The Seapine View

Recently, a customer asked the following question: “How can you filter the list of test runs based on the test variants it contains?”

The reason the question came up is because, while you can display a “Test Variant” column in the Test Runs list window, you can only filter the column between runs that have variants and those that do not.

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The prefix meta- is used to mean about its own category. For example, under the umbrella of business intelligence you often hear the term “metadata” which means data concerning data. For purposes of this short post, “metaquality” could be described as the process and operations through which quality assurance impacts the quality of the customer experience (quality concerning quality) through all phases of the customer lifecycle. Your customers generally move through a decision making process which opens the gate for multiple functional areas to have potential impact on the customer experience:

• Awareness and need identification
• Explore and qualify alternatives
• Solution discovery and evaluation
• Negotiation and purchase decision
• Implementation and post sales service
• After purchase acclimation and evaluation

 At each strategic stage of the process, research & development, marketing, sales, services and finance will have various levels of influence on the quality of the overall customer experience; which means quality assurance during all phases of the customer lifecycle is critical. In the Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment we asked respondents: “What level of priority does your company currently assign to building quality into your software development environment?”  Nearly 65% of our over 900 respondents rated their software quality initiatives as high or one of their top priorities. However; it also appears that many companies are still not committed to quality improvement.  In other words, they are only paying lip service about quality, and as a result there is a discrepancy with how their customers view the relationship.  Consider the following statistics from the Cutter Consortium, an IT advisory firm.

• 32% of organizations say they release software with too many defects.
• 38% of organizations believe they lack an adequate software quality assurance program.
• 27% of organizations do not conduct any formal quality reviews.

The current combination of declining customer satisfaction levels and economic concerns is creating the perfect customer experience storm.  In this type of business climate those companies that focus on quality will be the ones that come out on top. That means a relentless and coordinated approach to quality improvement across all functional areas has never been more important.

I serve as a member of the Advisory Council for CustomerThink.com.  CustomerThink is a global online community of business leaders who strive to create profitable customer-centric (CRM) business strategies.  The July CustomerThink editorial calendar focuses on the use of technology to power up customer management. In fact, the main focus is on how technology can help accelerate the success of customer-centric strategies. Customer feedback is critical to customer-centric strategies; if the truth be known, often times the feedback is not exactly good news. For example, software companies sometimes receive bug reports and feature requests from their customers. Yes, despite their best effort to ensure quality, a glitch in the software application may occur. And despite best efforts to really listen to their target market, there is always room for improvement, meaning feature requests.

Many times customers have to fill out a report form and either fax, mail, or email it to a technical support department where it is then hand-entered into the master bug database. This low-tech procedure provides no support for file attachments (for example – screen shots) and leaves room for communication error. In addition, the customer is not automatically notified that their issue has been added to future projects.

For ISV’s technology opportunities exist that allow for more effective and efficient beta programs and software releases. This technology allows customers to submit bug reports and feature requests directly into the issue management and defect tracking tool thus eliminating data entry errors and also saving data entry time. Are you likely to find these types of solutions under the normal CRM banner? No; but they are intended to keep your customer-focused strategy on track nevertheless.

The Wall Street Journal recently featured an article (“Consumers Are Downbeat on Economy” by Sudeep Reddy) that stated “Consumer sentiment about the economy dropped to a 28-year low amid surging gasoline prices, falling home prices and a weakening job market.”  When the economy tightens the ability to maintain a quality-focused customer experience can create a competitive advantage.  But does that theory really hold true as it relates to software development?  Do customers truly care about software quality?  After all, software doesn’t really wear out, spoil, or fall apart.  In fact, sometimes defective software works; as long as it’s used in exactly the same way once the bug is fixed.  So, unless we’re talking about applications that perform critical functions in highly public situations (regulatory and compliance related), such as public transportation, utilities or medical devices, the average consumer may not actually care that much about software quality … right?  Wrong.  Seapine Software has now surveyed nearly one thousand software development and QA individuals through our Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment and found that the top two factors driving organizations to focus on Application Lifecycle Management solutions are:

• The need to reduce risk by preventing poor quality from impacting customer satisfaction (23.9%)
• The need to quickly respond to customer requests and requirements (21.7%)

“The need to address compliance and regulatory issues” actually came in last with 5.4% of the vote.  Now don’t get me wrong, FDA regulations or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which makes executives personally responsible for the quality of their organizations financial reports, certainly forces executives to focus on accountability, traceability and quality related issues.  But it’s also true that when customers demand quality corporate executives almost always pay attention.  And based on the survey numbers, customers must care a great deal about software quality.

Did you happen to see the front cover of the April 7^th copy of “InformationWeek?”  The picture was related to the article “The end run around IT – and how CIO’s can prevent it” by John Soat.  Of all the executive level positions to choose from, why was “Marketing” pictured as the player making the sweeping end run in the OPPOSITE direction of the CIO?

