Quality Assurance

5 reasons why QUALITY ASSURANCE is essential to your business’ success by Sheena Shaik Head of Quality Assurance,Talksure

Every business, regardless of the industry, shares the same goal when it comes to customer satisfaction – happy customers with no complaints.

But, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Try as you may, no one and no ‘thing’ is perfect and the chance of human error will always pose a risk to your business. Cue Quality

Assurance (QA) – the one department that can reduce this risk and help ensure that you deliver on your promises.

After all, the attitude and performance of your employees have a direct impact on your customer

And, that’s not all. According to Sheena Shaik Head of QA, for Talksure (internationally-acclaimed Financial Services Provider in Umhlanga) QA also plays a role in innovation too, “QA, though traditionally a method of prevention, is also an awesome mechanism that allows your business to identify improvements and enhancements in order to deliver more, better and faster – exceeding customer demands and setting your business up for long-term, sustainable success.”

She adds that many businesses still believe that QA is something needed only in the manufacturing and software development industries and fail to recognise the impact on the service industry, “This can be a fatal mistake,” says Sheena, “After all, the attitude and performance of your employees have a direct impact on your customer. So much so that it (QA) is as important as product quality control is for a manufacturer.”

Sheena offers 5 more reasons why QA is a vital organ in the body of every business: 1. Maintaining high standards: Say goodbye to guessing the standard of service or the quality of product your customers are receiving. QA gives you the ability to rest assured that what you promise your customer, is in fact being delivered upon. And, if it’s not, it gives you the ability to stop, look, correct and take action - quickly! 2. Reduce compliance risk: If the correct processes are in place, QA will give you the ability to predict or detect any compliance issues before they arise, putting you in a strong position to not only fix timeously, but also prevent you from incurring any unnecessary penalties or fines. 3. Protect your reputation: A good reputation is achieved by consistently delivering a customer experience that exceeds expectation. One bad customer product experience not only breaks trust, but depending on how bad it is, can cause severe brand reputational damage (think Enterprise Foods). 4. Stay ahead: You cannot improve what you do not measure.

QA provides your business with valuable information about your customers; it gives you feedback on how they have received the product or service, whether or not it is meeting their demands and allows you to analyse if it is suited to your target market. This process also helps to identify products/services that are falling short of expectations as well as promote product development, which gives you the opportunity to always stay one step ahead in a very competitive market. 5. Keep staff accountable and properly trained: Listening to calls and receiving feedback from customers helps to identify where staff may need additional training – be it selling techniques, or simply knowing how to better deal with a customer in tough situations. It also keeps your staff accountable to a certain standard that will ultimately result in consistency and responsiveness.

“Finally, in order for a Quality Assurance team to deliver effectively, the entire business (from the top, down) needs to buy into the vital role that they play in not only keeping your business safe, but driving it forward too.” Sheena concludes.