Auditing of Customer Orientation

Customers are the king of the market. In order to survive in the competitive business world, professional business firms need to design and develop its product and services as per the need of external customers. In order to satisfy external customers, it is necessary to satisfy the needs of the internal customers (employees) effectively.

ISO 9001:2008 defines customer focus as a top management responsibility. Customer focus involves determining customer requirements and meeting the requirements so as to achieve customer satisfaction.

Enhance customer satisfaction by ensuring that customer requirements are identified. The principal message is that management must convey is that the objective of the business is to keep the customer happy.

Customer Orientation

• Regular external customer satisfaction surveys
• Regular internal customer satisfaction surveys
• HR strategies to link employee satisfaction with customer satisfaction
• Adequacies or inadequacies of these HR strategies

Auditing Methods and Techniques for customer orientation

Interviews:

• HR Managers: To get information on:
• Duration after which customer satisfaction surveys are conducted.
• Organizational initiatives on internal customer satisfaction surveys
• HR systems and mechanisms to ensure strong customer orientation of employees
• Linkage of employee satisfaction strategy with customer satisfaction
• Adequacies or inadequacies of these HR strategies
• Line Managers/ Functional Managers: To get information on
• System of customer-orientation implementation in past
• Understanding of internal and external customer orientation and its impact on their department
• Role of HR department in customer orientation

Documents/ Secondary Data

• Any report on a study conducted to understand the customer orientation level in the organization
• Mission or value statement incorporating customer satisfaction in it
• Employee manual
• In house training programs conducted on the topic
• Customer Orientation Drive

Questionnaire Data

• Relevant items from HR Audit questionnaire
• A separate short tool can be constructed for ensuring the same