What the clause requires
Clause 8.5.5 requires the organization to meet the requirements for the post-delivery activities associated with its products and services. Typical examples are warranty provisions, technical assistance, maintenance and servicing, spare parts supply, help desk and support, obligations written into the contract, and recycling or final disposal. The clause exists because a large share of what the customer judges happens after the invoice is issued, at a point where the organization has usually stopped paying attention.
To decide the extent of those activities, the organization considers the statutory and regulatory requirements, the potential undesired consequences associated with its products and services, the nature, use and intended lifetime of what it delivers, the requirements of the customer, and customer feedback. A manufacturer of industrial equipment will normally need maintenance and spare parts available for years; a printing company may need no more than replacement of defective material within a short window. Both answers are acceptable, provided the organization reached them deliberately.
What the auditor looks for is consistency between what was promised and what actually happens: warranty periods honoured, response times met, every call recorded with a diagnosis and a solution, and above all the information being used to improve. Defects that only show up in the field are one of the most valuable sources of corrective action for design and production, because they reveal failure modes that no internal inspection was ever going to catch.
It is also worth defining who records each call, within what time the customer gets an answer, and how the cost of warranty is tracked over time. A warranty cost that keeps growing is one of the clearest signals that something in the design, in the production process or in the choice of external provider needs to change, and it is usually an excellent indicator to take into the management review rather than leaving it buried in the finance report.
What the auditor asks to see
- Post-delivery activities defined, covering warranty, assistance, support and replacement
- Records of each post-delivery call with the diagnosis, the action taken and the outcome
- Evidence that the response times promised to the customer are being met
- Analysis of field failures with the resulting actions on design, production or the provider
Where companies most often get it wrong
- Warranty promised in the contract with no process behind it to deliver on that promise
- Technical assistance calls handled informally and never recorded anywhere
- Recurring field failure repaired again and again with no corrective action
- Response and resolution times promised to the customer but never measured
Example of a nonconformity
- Requirement
- ISO 9001, 8.5.5: in determining the extent of post-delivery activities required, consider customer feedback.
- Evidence
- Technical assistance records for 2026: 18 calls caused by failure of the level sensor on the BT-40 model; all 18 were closed by replacing the sensor, with no analysis of the recurring problem and no action on the design or on the component supplier.
- Finding
- Customer feedback arising from post-delivery activities is not analyzed and is not used for improvement.
Ready-made templates for this clause
Frequently asked questions
Does every organization have post-delivery activities?
Almost all do, because a statutory warranty of some kind normally applies. The extent beyond that is decided by the organization using the factors the standard lists.
Does outsourced technical assistance belong here?
It does, and because it is a contracted service it also falls under the control of externally provided processes in clause 8.4.
How does construction handle post-delivery activities?
In construction, technical assistance during the warranty period is normally both a contractual and a legal obligation, and sector quality schemes usually require a documented process for receiving, diagnosing and closing those calls.