Through the various tools used to determine customer satisfaction, including surveys, interviews, internal perception questionnaires, handling of claims and complaints, and letters of congratulation, Abengoa pinpointed a number of areas of improvement. These require the company to take the necessary steps in order to improve upon those qualities tagged as lacking or negative by customers, namely:

• Procedures employed to determine the degree of customer satisfaction. Some customers complained that their scope was limited, they were difficult to understand, and that unconstructive information was sometimes requested.
• Process for handling customer claims. There have been cases in which complaints or claims do not receive the attention they may deserve in terms of significance or in which the channel used to identify or treat them fails.
• Customer invoicing process. There may be deficiencies in the corresponding documentation.
• General awareness of and information on the companies. There have been documented cases that show a lack of two-way knowledge from customers to Abengoa, and vice-versa.
• Laboratory analytical control area. On occasion it has been detected that analysis has not been perfectly adapted to each customer or to a particular application.
• Transportation logistics area. There have been certain incidents relating to time optimization and the resources utilized in transportation.
• Project planning and scheduling. Deadlines may be negatively affected by poor planning.
• Degree of proximity to the business. Abengoa can and should continue to improve on the process of analyzing what its customers want and what potential customers may want.

For all the foregoing areas of improvement and opportunities, Abengoa must draw up an action plan including goals, persons in charge and the assigned economic and human resources to ensure that the areas of improvement detected are handled accordingly.
 

All of these should be handled through the corporate IA (Improvement Action) tool.