When was the last time you had a bad experience as a customer and complained about it? Was your complaint resolved to your satisfaction? When your experience as a customer doesn't meet your expectations, it creates a gap between you and the business. You may even decide that you'll never come back.
Let's say you walk into a tailor and to drop off a pair of pants to be hemmed. "They'll be ready in three days," you're told. On the third day, you realize you can't find your receipt. In fact, you don't remember getting one when you dropped them off, but you don't think much about it. So later that day you go back to the store and find out they can't find your pants and they have no record of your order. You ask for the manager. "I'm the owner," says the man on the other side of the counter. "And that's my wife," he says, pointing to a woman at a sewing machine. Neither one of them look like the person you spoke with a few days ago.
For obvious reasons, it's good business practice to create a unique record of an order and to have an organized and efficient system to track customer property. These are standards that most people expect when doing business with a reputable company, and examples of two ISO 9001 standards regarding record-keeping and customer property.
The Greek word for equal is iso. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, publishes over 16,000 standards. Companies worldwide voluntarily follow the standards to facilitate their efficiency in doing business with others. It is the largest standards organization in the world. ISO 9001:2008 is one, among many, of their sets of standards. This 27-page document describes the basics for running a business with a high quality management system. It outlines management responsibilities for managing resources, products and services. It also describes requirements related to measuring improvement of the business, such as cycle time, accuracy or customer satisfaction.
ISO standards are developed by specialists who understand their trade. Professionals come from every industry including: medical, engineering, communication, construction, technology, transportation and distribution. Experts typically distribute drafts of standards for public review and feedback. They debate them until they reach consensus on new standards or updates on existing standards. They tell stories and consider how their criteria might apply to different organizations throughout the world. They criticize every word in every standard. Every sentence must be clear, concise and thoughtful in order for it to work effectively worldwide.
Companies wanting to meet the standards of ISO 9001 are required to track their mistakes and find ways to prevent employees from making the same ones week after week. In ISO language, this translates to tracking nonconformities and following through with corrective actions to the business processes.
If you own a small company, you probably don't need official ISO 9001 certification yet, but if you learn the basics of the standard and apply them, you'll create a better company. If you own a company with more than fifty employees and aren't already ISO 9001 certified, bring it up for discussion in your next executive meeting. You'll be surprised at what this standard can do for the culture of your company and how much it will empower your employees to make it a better place to work and do business.
Fools believe they have all the answers and work hard each day, eventually putting themselves out of business. Owners who embrace improvement appreciate the standards described in ISO 9001. They learn from others, and listen to their employees and customers. They build profitable businesses that endure the test of time.
Lorraine Haataia, Ph.D., is a consultant, corporate trainer and professional speaker who helps businesses achieve continuous improvement and growth from the inside out. She specializes in ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems and ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems (http://www.iso.org). As an expert in education and business process improvement, she guides clients toward improving their customers' experiences while increasing profitability. Lorraine has more than 15 years in business leadership in various industries including transportation, construction and interior design. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Florida. To book Lorraine, call 904-315-8962 or visit http://www.drlorraine.net
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