How to get to quality – The role of the customer.
Warning, if you are not fan of questioning you should look away now. Quality. How do we know if something is quality? Or rather how do we know if something is of quality? What determines quality? What criteria should quality meet? Does quality represent good value or perhaps refers to a high-priced item. Perhaps it sets a certain standard, or it is linked to status? What do you think about with regard to a high-performance car. What denotes that it is a quality product? Is it the materials, the styling, how much it costs, how it makes you feel?
Organisations spend a great deal of time establishing systems and techniques to manage what quality is. This can be seen with Six sigma, a set of tools and methods to seek improvements in quality by identifying causes of discrepancies and rectifying constructively. These ideas first introduced by the electronics giant Motorola certainly have had an impact on managing the process of quality. Although it is worth noting that up to 60% of six sigma projects fail to reach their agreed outcomes. (1)
One objective of these types of management practice is to give everyone in the business a responsibility for quality and not just the ‘quality department.’ If operations and production are introduced to this philosophy through fault reduction and achieving a better standard there is a greater chance that a quality management culture will succeed. But who sets that standard and what does it contain?
To explore further we need to take a look at what quality means. In it’s very simple terms it can be defined as ?
The extent to which a product satisfies requirements. (2)
This brings a useful dimension to the discussion. The greater the extent of satisfaction the higher quality of the product. But, before we build a process to manage this satisfaction we need to ask a basic question.
What are those requirements?
Sounds simple, but how can we meet the requirements, if we don’t know what they are? Who does know the requirements? Quite simply the person or organisation who wants the product. So, the quality journey starts with the customer. We need to understand what the customer wants, then we can create a product that matches those requirements. History is littered with examples where this just did not work. From Britvic’s Juice Up to The Rover 75. The product did not match what the customer wanted and the product performed badly in the market.
Let’s imagine I am invited to a prestigious outdoor event with influential guests (I said imagine…). During the day it rains. I want to be wearing a coat which prevents me from getting wet, but I also want to look smart and respectable. Compare this to when it rains on a trip to my local park. I am less bothered by how I look, but I still want to be protected by the rain, so a basic waterproof is ok. As my requirements differ, so does what I perceive to be of quality.
If quality is concerned with understanding a customers requirements then how do we develop a good quality planning process? How do we ensure we provide a quality product in first instance? Well, it starts with information. We need to gain good quality information from our customers to understand what these requirements are. This responsibility often lies with sales and commercial departments, as they mostly have the first contact with customers. Although in all fairness it actually applies to anybody who deals with customers, and it begins with
Discovering, understanding and using information to establish requirements and how to deliver
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When we think of selling to a customer, we too often concentrate on product features, rather than asking what the customer’s requirements are. You can have the best sales technique in the world, but if the product does not match the customer’s requirements, it is going to yield poor results.
If a product matches the requirements and the customer is satisfied with it, it has passed the quality test. So, quality starts with asking questions, listening, translating and communicating what the customers requirements are, then organising the delivery of these requirements. How expensive or impressive it looks is a red herring, as this does not necessarily denote quality. This is a common misunderstanding.
For a business to succeed it needs its team to be confident and competent to perform in capturing and clarifying customer requirements. How your teams perform in this field will determine whether you objective of achieving a quality product (as seen by the customer) succeeds.
At Sara Penrose Ltd we work with business owners and decision makers who want to achieve quality – planning as a business objective. We firstly discover this as a business objective and why. Before training, applying and embedding the skills of critical thinking, lateral thinking and problem solving in teams to ensure it can be achieved. To re-iterate if quality is the extent to which a product satisfies requirements – how do you know what those requirements are unless your teams are actively and carefully harvesting this information? Our aim is to improve teams performance in this vital of business objectives.
1.????? The Wall Street Journal
2.????? What does product quality really mean? – Sloan Management Review
John Henderson – Co-founder and Director
Sara Penrose Ltd
Optimising performance through skill development
? Sara Penrose Ltd 2023