Evaluate and improve the quality of your products and services
Overview
This standard is for entrepreneurs who need to evaluate and improve the quality of their products and services. This process is important as quality can give your business a competitive edge and can help you to keep and gain more customers. Evaluating and improving your products and services involves making sure you meet your customers' expectations, the quality of your products and services is competitive and you are continuously monitoring and improving your products and services.
Quality of your products and services can affect:
- the performance of your business overall;
- your marketing and sales activities;
- how you develop and provide your products or services;
- how you keep business records;
- how you deal with customers.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- identify levels of quality your customers expect from your products and services
- establish how you measure and improve quality in the operational, technical and management parts of your business
- carry out a comparative analysis of your business with your competitors on the market
- set and review targets for quality and how you meet your customers' expectations
- plan how to deal with faults and complaints about your products and services
- improve your products or services based on information collated from faults and complaints
- decide whether to use a quality recognition scheme to improve your business products and services
- seek advice from experts, where required
- ensure you maintain quality improvements of your products and services
- regularly check progress by sampling products, services and processes
- monitor the customers' reviews and their feedback on your products and services
- assess the knowledge, skills and potential of any staff to improving quality
- seek additional resources to improve quality, if required
- identify any problems in making improvements and take action to deal with them
- carry out Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of your products and services
- implement the relevant IT systems in relation to sales and marketing activities
- review the opportunities and threats and change quality plans as necessary
- review your customer service as part of continuous improvement of your business products and services
- use the results of monitoring quality to review the effectiveness of your business
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
1. your products' and services' sales, marketing, supplies, maintenance and administration, methods of delivery
2. the range of IT systems for marketing campaigns and activities
3. the relevant systems for tracking the sales pipeline
4. why quality is important for your business aims and targets
5. how to deliver customer service offered by your business
6. the information about your products and services needed to measure their quality
7. the types of feedback and customer reviews of your products and services
Quality management
8. the principles of quality control and management
9. the principles of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis
10. how to measure quality based on reviews, complaints and returns
11. how to measure your customers' expectations in relation to quality of your products and services
12. how your competitors maintain and monitor their quality of products and services
13. how to identify quality improvements, staff skills and attitudes required for your business
14. your customer service quality levels in relation to products, services and processes
15. the schemes for recognising quality that are relevant to your business, the benefits of each and where to find out about them
16. how to identify whether your products and services meet recognised quality standards
17. how to sample products, services and processes to carry out quality checks
18. the potential issues you may face when trying to improve quality in your business and how to respond to these
19. why it is important to evaluate and improve quality of your products and services on a regular basis