Before the rise of the advanced technologies that many companies use today, traditional quality assurance practices required products and services to be evaluated manually. They evaluated key factors, such as workflow development, process improvements, and revenue generation.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) tells us that in late 13th-century medieval Europe, artisans formed guilds (or unions) that managed the development of stringent guidelines regarding the quality of products and services. The same model has been used and re-envisioned throughout the centuries. Eventually, they adopted key processes and standards to deliver exceptional value.
Today, we see enhanced QA practices that are specific to individual sectors and yield a significant return on investment (ROI) for businesses. Below, we provide ten ways entrepreneurs and business leaders can enhance their QA practices and increase revenue growth. By improving product quality, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency, businesses can unlock increased profitability and gain a competitive edge in the market.
1. Prioritize QA on Every Level
A 2023 Gartner study on modernizing quality assurance found that “88% of service leaders say their current Quality Assurance processes are ineffective and rarely match up to the customer view of quality.”
Such is often the result of quality assurance not being the company’s central focus, where C-level leaders need to place quality at the forefront of their mission. To effectively deliver high-quality products, processes, and services, a quality-centered culture must be built from the top down to guarantee that quality assurance becomes prioritized by leaders on every level.
When companies go beyond satisfying customer expectations and instead ensure top-tier quality assurance becomes a defining part of their brand, quality becomes a vital value of each employee and a natural part of the company landscape.
2. Establish Collaborative Team Environments
Building highly collaborative, cross-functional teams is one of the most overlooked ways to enhance quality assurance outcomes. With your first action of prioritizing QA as an integral part of your mission, values, and vision, each worker understands the importance of quality assurance across the organization. Therefore, with an established strong QA culture, teams can work together to integrate QA practices for heightened satisfaction and profitability.
Establishing a collaborative team culture regarding quality may seem complicated. However, encouraging strong communication among leaders and individuals will help ensure that quality outcomes continue.
Beyond internal collaborations, businesses can work closely with other companies or owners. By doing so, they can drive even greater brand awareness and quality assurance. Modern business collaborations are done through social media chats, live streaming, webinars, podcast interviews, and traditional local partnerships to identify where leaders could improve quality improvements. These same methods, including QA socials and discussion boards, can unite teams for an essential cause.
3. Lead With an Objective Mindset
In 2021, The New York Times published an article highlighting what defines a good leader and the importance of objectivity, as discussed in the highly acclaimed book, “Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower.” The article’s retrospect notes that long-held assumptions about power have often led to biased mindsets among leaders. Still, the book recognizes how compassion, empathy, and humility create a path of informed and fair decision-making.
Likewise, leaders and employees who focus on completing daily workflows and communications with a limited sense of bias can efficiently find answers to everyday QA problems. When presented with a challenge, an unbiased mindset allows outside-the-box ideas to be considered and innovative thinking to occur.
4. Leverage AI and Automation
According to McKinsey & Company, generative AI has the potential to significantly enhance quality assurance, not only paving the way for workforce development and productivity but also unleashing economic value for businesses across every sector.
MaestroQA is a company leveraging the depth of AI-driven QA workflows to gather actionable insights and directly influence customer satisfaction. Using MaestroQA’s AI classifiers and AutoQA application, customer service teams are empowered to successfully facilitate a new level of analysis and deeper quality metrics like never before. As a result, companies are developing a more comprehensive understanding of customer issues and needs by capturing feedback to identify KPIs and develop more effective internal processes.
With automated quality assurance testing, businesses can improve team productivity and decrease QA times. By identifying improvement areas, quality assurance automation and AI tools allow for streamlined resource sharing and decision-making.
5. Integrate QA and QC Approaches
A well-formulated quality assurance and control framework is essential in today’s modern business world. The absence of a complete quality assurance approach or quality control method leaves the potential for missed problems and opportunities. Consider them two sides of the same coin, where each is necessary to guarantee customer satisfaction with the product.
For example, Ford Motor Company has long been recognized as a reliable automotive maker in North America. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, in 2022, Ford could no longer sustain the slogan “Quality is Job 1,” with its quality assurance and warranty costs under fire. While the company’s CEO continues to battle these quality concerns, including leading the auto industry in recalls for two consecutive years, its heightened focus on QA and QC practices has been essential to its persistence.
6. Track and Document QA Changes
Especially in the customer-oriented business environment, quality is more than in-the-moment interactions with each customer. The fundamental changes in quality assurance come from data collection and customer feedback. Whether using a digital management system or other reporting methods, it’s important to have an organized documentation system. This can help identify which internal processes your business needs to adjust, or how your business should handle a situation.
Proper documentation of quality issues and successes can make identifying inefficiencies easier. This reduces lost time and productivity and ensuring consistency across the organization. It also allows team leaders and other decision-makers to implement changes more effectively and efficiently.
7. Maximize QA Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is essential for any business’s growth and maximizing target audience reach. But what about brand awareness when it comes to quality assurance?
Companies that can heighten awareness of their QA best practices and deliver the highest quality of transparency can more readily prevent quality issues in the future. They can accomplish this by identifying real-time quality issues and developing more efficient solutions. One corporate leader suggests that to become a brand recognized for its quality products or services, the image and presence of your brand are integrated deeply into everything from the company logo to customer service proficiency to clear and consistent content.
So, whether seen in the interactions among customer service agents or in the design of a company’s online content, the quality you show your customers has a tremendous impact on the future growth of your business.
8. Establish QA Review Policies
Quality assurance is now mission-critical for your business. Therefore, it is essential to have specific and comprehensive QA review policies in place for each level of the organization. When considering good practices for QA reviewers, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency notes that the most effective auditing requires policies and procedures to be readily established, be regularly monitored to determine compliance with QA/QC standards, and be summarized for change recommendations on at least an annual basis.
Ultimately, employees, team members, leaders, CEOs, and board members must have an aligned understanding of quality expectations. Your business should implement regular quarterly meetings, annual reviews, and peer reviews. These help to ensure that everyone is adhering to policies and procedures. These meetings can also give your business a chance to re-evaluate anything if necessary.
9. Measure Quality Differently
According to the Harvard Business Review, focusing on high-quality practices ensures your company has predictable, profitable, and diverse revenue growth. If your company sees low revenues with your current quality assurance practices, consider how competitors measure quality across their organization. Note whether there is a strong enough differentiation of how they measure quality assurance practices across the organization and its departments.
10. Identify Investment Opportunities
Finally, if your business repeatedly witnesses poor ROI regarding quality assurance, consider what areas need the most improvement and potentially more significant investment.
A Nielsen study recognizes North America and Latin America as two of the most robust ROI opportunity zones, with growth opportunities from additional investments leading at 48% and 42%, respectively. While the study focuses on the quality of marketing practices, we find similar ideas across every level of an organization regarding general QA.
For instance, instead of targeting the right audience to increase ROI, focus on recruiting and hiring employees with a strong track record for quality assurance. As mentioned, use automation and AI to track QA metrics to meet short-term goals and identify long-term brand-building opportunities. Stay creative and adaptive when facing quality challenges. This will help to ensure processes are manageable and the right tools are in place to enhance QA practices and increase revenues.
A Focused QA Strategy Pays Dividends
Enhancing the quality assurance process of a business can be daunting. But, the result could substantially improve your company’s return on investment. Take a closer look at how you can implement and improve quality practices at every level of your organization. In doing so, you will quickly see positive changes in customer satisfaction, service levels, and future growth.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by Vlada Karpovich; Pexels; Thank you.
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