[BULK] - Re: [TowerTalk] Amidon customer satisfaction

[Michael Tope]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Katz" <stevek at jmr.com>
> > Mike, I don't agree with you.  I'm a skeptic about a lot of things, but
> > any company who has any process controls in place really has no
difficulty
> > passing an ISO audit and becoming registered with very little change in
> > anything.

Steve, you are sort of making my point. You work for a good
company that would probably do things right regardless of
whether they are certified or not. I don't think ISO certification
magically transforms bad organizations into good ones.
Amidon appears to be a good example of this. It doesn't
sound like their current management has a clue about customer
service, despite their ISO certification. They would be better
off putting energy into actually doing things right and really
improving their customer service rather than getting ISO
certification.

In any case, I think you have to look deeper than ISO
certification to know that you are dealing with a good company.
For example, I work with this one company who makes mixers.
I think its a small company. When I call them up I usually talk to
the owner. He actually dissuaded me from using one of his
products because he said that it wasn't really his speciality and
that others are better at making low frequency mixers than he is
(he specializes in microwave mixers).   He always gives frank
advice even when it means losing a sale. Some might think
that this is foolish, but I won't hesitate to use him in the future
or give him a good word-of-mouth reference. I think he knows
this. Heck I don't even know if his company is ISO certified,
and I don't really care :)

73 de Mike, W4EF......................


>
>

> >
> > Here at my company, we use an outside ISO consultant who comes in only
> > about twice each year for a few days to pre-audit us, see if we've tied
up
> > any loose ends from the last audit, answered any outstanding
> > non-compliances, made any process improvements we can document and so
> > forth, and then we're ready for the next audit (which is usually
annual).
> > It's neither a big deal nor time consuming.  Ongoing training of
processes
> > is paramount to process control in general, and we do that by classroom
> > instruction as required.  Again, this would have been ongoing anyway,
with
> > or without ISO.
> >
> > Whether the ISO registration has actually done anything to improve us is
> > another issue -- not sure, but maybe.  In at least one memorable case,
> > having a valid registration won us one key (and large) customer who
would
> > not deal with any non-ISO vendor, so for that alone it's been worth the
> > cost of ongoing registration!
> >
> > WB2WIK/6
> >
> >
> >
> > From what I have seen of ISO, its no wonder customer service is so
> > lousy. People are either writing process documents or they are running
> > around trying to figure out how to pass on audit. With all that its a
> > wonder
> > anyone has time to do any real work or satisfy a customer :)
> >
> > Cynically yours,
> >
> > Mike, W4EF.......................
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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