ABB Improved Both Quality and Profitability
of Projects

ABB project managers and sales reps discovered that customer communications was a critical element in their projects, due to the fact that their product is only one part of the overall system that the customer is purchasing.

Mike Olson of ABB says that a few years ago they defined a process for clarifying customer expectations and made it a part of their ISO 9001 standards. (However, you don't have be ISO 9000 certified to put their successful actions into practice yourself.) This addition to their business process has not only improved customer satisfaction, it has also improved the profitability of a large percentage of projects.

Here is Mike's description of the process:

"Before any work is begun, we have a specific and formal review with the customer where we explain to the customer what we are expecting to deliver. We do this in plain English and as clearly as possible. The customer asks questions for any points that need clarification or further discussion."

"If we didn't cover ground that the customer was expecting us to cover, we'll find out as part of this process. The customer will tell us about expectations that we didn't include, and we address them right then and there."

"This has been a very successful process that has made a significant and statistically proven increase in the degree of customer satisfaction at the end of a project."