Using Metaquality to Build Customer-Centric Cultures and Operations

The prefix meta- is used to mean "about its own category." For example, under the umbrella of business intelligence you often hear the term "metadata" which means data concerning data. For purposes of this short post, "metaquality" could be described as the process and operations through which quality assurance impacts the quality of the customer experience (quality concerning quality) through all phases of the customer lifecycle.

Your customers generally move through a decision making process which opens the gate for multiple functional areas to have potential impact on the customer experience:

• Awareness and need identification
• Explore and qualify alternatives
• Solution discovery and evaluation
• Negotiation and purchase decision
• Implementation and post sales service
• After purchase acclimation and evaluation

At each strategic stage of the sales process, research & development, marketing, sales, services and finance will have various levels of influence on the quality of the overall customer experience; which means quality assurance during all phases of the customer lifecycle is critical. In the Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment respondents were asked: "What level of priority does your company currently assign to building quality into your software development environment?" Nearly 65% of the over 900 respondents rated their software quality initiatives as high or one of their top priorities. However; it also appears that many companies are still not committed to quality improvement. In other words, they are only paying lip service about quality, and as a result there is a discrepancy with how their customers view the relationship. Consider the following statistics from the Cutter Consortium, an IT advisory firm.

• 32% of organizations say they release software with too many defects.
• 38% of organizations believe they lack an adequate software quality assurance program.
• 27% of organizations do not conduct any formal quality reviews.

The current combination of declining customer satisfaction levels and economic concerns is creating the perfect customer experience storm. In this type of business climate those companies that focus on quality will be the ones that come out on top. That means a relentless and coordinated approach to quality improvement across all functional areas has never been more important.