Hello there. You may not have noticed, highly unlikely you did. I am blogging based on the podcasts I did the second half of last year. I covered some great topics and I felt they were useful enough to rehash here. Enjoy!
Today I’m going to discuss what quality is and how you can define it better inside and outside your organization.
What and where should we define quality?
Quality is, well, whatever your customer has indicated is the acceptability requirement for your product or service. So a car that always starts, a microphone with just the right sensitivity, or a candy with enough salty to balance the sweet. Most businesses spend lots of time figuring out what external quality is. What does the customer want? What problem is fixed for the buyer with my widget?
Internal quality…often gets the short end of the stick. Yet, it should get the same considerations. I relate internal quality to the effectivity of internal process, or all the things the customer doesn’t see, happening to allow the widget (or whatever) to make it out the door. Internal quality is just as, or possibly more, important than what you export. Internal quality will make or break you when you grow or have a problem or have a tight deadline.
Confused yet?
So what am I talking about? You, the boss, or the bosses, have to look at what sucks day to day. You have to aggressively find out where Jane in coatings gets bottlenecked because packaging can’t keep up. You need to ensure the process to assemble widget A can be done as written, especially if you live in a regulated field. You have to pay attention to flow within your organization, whether it is stuff or information. The details you overlook will show up in the product at some point. Leadership must ensure “the customer is your next process” is gospel within the walls of your establishment. My favorite line for this topic is “good customer service starts inside”.
External quality is a little easier to understand. Every touch point with clients is a quality event. You have likely gone through most of this yourself. So I will be brief and try not to patronize anyone. Details matter. Follow through matters. Be the one they think of because you were exceptional for customer service and quality of interaction AND because your product or service met their needs. You don’t have to have the best -thing- you must be the best at servicing their needs.
Things to do
So, be aware of what quality is, where it matters inside and where it matters outside your organization. If you are the boss, lead with quality. If you aren’t the boss, still, lead with quality.
If you need help with any of these concepts, I can help you. My primary purpose is get as many people introduced to these foundational quality concepts as possible. So if you want a new perspective, call. If you need some insight into process issues you deal with, email. If you are stuck and need help, text me.
Together, we will start somewhere.
