Six tips for delivering a benchmark quality that will attract and retain loyal customers
By Thomas Michael Hogg
Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Audi, VW when it comes to automakers. SAP when it comes to technology. adidas and Puma in the sporting goods industry. Lufthansa, Siemens, Bosch, T-Mobile, DHL, Nivea, Hugo Boss, Bayer, Allianz and many more are global German quality brands.
They deliver their quality value proposition with outstanding products and services and therefore have a strong and huge customer base. Quality is key for customer retention.
The adidas mission is described with a high focus on boosting the athlete’s performance and exceeding expectation. The reason adidas has a reputation that precedes it is simply because of its uncompromising attitude on quality. BMW has gradually grown into a global brand due to its focus on quality. Audi is clearly a cut above the rest considering the quality and value attached to its cars. The SAP quality management vision is to consistently deliver high-quality solutions focused on improving customer satisfaction. SAP is committed to applying the knowledge to enhance products, processes, and services and continually monitoring and improving their performance.
Lufthansa has been certified with the 5-Star Airline rating by SKYTRAX, the international air transport rating organization. The Certified 5-Star Airline Rating recognizes a very high overall quality performance and excellence in ground and inflight product provided by Lufthansa to its customers.
“Quality is a promise to the customer”
A German product or service often meets and exceeds the expectations of the customers regarding innovations, performance, and quality. Why? There is this engineering and quality DNA we stand for. Furthermore, quality process management is an important task that affects all employees, and which can only be executed successfully, if it is fully understood by involved and capable individuals.
It takes many positive customer experiences to negate poor quality left behind from one quality issue.
6 Tips for delivering a benchmark quality:
-
Design and implement a systematic and periodical service quality delivery program.
-
Start with the VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER and ask your key customers in which areas does your company lack to provide the best service and value in your industry.
-
Insist your customer to give you feedback of whether he/she is willing to stay with your brand or company in the next years. Receive qualitative feedback, why your customer is striving to stay with you or willing to leave you.
-
Communicate the results of the survey internally and commit. The feedback should be concluded in an executive summary and a strict quality improvement implementation plan for improvement.
-
Quality on the whole value chain is also so crucial; make sure each element fits perfectly and meets the quality standards. Without very high operations and supplier quality standards long-term success is at risk.
-
Every product / service delivery starts at 0 (“Zero”). This means we cannot trust that everything will work because it did so the last time or the previous years. We are starting at 0 again and aware that we must take care of the details again and again to maintain the quality level of each new product delivery. The best example here is the AUDI mission: “We act purposefully, systematically and with our full efforts – in other words, consistently. That is why our mission is ‘Consistently Audi.’”
In conclusion, the leading companies seldomly understand value in terms of price. This is essential because they consider a wide range of factors in their strategy beyond value. As such, it is common for enterprises to associate customer value and quality. Certainly, quality gives you the right to charge more and allows your business to have high gross and net margins with their customers. Quality is key for customer retention and profitability.
THOMAS MICHAEL HOGG, author of Profitable Growth Strategy, is a consultant and mentor with more than 20 years of market and work experience in Germany, Mexico, Switzerland and the USA. As the founder and Managing Director of TMH Consulting and Investing Group, Hogg has been an advisor to global companies such as PepsiCo (Germany), adidas (Germany), Campbell’s Soup, Johnson Controls, Bulkmatic, among other multinational companies, SMEs and nonprofit organizations. He also has been a consultant to the State Government of Nuevo Leon Mexico and the University Tec de Monterrey.
As a columnist at El Financiero, Hogg has been featured in Bloomberg TV, CNN Expansión, Milenio, Reforma, Negocios en Imagen, Mexico Industry, Cluster Industrial among others.