Running a Small Business

Lesson 2: Ensuring Quality

Delivering the quality your customer paid for

So far you've decided what characteristics would be desirable in your products and services. You've the put yourself in your typical customer's place and decided what he would like to see. Finally you can produce what you sell with the characteristics you want, guaranteed and consistently. But now you've got to deal with actual customers.

The key to dealing with customers as far as quality is concerned is to make sure that you and your customer have each understood the other. This may mean a little bit of extra work but it is part of ensuring quality and it will result in more satisfied customers.

If you just have a few types of products or services and no options, then being clear on the order is relatively easy. If one of my existing customers orders an inexpensive, clearly defined product with a short delivery time, I often don't find it necessary to confirm the order or the price - our agreement is clear. In all other cases, when a product has a large number of different characteristics, when there is a long delivery time allowing time to forget things, when the service is complicated or when there are a large number of items, I always send a written confirmation of what we agreed on.

Such a written confirmation must link into your process for ensuring quality. What you are confirming, are the characteristics of the product or service on order. You are, in fact, creating the document which kicks off the whole process of ensuring quality, i.e. ensuring that what you have confirmed is actually delivered.

This means that you must include, in the order confirmation, the essential characteristics which you and the customer have agreed will be part of the ordered product or service. This becomes the "Define" part of the process of ensuring quality and the remainder of the process ensures that what you have confirmed is really produced.

If yours is the kind of business where formal orders and order confirmations are not used or where you don't make the product, say in retail, then it is still important to have it somewhere in writing what the product will do. For the purposes of ensuring quality it is still important to have the essential characteristics defined. If you have no influence on the product itself, then you must make sure that the essential characteristics of the product are correctly communicated to the customer and that there is a written record. For retail, what is written on the box is often good enough and it makes sense to go over it with the customer. That's what you're selling and that's what he's buying - make sure that's understood.

When the customer enters the equation, the purchase is what defines the input of the quality process. If that input is clear, ensuring quality is just ensuring that you supply what you promised and checking to make sure the customer agrees that he received what he bought. Then you have ensured that your customer is satisfied.

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