Quality vs Customer Satisfaction - they are not equal.

Does your industry suffer from the lack of understanding the difference between quality and customer satisfaction? Depending on the industry you are in, it may be that customer satisfaction is placed in a much higher position of importance than quality or vice versa. Some of you would argue that they are the same. In truth, they are vastly different and yet both very important.

Customer satisfaction in simple terms is the measure of customer perception to their expectations for a given product or service. This is measured in CSI scores, Net Promoter scores and the like. It is a quick and easy way to survey the customer for understanding the performance against expectations. We can all agree that in many cases expectations can become the reality. If your customer perceives their experience was bad, good or great, then that is their reality.

Consider the hamburger - did it taste good? was it delivered to the table on time? was it cooked as you requested it? was it dressed the way you ordered it? and so forth. When a customer evaluates the meal, even if subconciously, they have formed an opinion about supporting repeat business, telling others about the restaurant (good or bad) and many other factors. While they have evaluated the experience, they have assumed quality for the most part.

Quality on the other hand is the reality of the quantifiable level of the product or service produced or performed to a standard. In other words, there is a definable output for a given product or service that can be measured during and/or after the process. Quality is reality. It is objective and not based on perception. It is quantifiable.

Lets consider the hamburger again - Was it cooked thoroughly? was the kitchen sanitary? did the workers follow standard operating procedures for the specific dish ordered? was the meat kept at proper temperature before it was cooked? The customer doesn't even consider these things in their perceptive evaluation of the meal unless the quality is so bad they can't ignore it, such as something being sour or uncooked. They may never know if any of these things were correct or not. Yet quality is critical and measurable. Lack of quality processes in this case could hurt or kill someone.

Both Customer Satisfaction and Quality are important. Without a high perceived customer experience, the future of the business could be at stake. The real key to customer satisfaction is to find a way to WOW the customer. We need to get beyond CSI scores and NP scores and go for a WOW score.That is the real measure of success. Of course that is only as good as the quality of the product or service that supports the customer experience. The customer must come first in our businesses and one of the cornerstones of putting the customer first is honoring them with true quality outputs. The real key to building a quality based product or service is to build it into the process. Even to the point of making what you do to honor the customer with quality more transparent than what you do today.

The next time you grab a burger at your favorite spot, think about customer satisfaction and quality. Consider your preceived values and then wonder about the quality processes. It amazes me how we will make our decisions on those perceptions and not even give a second thought about the really important quality aspects that we just assume. Maybe we should help change that paradigm for our customers and our industries.