Consumers these days have a lot more options than at any point in the past. This often makes budding entrepreneurs and even established businesses reconsider whether they still need quality or not. If you want your business to be successful, healthy, and growth-centric, then I’m afraid you just can’t do without a strong quality control function.
Quality Control and Its Influence on Business Success
These days, the definition of quality has grown to become broader than it used to be. Today, quality does not relate to just the product or service you offer. It also relates to offering consistently good customer experiences to your consumers. Being a customer of Cox bundles I know they have loyal customers based on the quality of both their services as well as the customer experience offered. That means it is doubly important for your business to have a quality control function in place.
Here is why your business success depends on stringent quality control:
- Meeting Customer Expectations
- Differentiating Your Product/Service
- Building a Brand Reputation
- Meeting Industry and Safety Standards
- Reducing Inefficiency and Wastage
Let’s examine these in more detail below.
Meeting Customer Expectations
It doesn’t matter what industry you are operating in. Customers will choose your business based on more than just the price tag that comes with your product or service. In fact, a large majority of consumers focus more on the quality of the product or service rather than the associated price. The better the quality, the more consumers are willing to pay for it. In fact, most customers expect the best quality in return for spending their hard-earned money. A low-quality product or service will fail to meet customer expectations and result in lost revenue, returns, complaints, litigation, and a whole host of other subsequent problems.
Differentiating Your Product/Service
Customers are very quick to look for other options, especially when product or service quality is a key concern for them. The quality that you offer goes a long way to differentiate your product or service from that of your competition. Even more importantly, quality controlled products and services are essential for retaining customers. In the long run, this is what will earn you the most revenue. A product or service that stands out in terms of quality and value offered will always be the winner in otherwise similar products.
Building a Brand Reputation
Of course, the quality of your product or service will inevitably reflect back on your brand. Consider how popular social media and third-party review websites like Yelp! have become. A single bad review on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram is something that tons of potential customers will see. This can have a severely damaging impact on your business reputation. Of course, you can always try to invest in online reputation management to mitigate the fallout. But it is often cheaper to invest in quality control so you don’t have to deal with bad product/service reviews in the first place.
Meeting Industry and Safety Standards
Legislations and industry regulations almost always require a specific product or service to conform to their standards. Certain customers may even make it mandatory for you to comply with certain safety standards or other regulations if you want their business. Most markets in the modern world are heavily regulated. This means you need a strong quality control functions in order to compete in the industry while meeting the required standards.
Reducing Inefficiency and Wastage
The poorer the quality of your product or service, the higher the costs you incur. Think of it this way. Say a business manufacturing electrical products lacks a quality control function. Some unknown defect develops, which requires you to analyze each and every product, which does not conform to quality standards in the first place. You will have to find the root cause of the problem after analyzing a large percentage of the defective product, which will take up valuable time and resources. Then you will have to spend even more resources on redesigning and testing the fixed product.
All this time, your reputation suffers, your sales are on hold, and you’re stuck with defective inventory. Put together, this makes for a very serious situation for any business to be in.
Whether you’re comparing consumer products like Apple or Android smartphones, or consumer services like Cox internet, it all comes down to one thing. A strong quality control function helps you offer a consistently good product/service, as well as a consistent customer experience.
At the end of the day, this is what will differentiate you the most from your competitors, add to your brand reputation, and help you retain customers for more revenue in the long-run. Don’t skimp on quality control, because the successful outcome of your business venture depends heavily on it.
