke' will not survive for reasons outside of the scope of a managment system standard.
I agree the advice is less useful to an organization, and potentially more about satisfying the requirement of the standard. If you think about the number as an indicator, it may be the 'smoke'.
For a business to succeed, you need to understand the needs and expectations of the customer. I submit that organizations that are successful do that in ways that are good for the customer and organization, but may not satisfy a requirement.
I will agree with Bev and say that there are better methods of taking the temperature of the customer that provide more useful information to the organization.
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