Quality and customer satisfaction

Group members

1. Ganesh Mokate

2. Gaurav Mane

3. Rehan Sayyed

4. Kunal Mutha

5. Rohan Thorve 

Introduction

We often use quality in our daily vocabulary to compare or describe a particular product but what does it actually mean and doesn't mean. And does a product have any influence on customer satisfaction? Read on to find out. 

In this article we will look what is quality and why it is important for entrepreneurs to maintain high quality. We will also study the relationship between quality and customer satisfaction and it's outcomes.

 What is quality?

We often use the term quality in our daily life to highlight as to compare two products and decide which one is good. But what actually quality means from a manufacturing or industrial perspective? 

Quality refers as to how well a product or service is performing it's designated function within certain parameters for a certain period of time. 

Quality can mean many things to mant people for some it may means just better apperance for some it means ease of use etc. Depending upon the type of product or service.

Why should organisations care about quality?

To understand this let's take an example

Let's consider Divis Lab. This is a pharmaceutical company which manufactures API for other companies. The API is a major constituent to most medicines. Now Divis Lab uses technology which can produce APIs which has a failure rate of 1 in 10 million as compared to other competitors which have a failure rate of 1 in 10,000. Now this gives them an edge over their competitors due to high quality and as a result they outperform the competitors and generate huge cash. 

Now Divis Lab is a very reputed lab in manufacturing API and they don't have to worry about cheap Chinese competitors gaining market share as their quality is very high and have a good relation with all pharma companies. 

As we have seen above due to high quality they can survive in a very competitive environment and are able to generate profits.

How do organisations achieve quality?

To achieve quality the company can appoint a quality expert and then implement different quality related methodologies like 6 sigma, fmea, TQM etc.

But before that all the organisation from the top to bottom has to commit to make it happen especially the top management must allocate a substantial amount of money to ensure a culture of quality.

Of course quality has a cost attached. If we are functioning in a very competitive environment then quality is a must because easily you could face disruption from competitor who has better quality. If your are running an industry where quality isn't much of a need then it can be overlooked.

Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is when a customer gets what he expects from the product or service. A lot of money is spent every year by industries on how to make customer satisfaction possible with thier product or service. Now why so much is being spent on this aspect is because this is what drives profits on industries.

It is observed that industries or companies which have a good satisfied customer base generally make a lot of profit that the ones who doesn't. But how to make a Customer satisfied? And what in return does the industry get by satisfying the customer?

How to make a customer satisfied? 

1. Human are social beings and emotions is a very dominant part of their function in the world. If we could create a pleasant and cordial environment in the shop or greet the person or smile at them when they come these things are studied to ha e impact on the satisfaction of customers

2. To mae the service or product go through rigorous tests and prototyping to arrive at the best the company has to offer. This means eliminating failures and inconveniences in operations

3. To implement state of the art technology to produce accurate and high end products to ensure negligible defects and high reliability of products and services.

How will the industry benefit from customer satisfaction? 

Customer Loyalty: Happy customers are loyal customers. If they are happy with your product or service they will want to purchase from you repeatedly and even recommend it to their friends and family result in more revenue.

Increased Security: when you have a loyal customer base you don't have to worry about cheap competition in the market gaining your profit share 

Better Value: you can create a huge value for the stakeholders in the company and in tern the nation if your customers are satisfied and want to do business with you. 

Conclusion:

Quality and customer satisfaction are related and as we have seen above it is important for companies to have a loyal satisfied customer. There are costs attached to quality and customer satisfaction but it generally pays off in the longer run.