Dan Hanzel

By Dan Hanzel
Quality Assurance Manager, Bernard

“Never promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise.” - Lou Holtz

Businesses frequently undertake initiatives to improve the quality of their products. Most of these efforts focus on minimizing defects and stopping quality problems from reaching the customer, whether the customer is internal or external. Each has its own set of protocols to follow so that a company can produce “high” quality goods and services. But what really makes a good or service high quality? Does high quality mean that it is free from defects? Or is it that the product works as expected with little maintenance for a long time?

The answer is that quality does not reside in charts or inspection reports or marketing surveys. The answer doesn’t even reside within the product itself. The quality of a good or service is exactly how it compares to the expectations of the customer using it.

If you buy a pair of inexpensive shoes and they end up lasting for five years, they have exceeded your expectations and you will consider them to be of very high quality. Conversely, if you expect your favorite baseball team to win the World Series and they don’t even make it to the playoffs, you’re filled with disappointment at the poor quality of play on the field.

Because expectations are inextricably linked to perception, you must put yourself in the place of your potential customers in order to effectively evaluate the quality of your good or service. There are a number of ways for your customers to perceive and thus to develop expectations for your product.

Assertions of Performance

Assertions of performance are what the provider tells people to expect from the product. Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less. A complete recovery in 3 weeks. 32 MPG on the highway. Laugh-out-loud funny. This is what builds expectations for the customer and provides a basis for performance comparison. Does the product do or accomplish what the provider claims it will? Well, it better. And it better match up to the assertions without any sort of conditions, provisos or caveats.

Customers make buying decisions based on these assertions, and if there is a disconnect between them and the product, the customer will feel cheated and the value proposition will be compromised. A customer who feels cheated will have no problem telling the world about the negative experience and poor quality of the product. Overcoming the stigma of providing a low quality product can be extremely difficult. Ensuring a product does what you say it will is essential to building a high quality product, but it is not enough.

Need Fullfillment

The product is available because the provider perceives a need in the marketplace. We each believe our product has value to someone (hopefully a lot of “someones”) and that this market value is greater than the cost of providing the product. How well this perceived need matches the actual need of the customer is another major factor in the overall quality of the product.

On a hot day, for example, you have a nearly limitless selection of beverages available to help quench your thirst. If a company chose to offer a cup of coffee as a way of quenching a hot summer day’s thirst, it would not be meeting your expectations or fulfilling your need to have your thirst quenched. Compared to a glass of ice water, the coffee would be considered to be a lower quality beverage.

Functionality, durability, reliability, efficiency, appearance and responsiveness are all elements of any given customer’s needs. Which elements are most important varies by customer, but all are essential for a customer to see a product as high quality. The level to which these elements are achieved in the customer’s eyes is what goes into the total quality perception of the product.

Alternative Products

Our product, as much as we love it, is almost never the only type of solution to a customer’s specific problem. If your potential customer is looking to join two pieces of aluminum together, for example, he has a wide variety of methods to choose from. Manufacturers of TIG welding equipment have any number of solutions to accomplish this feat, depending on the application. So do manufacturers of MIG welding equipment. So do makers of friction stir welding equipment. People who make rivets might offer a different solution, as would providers of bolts and/or screws. Manufacturers of industrial adhesives would most likely disagree with everyone mentioned above, again, depending on the application.

The option that does the job best (provides the most value) in the customer’s eyes will win the award for having the highest quality. Having a thorough knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the available alternative options and crafting your product to be the best solution from the customer’s point of view goes a long way toward providing the customer with the most valuable (and highest perceived quality) product.

Competitive Field of Like Products

In addition to competing against products in different categories, your product must also compete against oftentimes very similar products within its own category. Each provider of a product wants their product to carry the greatest value into the marketplace. For this to occur, every other similar product in the marketplace must be considered by the customer as having a lesser value.

Since all providers are continually vying for the position of greatest value, the field is constantly changing – sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically. This is why products, messaging and whole business systems must keep evolving. To ignore the need for evolution as a business can quickly lead to declining market share as your competitors continually refine their products to better meet your customers’ needs.

Each of these factors must be understood from the customer’s perspective because together they form a customer’s expectation for the product. If a customer perceives your product to be of lesser quality than other products on the market, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the best product and value on the market or not—no one is going to know because no one is going to buy it. It is the customer’s point of view that ultimately quantifies the product quality. To achieve a perception of high quality requires a dedicated and continuous team effort – not simply to minimize defects, but to meet, exceed and raise expectations.