The Voice of Quality from Our Customer

Do we truly know the voice of quality of our customer?

Quality is a very necessary and important part of the product or service that you offer. Yet many businesses either don’t understand what quality is for their customer, don’t know how to express it as an advantage, or both. But quality and its presentation are very important aspects of any business operation.

Peter Drucker wrote without equivocation that “quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the user gets out of it”.

The meaning being that users want only what they can use and what gives value to them. I emphasise Value is as they perceive it, not what the supplier may think. Quality is part of that value. Therefore, it is foolish for the seller to spend money, time, and effort in developing quality as he sees it when the buyer may not see it that way at all.

Quality Requires Two Different Lenses

In summary, Drucker was ahead of his time and knew that we had to look at quality in a product or service we provide in two ways.

One way is through the eyes of our user or customer. Only our customer can define what quality is. We do this by looking not at what we value and consider important, but what our customer considers of value, can use and therefore finds important.

Once we get that right, we can proceed to measure performance and productivity in that area. Only in this way we can truly optimise quality, and it is the only way that any of us can claim that we provide quality.

So, what do you think or how do you apply the customers voice of quality?