The Significance of Quality Assurance in assuring successful service marketing

In its simplest form, Quality Assurance refers to the process in which a business entity (both manufacturer and service provider) retains the superior quality as promised to each consumer. More elaborately, any customer no matter how frequently he or she purchases a service or product should get the same level of quality in every transaction.

Many companies term Quality Assurance in different names, but the underlying ideas are more or less similar in every case.

Quality Assurance and the Service Industry:

Although quality assurance is critical in both service and manufacturing industries, the weight of Quality Assurance is emphasized higher in the service industry. Why? The answer lies in the main distinction between service and product, which is the intangibility of services. The contact between the consumer and the producer is higher in service marketing, which asks for more careful execution of quality assurance measures.

Also, the competition is fiercely growing in the service market, meaning companies need to focus and improve their quality promises.

Implementing quality assurance in service industry:

Identifying the parameters to ensure quality in the service market is not that easy, and most of the time the parameters differ from provider to provider. However, the following steps could be applicable as general approaches towards quality assurance in case of any service provider. These approaches have been defined as the DMAIC approaches as well. DMAIC stands for: Defining, Measurement, Analyzing, Improvement and Controlling.

Identification of customer expectation:
A successful marketing approach starts with the identification of the target market and their needs. While in quality assurance the company has to set a standard for service offerings, first they have to identify the expectation of the market. Any standard bar set below the level of market expectation will not suffice.

Market research, customer surveys, feedback forms, secret shoppers, mystery shopping programs — these are the tools to help identify customer expectations.

Determination of standards:
While determining the standards, the ceiling is set by the mission and vision of the company whereas the floor is set by the market expectation. This means the standard of quality promise has to be set keeping the mission and vision of the company and can never be set below the market expectation. A company or service entity must provide their basic services at the least, like: in case of any restaurant the least promise they can make for quality maintenance is to provide clean food. Customer surveys sometimes help in determination of standards, as do secret shopper or mystery shopper programs.

Measurement of performance:
Then the existing performance standard has to be measured and matched with the adopted standard in order to figure out the differences between them.

Analyzing:
Now, when the gaps between the standard and the current performance have been determined, the reasons giving in to the gaps should be analyzed. The analysis has to be thorough, extensive and reflective of the market scenario. This is why in most of the companies; they delegate the duty to a separate unit called Quality Assurance.

Planning:
After, the causes and effects of the gaps have been analyzed; proper plan should be made in order to overcome these. Management can form different teams in order to plan for the best possible strategy for quality assurance.

Controlling:
Without constant performance up to the standard, there is actually no point in implementing any strategy. To ensure this consistency- proper control over the process is to be exercised.

By following the aforementioned steps, quality assurance can be given to customers, which will eventually lead to a higher customer retention.