When it comes to keeping and attracting more business, quality is one of the most important features a company can provide for their customers. Quality will promote the following for a company’s products and brands:
Increase customer loyalty and repeat business.
Attract new customers looking for quality products and services.
Lower overall costs of doing business.
Decrease the need for inspection.
Increase long-term profitability.
When choosing to buy two competing products of the same cost, customers will choose the product they feel will give them better value. A longer lasting better product will give more value. Even when quality differences are narrow the brand with the better perceived quality usually will get the consumer dollar. This is how quality creates customer loyalty. Loyal customers buy repeatedly. It is important for business to profit over and over again from their customers.
Loyal and happy customers tell others and influence friends to buy the product. This is all based on quality of product and quality of service provided by the business. Once a product is known for quality, customers will be attracted to buy even when it is not reduced in price. Higher margins are then realized.
When a business makes a high quality product the first time, it does not have the added cost of rework or scrapping a poorly made unit. It does not cost a company anymore to make the product right the first time around. Fixing defects in a product costs more money and actually creates losses for those poorly made units.
Business should focus on building quality into the product. This starts at the design phase of the process. A production process with less variability will produce higher quality products. When a company builds quality into the product at the start, there is less chance for a poor quality product at the end of the process. It is much harder to take poor quality inputs and create a high quality product.
When a production process creates 100 defects per 100,000 units, inspectors will be needed to catch all defects and send to rework. If a process only created 5 defects per 100.000 units less time inspecting the units would be needed and as the process approached 0 defects the need for inspection would also be zero. High quality results in less Quality technicians.
Customers do look at quality as a feature. Quality is tangible to the customer. If a product can work better, look better and in the end if it lasts longer, the customer will have more value.
When a company can count on repeat business, customers advising others to buy, and lower costs than your competitors, then you have truly created a more profitable business. All based on quality.