Running a Small Business

Lesson 2: Ensuring Quality

Advantages and results of ensuring quality

Now you can make sure your supply has the qualities your customers want, both at delivery and over the lifetime of the product. The only thing is, while there is a benefit in customer satisfaction, everyone is admiring you for your commitment and you derive a personal satisfaction out of it, where's the pay-off? So far there are a lot of costs. Are there any concrete benefits?

While you will not see an immediate rise in orders or jump in profit when you start introducing a "total quality" program, there are two other benefits which make your business run better and help you get and keep customers. Ensuring quality is detailed work and it forces you to look at the nuts and bolts of your operation, how it works and whether it works properly. It also gives you a clear idea of how the quality of your products relates to your customers, provides value to them and how to promote that value. A commitment to "total quality" makes your business run better and makes it easier for you to promote what you do.

Let's go back to the simple example of promotional writing. By applying the appropriate process you have corrected two problems with that particular business, problems which otherwise would have continued to hurt sales and your reputation. But, in addition, you can now write, in your promotional literature, "Texts written in a manner appropriate to the local target market." Finally, in most cases, the problems you run into in your business are not isolated - they are often industry problems and you have solved them as far as your operations are concerned. That way, when you're negotiating for an order for promotional writing, your customer might say, "What about different spelling etc. in international markets?" If you hadn't dealt with this problem, you'd be waffling but now, you can reply with confidence, telling him about the mistake in the Australian dictionary and so on. That kind of thing helps get orders.

Let's look at the shiny finish problem next. Everyone is likely to have a problem with wear at corners and your customer is quite likely to address it. You'll have the answers. You'll be able to tell him how some suppliers are providing products with exaggerated claims for wear and how you now have a finish which shows no sign of wear after three years. That's impressive and gets orders. And your promotional material should re-enforce that confidence.

Total commitment to ensuring the level of quality that your customers want is hard work and it costs money. However, it's work and investment with a triple pay back: you get satisfied customers, a smoother-running business and strategies for promotion. You won't find many activities that can do that all at once.

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9