The ISO 9001 Clause That Helps to Focus on Customer Satisfaction

Summary:

This article emphasises the particular clause or requirements of the ISO 9001 standard that helps businesses to boost their customer satisfaction by improving their products or services.

The ISO 9001 standard provides a wide number of requirements grouped under clauses that guide organisations need to fulfil to have a quality management system (QMS) implemented. While the ISO 9001 requirements apply uniformly to organisations in all sectors, this article underlines clause 8.2 which defines requirements for products or services that ensure businesses meet customer satisfaction.

Summing up the clause, it includes customer communication, assessment of customer requirements, review of requirements with an effective feedback system, and implementation of changes to products or services to address customer complaints. The next section gives you better details of the ISO requirements defined under clause 8.2 and states how they help businesses to focus on their customers.

Customer Communication

When you get to the clause 8.2 after fulfilling the preceding clauses of ISO 9001, it is time to empower your marketing team and help them do their best to imrpove products or services for customers. The clause comes in four sections and the first section concerns effective and consistent communication with customers. Your marketing team must establish methods for communication with customers where they can tell them about the products or services, collect vital customer information, get feedback, handle orders requests or enquiries, and take actions in the emergence of complaints.

Some of the methods that businesses can use to facilitate consistent communication with customers are:

• Website to publish about features of products or services
• Presentation of help guides and FAQs on the websites
• Online and offline enquiry system
• Online or offline surveys
• Custom webinars

Customer Requirements

The next part of clause 8.2 is concerned with understanding the customer requirements. You need to determine what they want from your products or services before actually selling them and engaging with them. Determining the requirements of customers related to products or services requires a process for your organisation which helps to identify:

• Customer needs and preferences
• Features/utilities that your products or services intended to offer
• Legal as well as statutory regulations of the local authorities or national governments
• Organisation’s objectives and claims made to customers
• Requirements of other companies, partners or interested parties

Identifying all these helps you to capture all possible requirements for your products or services that would explicitly meet the needs of your customers. The more capable your organisation is in identifying these widespread requirements, the more you can please your customers with value-added aspects in your products or services.

Review of Requirements

The third part of the clause is concerned with reviewing the requirements of your products or services and getting viewpoints of customers and other interested parties before committing to deliver the products or services. To review the requirements, you need to consider certain aspects such as delivery system, customer services, products/services warranty, applicable regulations, and procedures of contracts. You need to have information regarding these documented so that they are formally accepted and followed by the marketing team. Conducting a review of the requirements helps to ensure that customers’ requirements are defined and met. It also ensures that the business has the ability to fulfil its customer expectations.

Change of Requirements

There is a new section added to the clause which requires you to ensure that any documented information related to a change in products/services for better customer satisfaction is implemented. Review of requirements may lead to identification of certain modifications or changes in the products and so it has to be ensured that employees of organisation are informed about the changes. It is only then the changes can be incorporated into the products/services.

Organisations need the ISO 9001 certification for a number of reasons and meeting customer expectations is one of them. Clearly, ISO 9001 requirements defined under clause 8.2 directly help a business to establish a relationship with customers, communicate with them, understand them, and improve products/services accordingly. In order to achieve ISO 9001 you need to prepare your marketing team thoroughly because they are the ones who need to adhere to the requirements and ensure everything is satisfactory to the customers.

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