31.07.2024.

Quality? No, thanks.

The answer to almost every question to clients to list characteristics of their company includes the word “quality”. “Our work meets the highest standards of quality.” “We produce high-quality products.” “What sets us apart from others is quality.” Apart from quality, we often get “professionalism” and “reliability”, but let’s get back to quality. It deserves a special treatment.

Nowadays, everyone is high-quality. Even the most dodgy, unreliable company can stick the q-word on everything they do. It appears to be a must.

Quality doesn’t have a very specific meaning. For each business it can mean something else and precisely that is its weakness when describing a company - it doesn’t mean anything specific. But people looove to use it, while it is actually a waste of space. Personally, I doubt that anyone believes in such a statement any more, and I simply cannot imagine a situation where upon reading a quality-description of a company someone thinks to himself: “Hmmm, these guys say they do quality work. It must be so. I will hire them.”

What I would recommend is to ditch the word “quality” and substitute it with a more specific word that will offer some information to the user and not be open to interpretation. Are you fast? Focus on that. Is your work very precise? Put that in your slogan. Are you open 24/7? There’s a good selling point. The word “quality” has been prostituted so much that people simply don’t perceive it  any more. Find a better replacement. On time, every time.

author: martina