Quality Management

Quality Management was traditionally linked to factory management and production processes, but in recent years it became more and more important in the services industry. In fact, all organizations that want to monitor and improve their customer services need to apply processes and procedures summarized under the term “quality management”.

In the recent years, an increasing number of professional support institutions and (business) associations applied for internationally recognized Quality Management certificates, like ISO 9000 certification, in order to demonstrate their commitment to quality and gain a competitive advantage in their markets.

What is Quality Management? Quality Management focuses on the customer, it describes the institution’s effective approach towards how to meet the customer expectations, how to respond to inquiries and deal with problems in the best way. Basically, the Quality Management system explains how the institution achieves quality services and products.

Quality standards like the ISO 9000 series developed by the International Organization for Standardization provide a framework to fix and describe important key processes used for the production and delivery of the institution’s products and services. An organization holding an ISO certification has put a Quality Management in place that was audited and registered by a formal ISO authorization body. 

In order to introduce Quality Management in your institution you will have to develop and employ a quality system. You will then decide whether you want to get formally registered or not. 

The quality system comprises the organizational structure, procedures, processes and resources you need to achieve and maintain a desired level of quality. Once defined, the Quality Management system will be exactly documented in the form of:

·         Documents defining the quality policy (e.g., sales and after sales services)

·         Written procedures that need to be followed to implement quality policy (e.g. sales procedures)

·         Instructions for staff carrying out the procedures (e.g., explanation how to phone a potential customer, how to summarize customer feedback data, etc.)

·         Records kept in order demonstrating that Quality Management system is working (e.g. customer database, trainers and presenter’s database including feedback feed-back results, etc.)