TABLE OF CONTENTS The first nine chapters of this book have covered everything that organisations need to understand to comply with the customer satisfaction measurement requirements of ISO 9001:2000. This chapter provides some thoughts about how organisations can go beyond that and focuses on four main areas:
The new customer satisfaction related concepts introduced by ISO 9004:2000.
Benchmarking customer satisfaction across industries.
Monitoring competitors.
Characteristics of organisations that are most successful at satisfying customers.
As we saw earlier in this book, the fundamental purpose of the quality management system is to demonstrate the organisation's ability to consistently meet customers' requirements and focus the organisation's quest for continual improvement. This is emphasised right at the beginning of ISO 9001:2000 in clause 1.1 on the general scope of the Standard.
This International Standard specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organisation:
Needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable regulatory requirements, and
Aims to enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for the continual improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable regulatory requirements.
ISO 9001:2000 specifies the essential requirements of a quality management system capable of meeting the objectives outlined above. As we have seen throughout this book, customer satisfaction measurement is one of the important elements of such a quality management system. However, although customer satisfaction measurement is an essential prerequisite of an effective continual improvement system, it is...
