My husband and I own a side business and lately we have been working with a web development company. At the beginning, we were really excited. We saw work the company had done and we couldn’t wait to see the end result. They have a quality product at a great price! Eleven weeks later we have a quality website, but we are very disappointed, frustrated, and would probably not recommend the company to a friend.

Over the past several decades, quality has become a big issue. If you don’t create a quality product, your competitors will. Consumers want quality. My husband and I now have a quality product, so why are we disappointed? What the website company didn’t understand was that quality to us was not just about the end product. Quality includes a broad range of things. We were initially told the website would be done in 3 weeks. We didn’t see anything for 6 weeks and it was nothing like what we wanted. We didn’t see the second try until 4 weeks later. Communications were poor — not returning our emails or phone calls. Our credit card was charged even though our site wasn’t up yet (twice), and we were asked for information we had already given them on several occasions. This company appeared to only place their time and energy on the end product and not on any other area.

Quality includes every aspect of your business: customer service, efficiency, end product, etc. So what can you do to ensure that you are meeting all of your customer expectations? Do you know what your customers expect from you?