In an age dominated by instant gratification, shortened attention spans and ever-advancing technology at our fingertips, it’s no surprise words like “quality” carry weight.

And rightly so. As businesses adapt to meet these modern expectations and today’s ever plugged-in consumer, their brand reputation and the confidence it instills has arguably never been more critical.

Enter quality assurance — the branding buzzword that, to outsiders, may seem to be more industry marketing-speak rather than an actual, deliverable promise.

How can a business or organization follow through with true quality control and assurance with their products, processes and services, and what does it spell when they don’t? Below is an in-depth exploration of quality assurance and quality control in the contemporary age — and why it’s more important than ever.

What Does Quality Assurance Mean?

Quality assurance is a company delivering on their promise for the complete satisfaction of their customers across goods and services.

The purpose of quality assurance is to fulfill front- and back-end processes in the most efficient and fluid manner, delivering the intended product or service on-time and within-budget, and going above and beyond in all transactions and interactions with the consumer.

In other words, quality assurance is the promise that a customer will have the most positive experience possible with a company regardless of purpose, time and time again.

Quality assurance goes beyond merely satisfying expectations, though. A company that embraces top-tier quality assurance will incorporate its tenants into every corner of its organizational structure and operations, not just a final physical product.

Quality assurance can be found in:

• Recruitment and Employee Training. Promoting and accepting a quality-assured environment means investing as much in your human capital as you should your physical assets. Stress the importance of customer care, product excellence and people-first values during the hiring and onboarding of new employees, as well as in training and meetings with current ones.
• Management. Quality management systems can show buy-in and represent an institution’s commitment to practicing what it preaches. This, too, means management putting people first.
• Customer Service. All customer-facing departments and resources must have a deep understanding of what quality assurance really means. They represent the public face of your organization and are often the direct line of communication between your company and your customers. As such, their actions should relay an upbeat, friendly service-oriented organization.
• Branding and Marketing. Beyond listing the features and benefits of a good or service, quality assurance branding highlights the company’s mission of bettering consumers’ lives and prioritizing their needs. It must establish trust and an emotional bond, not merely a transactional one.
• Product Design. Depending on your industry, the products or goods you design will vary, but the commitment to excellence should not. Sourcing quality parts, providing relevant assembly training, outfitting quality machinery and enacting an overall efficient production system is the backbone of a physical product’s quality control.
• Regulations or Compliance. One of the many reasons for quality assurance is its innate embrace of regulatory compliance. It sees these measures not as red tape or bureaucratic annoyances, but a guarantee that the consumer’s interests come first.
• Testing. Assuring all products, goods and services are sound, stable and exactly what’s promised to the end user.

Why Is Quality Assurance Growing More Prevalent?

To understand the growing popularity of quality assurance, you must first recognize the evolving tastes of consumers across the 21st century.

Dozens of industry studies and resources — private and public — have gone into understanding what makes consumers tick. Why do they act, think and purchase the way they do? What makes them loyal to a brand? What turns them off? The results might surprise you:

• Consumers Are Feelings Driven, Not Logic Driven. To the disappointment of economists and marketing analysts alike, people, quite frankly, are complicated. Economic purchasing choices are a complex dance of tastes, experiences, opportunities and emotions — all the subjective and subconscious markers you can’t fully predict. You can drive home the objective superiority of your goods and service all you want. At the end of the day, this is not what motivates real people.
• Trust Is King. Any branding efforts that don’t convey trust are wasted. Understanding what establishes trust across customer segments, however, is a different story.
• Age Matters — But So Does Integrity. People return to brands like old friends. They are familiar, comfortable and safe, blending the feelings-driven and trust-based natures described above. However, established brands that don’t purposefully market their sincerity and quality assurance will be affected in the long run.
• Brands Need Boundaries. Consumers need to understand what your brand is about. They need to have a clear and specific sense of your company’s “personality.” If real people can’t name three clear adjectives that comprise the entirety of what you’re about, then you’re branding is shapeless.
• Be Consistent. Rebranding efforts are essential but precarious endeavors. Radically shift your branding too abruptly or too drastically, and even the most loyal clients can feel betrayed. Perception is everything. Ensure yours is consistent and controlled.

