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Start-Ups & TQM

Total Quality Management (TQM) helps a business to ensure adherence to quality and to meet

customer as well stakeholders’ expectations. It is such a powerful concept that allows not just a particular area of an organization to be excellent but the entire functioning and delivery.

I always held the view that TQM becomes a scarce concept only in large, multi-unit organizations. In a typical large organization with several verticals, focus on TQM potentially becomes a rare thing because it is just not part of the organizational culture from Day 1 and it becomes a very complex and humungous task to implement in a grown up organization. The lack of TQM could reflect at many different levels and across functions, for example from Business Development to Human Resources Management and within a team in one vertical to handling customers and external stakeholders. Small day to day operational aspects such as to prepare for a meeting with a potential business partner such that the concerned subject of meeting is thoroughly analysed by team members and common questions are framed to make the meeting most productive forms a fundamental aspect of the broader philosophy of TQM.

However, to see Start Ups lacking TQM in their DNA is disturbing to say the least. How could one expect to make the start up a success without adequate emphasis on TQM? My recent interactions with a start-up left me disappointed as it not only lacked TQM but members of management team surely lacked the very concept of it.

The Start-Up provides services that has a country wide appeal and the overall demand for these services is all set to rise exponentially. So, the market demand is sorted and sustained level of demand into future is assured.

The business is a web based venture. The medium to reach out to potential customers, portray its services and convert visitors into revenue paying customers, the website is of top quality. The website is very well designed, soothing colour scheme, good presentation and positive user experience is a given. But there are shortcomings once you pay for a particular service and visit inner pages to fill out information and other details in order to avail services you paid for. There is a glaring difference between options available to choose from on the website in respect to a particular service and options available in actual forms released by concerned ministry of government in respect to that service. The steps to be followed and their precedence through the entire process is not explained anywhere and a novice is clearly lost in details of the process.

The biggest let down is execution part, the operations team of the start-up. It absolutely does not make any difference between regular and fast track service, though fast track option costs 25% more. The quality of communication over telephone is very low. No effort was spared to understand concerns of the client. If there is any issue in moving forward with the engagement, the respective client is not updated and solutions are not discussed rather the client gets to know on chasing up with the team after a long duration of radio silence during the course of engagement. Any track of emails exchanges is clearly absent and information is to be repeated to different members of the team at different times.

All this brought up a million dollar question to me – the start-up that ensured such a high quality website and currently spending aggressively on its online marketing – why is it not focusing on its operations, delivery and client satisfaction? How will it ensure customer retention? Does it just care about picking up unique customers through aggressive online marketing? Is there no more relevance for Word of mouth marketing?

Even in the age of Digital Marketing, I strongly believe that nothing beats good old fashioned Word of mouth marketing, both for products or services. A detailed focus on quality of services being provided along with regular feedback from customers helps to constantly improve your services and organizational practices, which all will lead to TQM and Customer Satisfaction sustained through time.

TQM is ever more essential for start-ups. Especially, for a business providing services that are generic, TQM has to be in its DNA, which would obviously develop as it USP. The web based business model allows to erase regional and geographical limits and to develop a client base on a much bigger and ever increasing canvas. The forecasted size of potential customers seems to be too large to have a satisfaction that picking up new customers would be sufficient to sustain the business model. However, success of such a strategy is highly debatable and lack of quality in services and delivery would also reach to the same wider customer base and prove to be detrimental to the business.

This reminds me of the concept I came across several times during my business education and one I always strived to adhere to during my last assignment as manager of a small brick and mortar start-up: select a small group of potential customers, ensure your product or service fulfils all their needs with highest possible quality and then expand to add new customers building on lessons learned and regular enhancements to your product or service. Few Start-ups are clearly getting their priorities incorrect!