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No company can successfully compete (at least not for long) by having the lowest price, the best service and the highest quality.
I pulled this quote from another thread. Rather than guide that topic in a different direction I thought a new thread was a better idea. Honestly speaking, our business is successful only because of the reasons stated above. We'll be celebrating 10 years soon. We aren't the lowest price, but certainly competitive. Service can vary but not because we don't care, but because the third item, Highest Quality, is exactly what we do, and we use that as a successful selling point. Its also a continous and demanding stream of work, and service might lag at times.
My goal is always to improve service, the boss's role is always to give a better price, and quality is simply what we do. Any other way and it wouldn't be worth doing, at least for me. I suppose also, that with any service or product there will degrees of these reasons applied, for any reason, and with various levels of success.
This is a really goofy question, but would anyone have an idea who the "P.T. Barnums" of the internet might be?
There's a competitor in my area that violates most, if not all rules of good design, including the examples above. When I want a good laugh, I check out their portfolio. I've spent hours with friends laughing at their stuff. It's that bad. Worse than being "sooooo '98"!
Guess who gets more businss than I do. That's right! I'm sure it dosn't hurt that they're "in bed" with the local ISP. It comes down to the fact that they're so damn cheap.
I'd have several loyal clients with good taste that pay well. Obviously my competitor would rather spit out as much crap as they can at $39.99 a page. I'm not aware of any one who does quality work for this rate. Nor am I aware of crappy designers who charge $1,000s.
Unfortunatly or fortunatly, people make assumptions on the quality of your work based on what you charge. From my experience in THIS industry, this method is fairly accurate.
who the "P.T. Barnums" of the internet might be?
The question wasn't phrased very well... and maybe nobody really cares :) But didn't PT discover a truism, and method which almost guaranteed a dollar from everyone he met. The internet is a bit different than a circus. Traffic can become your measure of success... everyone who plugs in visits your site. In those terms is seems like G is one of the internet "Barnums". Anyone else? In terms of dollars a place like e-bay comes to mind.
In clothing, for example, in certain categories, styling and design trump all three of those elements.
Low price inadvertantly often reflects low quality (a stereotype that is normally true). People that shop based solely on low price are normally the exact type of customers that you DON'T want. They are the customers that are more hassel than they are worth, try to cheat you, try to return non-defective merchandise, try to get everything for free.
Even when running a sale or special, the focus should be placed on VALUE rather than cost. The value of my widget is a phenomenal BARGAIN because it is exceptional...not because it is cheap.
The internet is a bit different than a circus.
It is? I thought that was a very good comparison :)
Amazon has a lot of Barnum-like qualities.
He isn't even aware of the latest low-cost wholesale channels, has been with the same mainstream vendors for years, relies on others for the day-to-day of channel management, and has no idea that he's in the top 25% on price in his market.
When I ask a business owner about quality and he says he's not the top tier, but he's delivers a quality product and has a focus on quality, it usually means:
He has already done as much as he wants to do when it comes to giving more for the same price, and has already made an internal decision that if anything has to give it's going to have to be a big change, cause he doesn't think he can do any better while still putting on heirs of quality.
When I ask a business owner about service comprehensiveness he says he can't do everything for everyone all the time, but he's committed to customer service and does a good job overall, it usually means:
He's not aware of the latest advances in technology in support of customer service, and has not the necessary customer perspective to see opportunities for improvement. To him better customer service is the same stuff done more, and he is already dedicating as large a piece of his profits to that as he wants to. Now he justifies his with holding of customer service using his current costs and profit margins as guidance.
All three can all be improved, always. It takes time and effort. Oh, and when speaking of time and effort to produce results, consultants have a saying for that as well.
You can have it faster, better, or for less cost. Pick two.
Lowest price, best service, and highest quality are not the only drivers.In clothing, for example, in certain categories, styling and design trump all three of those elements.
Whenever you can attach an emotion to a product, logical reasoning seems to go out the window. I once worked with someone who admitted to owning $800 worth of Nikes that had Michael Jordan's name on them. The same "drivers" seem to also work well with cars and beauty products. I think this is known as "branding."
Unless you're someone like 2Advanced Studios, I think branding on this level is a bit difficult for you and me.
Low price inadvertantly often reflects low quality (a stereotype that is normally true).
I went into my local Costco today (our low-price membership warehouse club). I typically think of them as best price, good quality (products), no service. But today I realized that there is one aspect of quality that does suffer -- and that is the quality of my experience. I had to suffer with crowds of other shoppers who don't have the consideration to at least move their carts aside when taking items off the shelf, or who stand in the middle of an aisle and refuse to move as others are attempting to squeeze past. And the reason that quality suffers in this manner is because of low price -- it brings in a lot of people.
I thing balance is the name of the game.
I see this "balance" as a naturally occuring consequence; it's going to happen whether you plan it or not. If you don't plan or if you strive to excel at all three, then, at various times, you'll find that your quality or your service will suffer. It's as if you can only juggle 2 balls at once, but you're trying to juggle 3. So you've got the "price" ball under control and now you focus on the "service" ball, and you drop the "quality" ball. As you stoop to pick up the "quality" ball, you drop the "service" ball.
Problem is, you've represented yourself to your customers as excelling at juggling all three balls. At best, they be confused, at worst angry at you for alternatively providing them with good service/quality, then bad service/quality, depending on which ball you dropped that day.
On the other hand, if you plan which to balls you're going to juggle, and you market to people who want those balls juggled, you will consistently please your clients because they know what to expect.