So why is quality assurance becoming more important? Simple. It encapsulates all the principles above. Companies are taking note:

• Quality Assurance Speaks Straight to Feelings. It says we’re here for you, we care and we go above and beyond.
• Quality Assurance Prioritizes Trust. When followed through with, it stamps dependability and credence on your company in a way few other acts can.
• Quality Assurance Conveys Integrity. When you state your company provides flawless, people-first deliverables — and then do just that — others will take note.
• Quality Assurance Gives Your Brand a Backbone. It says who you are and what you’re about, rather than shoveling features and affordances that consumers quickly drown out.
• Quality Assurance Maintains Consistency Across All Org Levels. Top-down processes and procedures are all tied together under its promise, providing overall dependability.

What Industries Does Quality Assurance Apply To?

The advantages of a quality assurance system are pertinent to a range of industries.

Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not just companies that provide raw goods or tangible, physical products that need to maintain consistency and customer satisfaction. Since true quality assurance is about authentic, people-first attitudes and step-by-step, satisfaction-ensured org processes, any sector that deals with people in real time will, indeed, benefit from quality assurance and quality control principles.

Consider the following industries and what they have the most to gain from instilling people-centric values, brand trust, integrity and flawless deliverables:

1. Government Agencies

From public utilities to legislative boards to regulatory agencies, the government sector provides both tangible and intangible services that, indeed, require steady public trust.

This can be a tricky act to balance. However, quality assurance in this sector would invite more transparent messaging, bureaucratic processes and access to informational or educational resources that allow the public to receive simple and straightforward material. It could also cut down on processing times and streamline many governmental operations, to the benefit of everyday constituents.

2. Technology

From computers and phones to the increasing prevalence of “smart” technology in cars, homes, schools and offices, technology is everywhere. Its immersive and saturating reach dominates many of our day-to-day functions.

It’s this nature of the technology sector that necessitates quality control and assurance for brand integrity — and primes it for disaster if it doesn’t. Just consider the PR nightmare of Facebook’s data scandal, the data breaches at Equifax, account hacks at Yahoo and many more mismanagement nightmares the tech sphere experienced the past few years. Quality assurance may have helped deter them.

3. Nonprofits

Organizations within the nonprofit sector rely on trust, ambassadorship, goodwill and social good to operate. Their services already encompass many of the notions of quality assurance and quality management systems to remain true to their missions. However, they can also quickly land in hot water if they aren’t following through on the services they claim to provide.

4. Finance

Insurance agencies, banks and investment groups often court polarizing public opinions. Despite certain wolf-on-Wall Street stereotypes, though, most consumers value the guidance and opinions of these institutions, seeing them as a necessary part of their financial futures.

Those in the financial-service sector can utilize the goodwill and public-first principles at the heart of quality assurance. They can also rely on it for creative, consumer-first marketing and customer service operations, both in-person and online.

5. Manufacturing

Whether automotive, electronic, heavy machinery, steel, raw goods and so much more, the manufacturing sector has traditionally been the most forward with quality assurance, testing, checks and balances and quality control principles.

In many ways, they’ve had to. Tighter markets and higher global competition have made product reliability, cost-effectiveness and confidence king regarding manufacturing companies’ branding efforts. This is only poised to continue in the near future, with creative uses of quality control buffering them.

6. Food and Beverages

Consistency and consumer responsiveness are hallmarks of successful food and beverage brands. What’s more, consumer tastes in food and beverages have increasingly tilted toward those with transparent ingredients and ethical sourcing — all tenants that can be highlighted in contemporary quality assurance.

7. Health and Beauty

Health and beauty brands like Dove have soared in recent years because of their quality assurance and trust-focused marketing commitment. This industry operates in a strategic place between needing individuals to buy their products yet also needing to show empowerment and portraying broader beauty standards. Quality assurance helps mediate these needs.

Why Does Quality Assurance Matter?

