Abstract:At the time when economy is growing, there is strong competition in the market, and customers have increasingly higher expectations as regards quality of service and products. Under such conditions, organizations need to improve. One of the areas of improvement for an organization is to research the level of customer satisfaction. The article presents results of customer satisfaction surveys conducted by the Servqual method in a pharmaceutical service company. Use of this method allowed to improve the services provided by that pharmaceutical wholesaler, identify areas that need to be improved as soon as possible in order to improve the level of service provided.

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A city based on the sustainable development priorities, friendly to its residents, combines human activity, technology challenges, and environmental requirements. The implementation of the idea of smart city should be discussed with regard to specific areas of activity. In order to identify the way of perceiving the activity conducted under this concept, a survey was carried out among employees of the City Office in Zabrze. The cognitive, competence and informational scope was verified. It was found that the overwhelming majority of officials (79%) are convinced that smart city principles are being implemented. The survey participants also provided specific examples of smart-city initiatives undertaken in the city, and a significant part of the respondents (64%) assigned their professional tasks to them. Moreover, three out of four surveyed officials in Zabrze declared that they know the tools supporting the smart urban development. The results presented in the article constitute pilot studies aimed at understanding the extent to which the Smart City idea is known by local government administration employees. In addition, these results serve as a tool for the authorities of Zabrze to disseminate knowledge about smart city among employees of the city hall.

The ISO 9000 series of standards are among the best-known standards developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation ISO. They provide guidance and guidelines for companies and organisations that want their products and services to satisfy customer requirements and their quality to be continuously improved. However, the need for recertification of the Quality Management System (QMS) based on ISO 9001 is increasingly being discussed by managers. The questions asked are: is it necessary to have such a certificate in order to maintain high product quality and customer satisfaction? What is the balance of benefits and losses for maintaining a certificate of this standard? The authors of the paper will try to answer these questions based on the experience of a medium-sized metal manufacturing company.