Ensuring Customer Satisfaction with the Help of ISO 9001 Certification (Demo)

ENSURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION WITH THE HELP OF ISO 9001 CERTIFICATION (DEMO)

In the world of business, few axioms ring as true as “the customer is always right”—that is, an unhappy customer is a customer lost forever. Having said that, it’s sobering to learn that despite the establishment of various customer-care programs, people aren’t any happier with customer service than they were in 1976. While most companies are happy just to make a sale, making sure that your customers are satisfied with their purchase has profound effects on your bottom line, as opinion research firm WPA reveals: the-importance-of-customer-satisfaction Sometimes companies are misguided by the notion that customers depend on them. The truth of the matter is that we very much so depend on them. Many researchers and academia have highlighted the importance of customers in today’s market. The level of satisfaction a customer has with a company has profound effects. Studies have found that the level of customer’s satisfaction has a positive effect on profitability: – A totally satisfied customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue to a company as a somewhat satisfied customer. -A totally satisfied customer contributes 17 times as much revenue as a somewhat dissatisfied customer. -A totally dissatisfied customer decreases revenue at a rate equal to 18 times what a totally satisfied customer contributes to a company. At the end of the day, there’s really only one metric that determines how happy a client will be with your product or service—quality. However, the concept of quality has to be fully understood throughout a company, from the CEO down to the sales associates. Thankfully, ISO certification 9001 allows any organization—whether they be schools, car manufacturers and even call centers—to have the same definition of quality so the actions of all members are geared towards achieving it. ISO 9001 is an international quality guideline that encourages companies to create and implement a quality management system (QMS)—a best practice handbook that governs everything from securing a supplier, to manufacturing a product, to fielding complaints from unhappy customers. This standard also requires organizations to devise ways of measuring customer satisfaction to ensure that they are delivering exactly what their clients need. Of course, ISO 9001 certification cannot be bestowed upon itself by a company but is instead granted by a third-party auditor like International Standards Authority, Inc. (ISA). Only after closely scrutinizing and judging that an organization’s QMS manual is effective will an auditor present ISO 9001 certification.   (Article Excerpt and Image from The Importance of Customer Satisfaction, WPA Opinion Research, February 02, 2012)