What are your top tips for improving quality and customer satisfaction in your company?

Customer satisfaction is not only related to product quality but an end to end customer experience right from a point where the customer makes the first inquiry. Each process should create curiosity and interest in customer to move ahead. Post sales also has to be taken care of.

To define Quality goals, it must be aligned with the organization’s strategic directions. Quality goals should move toward to achieve the directions and then break it down to objectives.

Any customer satisfaction project/ aspiration always travel from top to bottom. The scope of the organisation always defines the boundary of customer satisfaction as aptly explained in QMS Policy ISO 9001:2015. It goes like: - Context/scope of Organisation - Leadership involvement - Planning QMS - Resource allocation for QMS activities - Operational execution - Performance monitoring - Control and improvement This is the very generic but aptly customisable based on the nature of work/ organisation.

Elevate quality and enhance customer relationships adeptly: 1. Implement meticulous quality assurance protocols. 2. Foster a culture of unwavering quality commitment. 3. Employ sophisticated customer engagement strategies. 4. Garner comprehensive customer feedback. 5. Tailor products or services with precision. 6. Prioritize customer satisfaction vehemently. 7. Facilitate seamless communication channels. 8. Cultivate enduring customer loyalty astutely.

Involving our customers should include learning about their expectations and setting the appropriate expectations of what to expect in your industry or healthcare setting. Dissatisfaction occurs when there is a gap between what was expected and the actual experience. By setting expectations early, there can be shared decision making in ensuring a great customer experience.

It's important to choose the right feedback channels. It should be accessible (easy to find and use) and takes into consideration the age, location and preferences of your customers (use of social media, preferred languages, etc.). One example is the case of X organization in Lebanon. The organization offered only one feedback channel: a link to a form that was only available in English. As a result, they received very little feedback. When the organization conducted a focus group to learn more about why customers were not submitting feedback, they learned that most of them preferred to use the Arabic language and that they wanted more ways to submit feedback that didn't require an internet connection.

Empowering employees is huge and often overlooked by companies. Employees should be able to make decisions that can resolve customer issues or concerns without having to involve upper leadership unless something truly needs to be escalated. By empowering employees, they also feel connected to the company's mission and service to the customer.

Developing the quality as a culture is just as vital as giving people more authority. Separate quality functions become unnecessary whenever the ecosystem as a whole starts to demand quality. Well-established procedures and frameworks ought to produce quality. You cannot obtain quality by putting in more checking gates.

Having a quality management system keeps everyone on the same page for expected outcomes and expected processes. There should also be some allowance for real-time decision making to allow for meeting the customer's needs.

Involvement of stakeholders into processes is very important in my view, too. When I was working in a company as a Quality Assurance Manager we have faced with reoccuring misplacement of stickers on the product. It was a very simple defect, however it had a huge effect on the product image. We have decided to get all the workers together, took some of the products coming from the customer and told them to act as if they were the customer. It was an open discussion. The workers till that time were not really aware of the complete process. The cycle was not closed for them. They were only doing what they had to do without considering the customer. After being involved with the whole process they started to come up many more ideas.

Desde mi punto de vista la claridad que se logra al entender las expectativas del cliente alineado a sus necesidades y de acuerdo con el alcance de los trabajos o servicios contratados, es lo más importante para brindar un servicio de calidad, ya que si el cliente quiere algo color azul y nuestro alcance es brindarle este, lo ideal sería mostrar las gamas de azul con las que cuenta la empresa para que este quede enteramente satisfecho, el cliente siempre tiene la razón, pero cuando uno es especialista en la materia, es más fácil dar la asesoría que este requiere para tomar la mejor decisión en su adquisición.