Overlooking the Importance of Quality Puts a Brand’s Reputation at Risk

SQS Group
SQS Group
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

For many businesses, their brand is what defines them. A brand also helps to differentiate a business from the competition by building a relationship with its customers. Like any relationship, trust and loyalty are key, and when those things are compromised the relationship can fall apart. But when the success, and often survival, of a business depends on a healthy relationship between brand and customer, you’ve got to do everything possible to ensure that relationship is maintained.

As we explored in a recent SQS study, technology and society have become completely co-dependent. People today use technology to travel, communicate, learn, and do business. Today, technology makes things faster and more convenient, and that is having a profound impact on the expectations of how customers interact with businesses and their services. Of course, this new dynamic has affected the customer’s relationship with brands as well — and the customers are driving the supplier strategy — not the other way around.

In fact, as much as 67% of customers now cite a bad experience as a reason to abandon a company’s products or services, essentially ending their relationship with the brand. That staggering statistic makes it absolutely clear just how important it has become to ensure quality is present across every aspect your business, to protect the brand you’ve built.

The Impact of a Negative Customer Experience

With the emergence of social media giving everyone has a voice in today’s digital culture, those negative customer experiences have gained significant potential not only for the loss of individual customers, but also for those customers to harm the brand’s reputation.

Twitter has become the ‘unofficial complaints department’ of many of the world’s businesses since its introduction to the mainstream, from global enterprises to small startups, and customer service interactions on Twitter have actually increased by 250% over the past two years.

The significance of this, of course, is that every single complaint is in the public domain, as is each organisation’s ability (or inability) to resolve them. Consider the global publicity one complaint can generate by someone with millions of Twitter and Instagram followers. Although it is an extreme example, if this very real possibility is allowed to happen then entire demographics can instantly adopt a negative impression of your brand.

With this digital word of mouth on the rise, it’s now so important for businesses to try to keep as much control over how their brand is being perceived. To achieve this, they must turn their attention to quality.

Going the Extra Mile

Remaining with the example of Twitter, we can actually find ways for social media platforms and other modern technologies to play a role in improvingcustomer experience, if leveraged intelligently.

I recall Virgin Media recently using its engagement on Twitter with a UK celebrity to offer an entirely new feature of its TiVo delivery and installation service. The Twitter exchange drew attention to this nice gesture in a positive way, and so the company added this to its standard service for all its customers.

This clever strategy was a fantastic way to earn extra praise and confidence for the Virgin Media brand, demonstrating a willingness to be proactive and exceed the expectations of its loyal customers.

This suggests Virgin Media is keeping a close eye on the level of quality in its business process assurance, by looking at the complete customer journey, rather than simply stopping at the sale.

Quality Should be Ever present

We all know that quality is key in ensuring the positive perception of a brand, as it helps a business to consistently provide the best possible products and services. But as Virgin Media proved, it is crucial to remember that quality should be present in the entire end-to-end customer experience, and throughout the whole supply chain.

Consider the relationship between a software provider and a hardware provider working in tandem. Each business’s product is dependent on each other in terms of how they will be used (and perceived) by the customer. As a direct result, both brands’ reputations are also dependent on each other.

This means that quality must be upheld throughout every phase of the supply chain by both organisations, from design, development, testing and QA, distribution, and beyond. There must be process management and regulations in place to ensure each business does everything possible to deliver a positive experience to the end customer, otherwise the brands will inevitably suffer.

Set Standards Sky-High

The importance of this end-to-end strategy has seen a rising trend in organisations working much closer with third-parties to alleviate such challenges.

BT, as an example, has invested significant effort into ensuring that engineering firms installing cables in residential areas maintain customer service standards consistent with the BT brand. That compliance is managed carefully, even though it is an outsourced company doing the work, and customers are the ones who benefit.

Looking elsewhere, many leading organisations in manufacturing, utilities, and other sectors have used solutions such as robotics and IoT as another way of achieving quality in very different areas.

By implementing these intuitive technologies for process automation to improve the quality in their end-to-end supply chain, it introduces a level of consistency appropriate for, and reflective of, the relationship they wish to keep between their brand and their customers.

Final Thought

This kind of attention to detail and level of quality assurance is a necessity for any business, regardless of industry or size, because having a great product simply isn’t enough in today’s business landscape.

When a brand’s relationship with the customer is more important than ever, the need for quality has never been more apparent.

Find out more about how SQS ensures your brand reputation won’t be put at risk when implementing new IT solutions or going through digital change.

SQS Group

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Transforming the World Through Quality. With you during every step of the digital transformation process and at the heart of digital change.

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