Issue 103 – Customer Complaints: Open your ears!
ISO 9001:2015…
Customer Complaints: Open your ears!
I appreciate receiving emails with questions and/or comments from readers of this Newsletter… please continue to do so since it provides me with ideas on what these publications should cover. In my last Newsletter (ISO 9001:2015 Newsletter Issue 102) we discussed the topic of “Auditors: Use your camera!”, and now in this Newsletter we will discuss “Customer Complaints: Open your ears!”.
The ISO 9001:2015 Element numbering…
Element 4 – Context of the organization
Element 5 – Leadership
Element 6 – Planning
Element 7 – Support
Element 8 – Operation
Element 9 – Performance evaluation
Element 10 – Improvement
Customer Complaints: Open your ears!… I’ll begin by relating a recent audit interview that prompted my choice of this topic for the Newsletter. I was having a discussion with a maintenance planner/coordinator and during the course of the conversation I happened to ask whether they ever had to interact with the outside Customer. They proceeded to tell me how they never are directly involved with Customers but occasionally they are drawn into an investigation for a Customer complaint which didn’t happen very often, they quickly added. So I asked when was the last time and they said something had come up about six months prior, and it was because of a scheduled maintenance activity that went from bad to worse. This resulted in a production run being delayed which in turn caused a series of late deliveries to a very large Customer, who then called a high level person in the organization, resulting in a cascade of heated internal calls & emails… and that’s how my maintenance person got caught up in it all.
What are the benefits of listening?… …What makes the above story even more interesting is that I had already completed my audit interviews with the top Quality person… and with the top Sales person… and with the top Production person… where I asked each one of them about how they handled Customer complaints… and surprisingly, this particular Customer incident never came up. I had even reviewed all of the Customer complaints that had been logged/recorded over the past 12 months in their database… and this complaint did not show up.
I was confused because this was the first time I was hearing about this problem, so I circled back and re-interviewed the Production Scheduler and asked about this situation. He quickly confirmed that this late delivery event had occurred and how he had to do a last minute shipping shuffle to satisfy the Customer. I asked if this had happened before and he admitted that at least a couple of times a year he has to untangle a production snafu like that. When I asked him why he hadn’t said anything about this in my earlier interview, he said “because you didn’t ask about Customer problems”. When I asked why this wasn’t logged as a Customer Complaint, he simply shrugged and said his only priority was to quickly put out the fire and move on.
Basically what was happening was that these types of incidents were being resolved (after the Customer was forced to call and complain) but no one was keeping a record of it… and worse… no problem solving approach was being applied… which meant that another Customer “surprise” was waiting just around the corner. I suppose the moral of this story is… always “open your ears” for any hint of a Customer problem… because it can pop up from the most unlikely of places (i.e. maintenance).
When I say “open your ears”, I am talking primarily to Internal Auditors AND to the top Quality people, because sometimes you may not be always told about these Customer incidents unless you ask about Customer problems specifically… and don’t forget that protecting the Customer from surprises is why you exist.
Be sure to watch for our next Newsletter issue where I will be answering some of the questions that I get from Readers of my Newsletters about how to implement the requirements of ISO 9001:2015 in a specific and practical way, that will also help improve business performance…
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For cost effectiveness, the Internal Audit function can be outsourced to an external experienced auditor on a periodic basis. This will provide an independent and objective assessment to management, of where process issues may exist, along with identifying opportunities for improvement. It will also provide the evidence needed to satisfy the Internal Audit requirements in the ISO Standards. We have used two different approaches with this service: a) We conduct the entire audit ourselves, or b) We act as the lead auditor, and along with your Team of internal auditors, we complete the entire audit together. This latter approach allows your people to receive guidance and direction from an experienced lead auditor while at the same time maintaining significant involvement in the internal audit process.
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The two (2) day Internal Process Auditing for ISO 9001:2015 Training Session is focused on a process approach to auditing with the objective being not only to assess conformance of the quality management system, but also to uncover process improvements during an audit. This goes hand in hand with the process auditing requirements found within ISO 19011 and the process approach covered in ISO 9001:2015, which promotes continual process improvement throughout this Standard. An enhanced checklist is developed, and there will be workshops throughout, to reinforce learning, as well as a live, practice audit. If you are looking to meet the ISO 9001:2015 internal audit requirements and to “raise the bar” for your internal audit program then this is the course you should consider.
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Until next time…
Tim Renaud
Helping Business Professionals Reduce Risk and Remove Waste!