It's Your Supplier Survey™

ISO9000 Background

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) was established in Switzerland in 1947 to develop common international standards, applicable in many areas. Today, its members come from the standard bodies from more than 120 countries.

ISO published a set of quality standards in 1987 and revised them in 1994, referring to them collectively as the ISO9000:1994 standards, or ISO9000 for short. By the year 2000 over 400,000 organisations world-wide were certified to this standard, as they recognised that it was one of the most important quality management standards for organisations, as it controls quality, improves repeatability and saves money. Its importance to business has also been underlined over the years by the fact that more and more customers are expecting it from their suppliers.

ISO 9000 is not only for large organisations: many small to middle sized organisations, both product and service oriented, have been able to profit from their own implementation of the ISO9000 standards, by achieving both internal cost reductions and standards of quality recognised and respected the world over.

In the year 2000, as part of its own product improvement programme, ISO listened to its customers and rewrote significant parts of the ISO9000 specification in order to simplify it and to make it more globally applicable. These new standards are known collectively as the "ISO 9000 2000 Quality Management Standards", or ISO9000:2000 for short. These new standards are much more customer oriented, focus more heavily on the need for involvement of top managers within the certification process, and focus on the process of continual monitoring and improving of all relevant processes. Also, and most significantly, the new standard requires organisations to continually monitor and improve Customer Satisfaction.

This standard came into effect on 15th December, 2000, but, recognising the fact that many organisations currently approved to ISO9000:1994 would require time to implement the changes required by the new standard, ISO defined a 'transition time' of three years.

As such, all organisations certified to any one of the ISO9000:1994 standards (ISO9001, ISO9002 or ISO9003) needed to be re-certified to ISO9000:2000 (ISO9001:2000) by 15th December, 2004.

Monitoring Customer Satisfaction

In the new ISO9001:2000 standard, ISO have highlighted the importance of customers to Quality Management by introducing a new requirement: that of the continual monitoring and improvement of Customer Satisfaction. Clause 8.2 of the ISO9001:2000 standard ("Monitoring and Measurement") contains a sub-clause (8.2.1) entitled "Customer Satisfaction" which was not part of the ISO9001:1994 specification.

Specifically, this sub-clause requires an organisation to:

• define a methodology for monitoring Customer Satisfaction
• implement the methodology to monitor Customer Satisfaction
• use the results of the Customer Satisfaction monitoring process in order to improve Customer Satisfaction.

The actual sub-clause of the ISO9001:2000 standard (8.2.1) refers to the monitoring of Customer Perception. As perception is a personal trait, the only true way of monitoring it is by using some form of customer interview technique, of which there are numerous different types. Any other indirect techniques, such as the measuring of the number of customer complaints and/or product returns or even the monitoring of the use of the organisation's products and/or services are not exclusively influenced by customer perception, but also by many other independent factors such as a customer´s financial situation, for example. By using these and similar techniques, therefore, could lead to a misleading measurement of Customer Perception and hence Customer Satisfaction.

It follows that customer interviews are the most effective way of getting information from customers; but organisations have shown a reluctance to use this technique due to the following concerns:

• turn around time to conduct interviews
• resources required to conduct interviews
• time to collate and analyse the results
• the expense of using an external agency
• questionnaires typically measure a respondent's emotional response rather than a truly rational response

As a result, typically a significant amount of time and money needs to be spent in conducting a Customer Satisfaction survey.

In order to address the concerns of a typical Customer Satisfaction survey highlighted above, The Gosling Group has used its questionnaire technology (The "Dynamic Questionnaire Engine™" - patent pending) developed for the It's Your Company Questionnaire™ (IYCQ) to produce the It's Your Supplier Survey™ (IYSS). Measuring the four disciplines of Product Positioning, Customer Service, Total Quality and Competitive Positioning, the IYSS™ is an ideal solution for companies wanting to conduct a quick, easy to use, reliable and cost effective Company Satisfaction survey which meets the requirements of ISO9001:2000 sub-clause 8.2.1 (Measuring and Monitoring - Customer Satisfaction).

The IYSS™, as with the IYCQ™, has the following benefits:

• All analyses are performed internally. No expensive external companies need ever be involved.
• A full analysis of the Customer Satisfaction can be taken and analysed in days rather than weeks.
• The effectiveness of any corrective programmes can be measured in real time.
• Customers feel part of a dynamic programme.
• Customer questionnaire response rate is maximised by:
  - ensuring questionnaire takes less than 5 minutes to
    complete
  - customer receiving immediate feedback to their
    inputs
  - customer automatically receiving a supplier
    assesment free-of-charge (for benchmarking
    purposes)
• The output report is clear, concise and jargon free and lets you know exactly how your customers measure your company and how satisfied they are.
• The Gosling Group's patent pending Dynamic Questionnaire Engine™ (DQE) technology ensures that customer satisfaction is measured, rather than customer emotion; the technology also records customers' level of conviction, thereby enabling the future trend of customer satisfaction to be determined.
• Using The Gosling Group as an independent organisation for IYS Survey™ collation and assessment reassures customers that their inputs remain anonymous.
• Allows immediate benchmarking by comparing your company's results with those from your company's industry.
• Very easy and quick to set up.
• In addition to the standard 21 questions, the IYSS™ allows you to include up to 3 of your own questions in the Customer Survey.

Setting up your own company's IYSS™

Setting up an IYSS™ for your own company simply requires you to navigate to:

On this page, which can be completed in less than five minutes, you will be required to enter a minimum amount of information relevant to you and your company and also decide how your customers should logon to the IYS Survey™.

Options for the logon procedure are:

1. By using a Master Key
   - a password used as a Personal Identification
     Number (PIN) for all customers
2. By defining a list of randomly generated PINs to distribute to only those customers who should partake in the survey (recommended)
   - prevents double/multiple entries
3. Using your own PINs (e.g. Customer Numbers)
   - saves time and effort of PIN distribution

Whichever procedure you choose, the customers' inputs remain completely anonymous at all times.

On completion of the Setup page, by then navigating to the Own Questions page, you can personalise your questionnaire further by inputting up to three of you own questions into the IYSS questionnaire. This is useful should you want immediate feedback on a new product or service recently introduced, for example.

Requesting an IYSS™ report

Having successfully set up an IYSS™ for your company and distributed the PINs to those customers who should take part in the survey, the next step is to order an IYSS Summary report, once your customers have successfully completed the survey.

To discover how many customers have already responded to your survey and also to order a summary report of those customers' inputs (assuming enough customers have already responded to warrant ordering a summary report) you should navigate to:

On this page, as well as inputting your company information, you will be required to specify which report(s) you want and how they should be delivered. You have the opportunity to not only order your own company IYSS Report summary, but also the results collected so far for your company's entire industry (for benchmarking purposes).

You can also opt to have your report(s) delivered by email, or by registered post.

Prior to submitting your order, you will be advised how many of your customers have already completed the survey. Based on this information you can choose to continue with your order or not.

NB In order to order a report will require you to purchase a license from The Gosling Group for each report you wish to order. This is achieved under the Order Licenses page†.

Their site can be found at: http://www.iso.ch.

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