Why QA drives the success of a business?

Let me try to answer the above question from my own perspective - as a former QA specialist and a data-driven person. I always love working with data doing analysis, showing performance trends, and building reports. Somehow it makes me feel alive when I work with tons of information compiled in a single spreadsheet and my task is to find something out of it. Weird, right? I know. Well, let me first define what is a QA in my own understanding and why is it important in a business.

Putting a quality assurance structure in a business helps to determine factors that are critical to its overall success. On the other hand, it can also help the owner to make business decisions that will increase the productivity and efficiency of the business. By definition, It is a process that is used to learn if the product or services whether it meets the standards and the business is giving high quality-level results to your customers or not. In short, it helps a company build its credibility if what it offers has a positive reputation for giving consistent high-level quality of products or services.

Think of it as when you are going to purchase a product online, right before you add the item to your cart and place the order, you would check for customer reviews first and if you see that buyers have given a low star and negative feedback about the product, the tendency is you would look for somewhere else, right? Let's say the product that you purchased is not functioning or damaged and does not appear to have exceeded the quality standards that you expected, you would for sure contact the business to ask for a refund or a replacement. Well, there's quality control - or the actual fulfilment of quality requirements that requires to be put in place to make sure a business is producing a quality product that will fulfil the customer's demands. On the other hand, quality assurance is making sure that all the quality control methods are being executed as planned.

Quality Assurance - in general

Quality assurance helps a business fulfil its customer’s expectations. It can help build trust with the customers, which, in turn, can increase the business' competency in the market. Through QA monitoring, audits, and other methods to assess a process, quality assurance helps to rectify issues before a problem becomes larger, and it helps to set quality standards to prevent problems before they even take place.

Quality Assurance in Call Center Industry

I have been in the call centre industry for about seven years and was a QA specialist for more than two years. In general, a QA specialist in this industry is the one that audits the call recordings using a checklist with targeted behavioural questions to measure if the person taking the call meets the customer experience guideline. QA first listens to the call, lists down positive behaviours as well as the areas of improvement, and compiles all those data after. With enough QA audits, a QA specialist can produce historical data on a timeline-based graphical report that makes everything clear for the managers to see performance trends and factors that are critical to the business on a small or large scale. But the job does not end w/ that - the QA also provides coaching to the person taking the call through a one-on-one session, a collaboration between the QA and the coachee to find the root cause of the problem. Right, remember the five (5) WHYs? It is often being used in this industry as well. The goal? To improve the quality and establish a customer-centric business where everyone displays a customer service-driven attitude.

Defect Rate and DPMO

Disclosure - I am not certified or an expert in Six Sigma but this is how I understood the approach during my Six Sigma training in Teletech (my first call centre company). Defect rate is when you divide the number of defects over the total number of samples observed. The method that calculates the number of defects that the process delivers per million opportunities is called Defects-Per- Million-Opportunities or DPMO - it is calculated by the number of defects divided by the number of units times the number of opportunities, multiplied by one million.

For example, there is a total of 1000 orders audited and a QA specialist used a checklist w/ four (4) fields for possible defects per order. Therefore, there are 4000 opportunities to occur based on the total number of orders accepted: 4 possible defects x 1000 orders taken. DPMO is calculated by dividing total defects observed by total opportunities for defects and multiplying by a million. So, 60 / 4000 (1,000,000) = 15, 000

The lower the DPMO, the better and on the other hand, If the DPMO is too high, you run the risk of negatively affecting customer satisfaction which in turn will reflect negatively on the business. So to put it simply - The value that we get allows us to determine how effective is the process that is put in place. Leave a comment below if I was wrong.

So what I'm saying is...

Through years of working with different clients and businesses, I've learned that this approach is something that always applies to almost all kinds of businesses out there. So no matter what the nature of the business where I am working, I always take time to look at the data and present a report to my client. This is a tool for me that helps me deliver more professionally and with accuracy.

Quality Assurance Skills

Attention to detail - ensuring that all the tasks are completed to the business’ specifications. Getting minor details correct every time can prevent major problems from occurring. It also prevents tasks from needing to be redone or revised to meet requirements later.

Time management - having an adequate time to complete tasks productively and efficiently to the desired quality standard without feeling stressed about it. Someone who is good at time management is good at doing things and most importantly at prioritizing, working out what really needs doing - and discarding other things that are not important for the time being. They understand the difference between urgent and important.

Problem-solving - someone that has good analytical skills and creative thinking that can quickly identify the underlying issue and implement a solution effectively. A quality assurance specialist is someone that can analyze contributing factors of a problem, generate interventions, evaluate solutions and implement a plan.

Did I miss something? Please comment down your thoughts.

"What kind of QA are you?"

"What was your greatest accomplishments when you were a QA?"