Occasional glitches or defects in a product are one matter. Mismanagement of resources, wasted time, poor oversight and dissatisfied consumer bases are another.

Quality assurance matters because of what occurs when it’s overlooked. In other words, organizations that don’t take their products and customers seriously across every department and operational step will inevitably run into issues. It takes years to build a company’s reputation. It takes minutes to see it crumble.

When left unaddressed, these widescale problems pool to influence your entire brand:

• You Will Lose Customers. Today’s consumer has more choice than ever. This is no catchy tagline. It’s a 21st-century reality. They will flock to greener pastures if their needs aren’t taken care of across the board.
• You Will Lose Revenue. As your consumer base falls and your brand’s reputation drops with it, you ultimately hurt your bottom line.
• You Will Lose Sight of Your Mission. Quality assurance is as important for strategic reasons as it is for your spreadsheets. If you have poorly functioning goods and routinely disgruntled customers, you will have poorly performing and disgruntled employees. This, in turn, forms cracks in every layer of your organization and their ability to buy into your branded mission — something that will fundamentally change the course of your company’s future.

Likewise, when appropriately implemented, quality assurance stands to lend your company the following:

• A Results-Driven Mindset, Not a Job-Driven Mindset. Across the board, employees will maintain quality assurance as a principle, not a routine checkmark. This attitude shapes their roles. No one is in-house simply to clock in and clock out. They are there to solve problems and better the lives of customers. Business results will bloom accordingly.
• A More Positive Work Environment. Work attitudes can be a notoriously hard variable to control. Yet few managers or directors grasp the mood-hacking benefits of a mission-guided company, one that takes the quality of products or services and the care of people to heart.
• A Vibrant Brand Following. Quality assurance brings home the trust and integrity you both want and need to build with consumers. It establishes that you put your money where your mouth is, creating a brand that does what it says it will do and then some. This is the pulse of a brand’s culture, and it’s one many organizations pay big bucks for.

The Advantages of Quality Assurance Systems

The advantages of a quality assurance system will not just boost the feel-good nature of your brand. When thoroughly applied, it will bring real value to real people, both within and outside your organization in the following ways:

1. A Leaner, Top-Down Organizational Process

A quality assurance system allows for more streamlined and efficient production of your goods or service. Regardless of those goods or service types, this means:

• Improved process controls.
• Smoother regulatory audits.
• An internal system of checks and balances for the quality of products.
• A culture of improvement and collaboration.
• Better employee and management training.
• Increased worker engagement.

2. Better Resource and Asset Management

Quality assurance saves time and money. At every level of an organization, it brings a renewed focus on efficiency and productivity, allows reviews of old company ways and creates new models of production and innovation.

It also allows for better testing and compliance procedures, which, in turn, bolsters accountability and improves the reliability of your product.

All the while, it doesn’t promote these things at the expense of employee morale. Rather, a quality assurance system empowers employees to see their work as part of a larger picture, one directed toward an authentic common good. It further incentivizes a horizontal structure, as quality control curates an atmosphere that all insights and roles matter because they all contribute to the best possible product or service.

3. Focus on Real People

At the end of the day, a company unmotivated to bring real value to real people is one adrift in its purpose.

Within an organization, quality assurance stimulates creativity and collaboration. It requires feedback and guidance from all employees and managers. It helps team members reflect on their goals and mission, as well as what they contribute to it. This, in turn, makes a superior end product.

The consumer and the public at large reap the rewards of this attention. They receive the highest quality service or physical good, noted customer attention, and interactions that stem beyond the commercial or transactional.

It’s one of those rare occurrences where everyone wins with thorough quality assurance, day in and day out.

Quality Assurance Brought to Life

At Momentum, we don’t just talk the quality assurance talk — we walk the walk, too.

People are at the center of every project we partner on. From technological solutions to infrastructure and process innovation, we’ve built a unique system of business analysis, deliverable reviews, project management and fluid implementation with one mission: to help clients do business the way they were meant to.

Submit a contact form or call us (717) 214-8000 to see what momentum we can create.

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