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December 19, 2006

Do You Know the Difference Between Quality and Cost?

ME Liz Strauss wrote this at 12:41 pm

When Quality Is Wrong

I've been thinking . . .
Writing, designing, tweaking anything, we work to bring what we do to the highest level. Who decides what the highest level is? Who determines the definition of quality? At first we think we do.

But we don’t.

The customer does.

If the customer can’t see what we add, it’s not quality.

If the customer doesn’t value our additional tweak, that’s not quality either.

If the customer doesn’t want that bell or that whistle, we may have gotten her way, we may have actually taken something from him.

If the customer can’t tell shades of blue as well as we can, we may have just made the customer wait.

In each of those cases, we weren’t adding value by investing our time what we added was . . .

COST.

What’s really silly is that some of us will sit back and wait for a thank you, a thank you that will never come from customers who want what we called quality. Thanks come so much more quickly when we give our customers something they want.

I don’t want a new chair. I want this one fixed.

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3 Comments to “Do You Know the Difference Between Quality and Cost?”

  1. December 19th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
    Ellen Weber said

    Liz, you build a great case for listening - and what an inspired reminder. because we think we cannot get paid to listen - we forget its value. But we do get paid a huge price to listen well. Spoken like a pro! thanks Liz.

    Interestingly I was just interviewed by Wayne Turmel at the Cranky Middle Manager program, and I left that ipod session inspired in much the same way. What an honor to be asked questions because somebody wants insights.

    How much better to ask others as you do, and share wisdom! Thanks - this is really a brain based concept you have designed — based on multiple intelligences….

  2. December 19th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Ellen,
    You are so excellent at catching people dooing well and doing good.

    Your brain is always on the look out for how we might be using ours and then telling us when we are.

    Thank you for doing just that. It’s a reminder we all need.:)

  3. January 23rd, 2007 at 11:28 am
    Liz Strauss at Successful Blog - Words We Search with, Words We Sell with said

    […] Related Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think Do You Know the Difference Between Quality and Cost? Blog Promotion: How to Write for People and Search Engine Spiders […]

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