What Role Does the Customer Play in Your Quality Requirements?
Monday, August 17, 2009
What is quality? The word seems to be used very liberally, but do we really know what it means? Do we know what constitutes a quality product and how it is measured? Can quality be assessed in a service related business? What might the service measures look like? Who would be best suited to collect the data? Could an assessment of quality related to service really be objective, or based on the perception of how one feels? I suppose it means different things to different people.
When assessing the quality of a product offered in the marketplace one could compare similar offerings of multiple providers. From this comparison one could make a selection based on the perceived value that one product is better than another, but is this a measure of quality? If the detail behind the comparison addresses life cycle cost, perhaps objective value of the product could be determined, but again is this a true measure of quality? If a widget is successfully produced every time from a design drawing through Statistical Process Control, does this constitute a quality product? Would the answer be the same if the design was flawed? After all, the widget was made to specification.
How might one evaluate the quality of service? Are quick delivery and the number of friendly smiles accurate measures? Perhaps a good service example to review is a restaurant Server. Other than the Host that makes the initial greeting and the Manager that might come by your table, the Server is the primary customer facing representative of the company. Since tipping is customary with good service, how do we make the determination that the service warranted a tip? I suppose we could consider the friendly smile, menu knowledge and accuracy of the order, but should that alone be the criteria? What if the Server brings the entre’ before you have had time to enjoy the appetizer? Was an appetizer to entre’ dwell time expectation conveyed to the Server? If so, perhaps a metric could be established by which to evaluate the service. If this thinking is correct, and this logic is applied throughout the service industry, then wouldn’t the consumers of services be responsible for the requirements of service, by which to establish a metric of quality?
So, how might the quality measures for product and service differ? If the aforementioned assumptions are correct, the customer would be responsible for generating and communicating the requirements for both. If this is true, then perhaps there is no difference. After all, we can only measure the quality, cost and delivery to specific requirements.
by Emery Arnold
Miller Consulting Group
at 11:07 AM Link to this Article 0 Comments
Comments:
When assessing the quality of a product offered in the marketplace one could compare similar offerings of multiple providers. From this comparison one could make a selection based on the perceived value that one product is better than another, but is this a measure of quality? If the detail behind the comparison addresses life cycle cost, perhaps objective value of the product could be determined, but again is this a true measure of quality? If a widget is successfully produced every time from a design drawing through Statistical Process Control, does this constitute a quality product? Would the answer be the same if the design was flawed? After all, the widget was made to specification.
How might one evaluate the quality of service? Are quick delivery and the number of friendly smiles accurate measures? Perhaps a good service example to review is a restaurant Server. Other than the Host that makes the initial greeting and the Manager that might come by your table, the Server is the primary customer facing representative of the company. Since tipping is customary with good service, how do we make the determination that the service warranted a tip? I suppose we could consider the friendly smile, menu knowledge and accuracy of the order, but should that alone be the criteria? What if the Server brings the entre’ before you have had time to enjoy the appetizer? Was an appetizer to entre’ dwell time expectation conveyed to the Server? If so, perhaps a metric could be established by which to evaluate the service. If this thinking is correct, and this logic is applied throughout the service industry, then wouldn’t the consumers of services be responsible for the requirements of service, by which to establish a metric of quality?
So, how might the quality measures for product and service differ? If the aforementioned assumptions are correct, the customer would be responsible for generating and communicating the requirements for both. If this is true, then perhaps there is no difference. After all, we can only measure the quality, cost and delivery to specific requirements.
by Emery Arnold
Miller Consulting Group
at 11:07 AM Link to this Article
Comments:
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