Customer satisfaction studies

It’s obvious that a company cannot exist without its clients. But is it enough for an organization to have clients, without knowing how (dis)satisfied they are, what are their expectations? The answer is NO! From this point of view, ISO 9001:2000 standard places the client in the center of the universe. Clause 8.2.1. Customer Satisfaction requires for organization to monitor information regarding customers perception about how organization satisfied their needs. We can understand further that customer satisfaction is one of the methods to determine the performance of the system.

Under ISO 9001:2000 standard, whatever is doing the organization, it has to fulfill the requirements of the client, if they were mutually agreed initially. It’s important for the company to know how well it performed in front of the client, how pleased is the client, having as reference what was agreed initially. Such studies may help the management of organization to improve the relation organization – client in two directions: lowering the operating costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

No need to discuss further on lowering the operating cost. Who would not like a company to operate at the minimum cost ever possible?! As for increased customer satisfaction, there is a simple and straight benefit: partnership between organization and client. Most successful companies turned their customers into partners. This is a superior approach of "client" concept.

Thus, every company must be preoccupied by satisfaction of their customers; furthermore, satisfaction has to be determined. Results from the analyze of customer satisfaction must be an input element for managers for deciding future actions. Answers to following questions should be provided by customer satisfaction studies:

• what’s the overall perception of the client regarding the organization;
• what is not working properly in relation organization – client;
• how well the needs of client were satisfied;
• what are the expectations of the client (here we enter in marketing studies);
• how valuable was the interface between organization and client;
• and question list may continue.

Answers to above questions can guide the future actions of management. Examples presented above are not the only one that exists. Where applicable, these main issues may be divided in sub-components, in order to be compiled a better understanding. New subjects may be added, as well.

Russell Romania (ISO 9000 Consulting) has developed, tested and proved methodologies to determine customer satisfaction. They are developed to most regular business sectors and can be further adapted to particular needs you may have. One of the strongest points of our methodologies are related to possibility of diminish the subjectivity of answers provided by respondents.

Final advice of specialist: focus on the client, measure customer satisfaction (meaning more than monitoring which is an ISO 9001:2000 requirement), try to improve it and lower the operational costs wherever possible...

A graph example from a report regarding customer satisfaction is included above in this article. That uses a common methodology, widely spread among practicians. Below are included partial results from another study, where a more deeper analyse was involved. The goal of the study was to determine how often a customer is satisfied and what are the odds of failing to satisfy the customers.