Well, marketing automation, marketing optimization, marketing resource management, BI / customer profitability projects, SEM, and social networking initiatives (just to name a few) do provide plenty of technology situations in which it might be tempting to bypass my CIO and ask for forgiveness later.  On the other hand, I prefer a play book in which the CMO and CIO are leading the charge together with power sweeps.  Let me explain; at USC, opponents are often fed a healthy diet of the Trojans’ famed “student body left” and “student body right” toss sweeps. Hordes of very large sized linemen lead fleet tailbacks left or right with regularity for healthy gains.  In a like manner, I’ve found my marketing strategy is more likely to produce healthy gains when I keep my IT organization in tight, leading the charge with me.

With that said, how about your development and QA organizations?  Are they in tight leading the power quality sweep for competitive gains that result in customer loyalty and healthy profitability?  Or does it sometimes look like end runs heading in opposite directions?

The Seapine Software Quality-Ready Assessment (www.seapine.com/qualityready) asked the following key question:  How well do your development and QA teams collaborate? To date we’ve had nearly 600 responses to our survey, and the results are very interesting. The answers follow:

1. Regularly scheduled meetings keep the development and QA teams up-to-date.  29%
2. All team members stay informed of each other’s tasks and progress through automatic assignments, email notifications, and RSS feeds.  24%
3. The QA manager is informed when development is completed.  18%
4. The teams do not interact. New builds are “thrown over the wall” when they are completed.  16%
5. Development teams track their status in a spreadsheet, which the QA team can access to check the project status.  13%

At a glance it appears about half of those who have taken the survey are facing 3^rd and long situations.  By that I mean there isn’t tight collaboration between development and QA capable of producing a sustainable competitive quality-drive.  For your marketing and sales counterparts that’s disappointing news because the odds are low that they’ll be able to provide the Hail Mary pass capable of keeping your customer relationship drive alive.  No matter how you try to spin it – poor quality is a tough sell, especially in the red zone.

Does your software development and QA strategy clearly support your customer relationship strategy?  Feel free to take my polling question (to the right) and let’s see how many power sweeps are in play.

Top flight customer support can create a sustainable competitive advantage for company’s that are able to deliver the right customer care.  Delivering superior customer support may sound easy; however, it’s not.  In fact, according to a survey by Harris Interactive and RightNow Technologies 85% of consumers say they’ve sworn, shouted, cried, smashed things, or experienced chest pains while waiting for help on tech-support call lines.  In other words, many support organizations are not doing it right.       

In my marketing role at Seapine I’m very thankful to have a world-class support organization standing behind our brand.  The Seapine Customer Support organization is staffed by individuals who are truly customer-focused, and their efforts positively impact our customers.  That impact was recently reflected in our March customer satisfaction surveys.  The attached is an amusing and fun message that originally went out only to Seapine employees.  I’m going to take a chance and share it with you:

You’re invited to view a short presentation titled Seapine Software Customer Support:

http://www.brainshark.com/seapine/Great_Customer_Support

OK, OK …my impersonation of Harry Caray isn’t world-class, but now you know why I’m excited about our customer support.  Great support is part of a quality customer experience.

Pluto got bumped from the line-up.  According to a committee of scientists the small solar-system body failed to meet planet-standards, so they downgraded the former planet to an asteroid.  Plutoed; chosen as the 2006 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society, it means to demote or devalue someone or something – to be unceremoniously relegated to a lower position.

In a down economy it might be tempting to pluto your quality improvement initiatives.  When economic indicators are pointing towards a rough landing the “cost of quality” may seem out of orbit.  Anyways, perhaps your customers really won’t notice if quality is dialed down a notch or two.  In fact, generally speaking satisfaction with a company’s products and services is built by repeated customer experiences. So, unless the experiences are below or above expectations, it takes a while for an attitude shift to take place.  Like Pluto’s orbit around the sun – you’d have plenty of time to recover satisfaction, and shift any negative loyalty inertia that might develop – right?  Don’t count on it; because the “cost of poor quality” can strike at the speed of light.  How?  Thanks to user-generated reviews the business solar-system is much smaller now.  Research shows that your customers are increasingly learning about your brand from individuals outside of your control.  And to that point a recent article in marketing news stated that 76% of people who are shopping check out user-generated reviews and that 16% of those reviews were negative.

Bottom line; keep your quality initiatives in placed or you’ll be taking yourself out of alignment with your customers’ needs and expectations – because your customers care about quality.  Your customers care about software quality because your code is often critical to their business.  Your software not only impacts their customer’s experiences, but also puts their brand reputation on the line.  Whether you’re writing code or responsible for QA; your good name is also on the line.  So, don’t pluto quality.