Operational Audit: Quality

     If your desire is to have a successful department or organization then quality must be at the top of your list. Quality is a key component of long term success. Pat Williams in his book The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon states, “Don’t be too quick to undercut your competitor’s prices; instead, deliver better quality and better service.” I am yet to hear of an organization that has been successful while putting out sub par quality products or service. As a result, you must be able to gauge the level of quality that your organization is generating at all times.
     I have experienced and determined that a full assessment of quality is a three prong approach. You have to know what your customers think (external), you need to know what your indicators show (internal), and you have to know how your team and leaders are performing. These three areas integrated into one quality assurance system (QA System) will ensure that you are delivering the levels of quality that will allow you to be successful in the long term.
     The first step is to determine how you will consistently gather information from your customers. If your customers are not happy, you will not be happy (since you’ll be looking for a new job). I believe it is critical to know what your customers are expecting, how satisfied they are, and what their future goals are for your product or service. You have to identify how you will stay engaged with all of your customers at all times. The free market is a very competitive one. Businesses are constantly looking for better ways to support their customers—this should apply to you too. The only way to do that is to be consistently asking them where you stand. So from an operational audit standpoint, the question is, do you know where you stand with your customers? What system do you have in place that is constantly gathering data about your customer’s satisfaction? And most importantly, what is your department or organization doing with this information? I cannot tell you how many companies I have come across that gathers information and does nothing with it. As a result, the customer is even more frustrated because they took the time to communicate with you, but you failed to communicate with them. So what do they do? They go to someone who does ask, listens, and takes action to meet their expectations.
     There are many mechanisms for knowing how satisfied your customers are but the two most common are mailed customer questionnaires and electronic survey systems. But by far the most effective is face to face interaction. Of course if you are a multinational organization this may not be cost efficient so you have to determine which method provides the most value at the lowest cost. But reality is, people buy from or continue to buy from or work with people they like—not companies. And the only way people can determine if they like you is through a relationship. And the only way to build a relationship is to spend time together. As a result I have found that the best way to gauge customer satisfaction is to do a customer assessment face to face.
     The next step in the QA System is to know exactly what level of quality you are producing internally. Your team and leadership have to be engaged and look for every opportunity to improve quality. However, it has to be measurable. You need to create KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and commit to consistent inspections. This is the only way you and your team will know exactly where you stand. It is critical that you understand what are the levels of quality that you are trying to achieve and more importantly that your team does. So you have to evaluate your system to determine whether you have metrics that you are attempting to achieve, are you gathering the necessary data, and what steps are you taking to improve them. The most common ways to gather this type of information is through visual inspections and automated systems. These systems generate reports or highlight your KPI’s on an automated dashboard. Once you have this internal assessment in place, you are constantly evaluating it against what your external input is and are looking for any gaps. The point being that you may be meeting the quality levels that you think are important, but they may not be important to your customers.
     The final step in the QA System is to evaluate what mechanisms exist to monitor and develop your team and leadership on a consistent basis. Majority of organizations evaluate their employees once per year. And once per year they identify opportunities for improvement. If you desire to beat the competition with quality products or service you have to link your team’s performance to your quality assessments and results. It is a tremendous commitment but I believe leaders have to be evaluated on a monthly basis. You identify what their strengths, improvements needed, and significant observations are for that month. This assessment has to link to the level of quality they have produced based on internal and external assessments.
     It is imperative that your quality audit determines that the proper methods of assessing your customer’s satisfaction and internal operations exist and that these results are linked to your team’s performance. If you commit to this three pronged QA System I guarantee your quality will improve, number of customers will increase, and ultimately, your department or organization will have long term success!