“Incremental degradation” is a term used to describe what happens to a business after an initial spurt of success. In an effort to increase profits by controlling costs, product quality is lost by a gradual diminishing of the quality of the ingredients. Ultimately sales volume drops to an unsustainable level and the business fails. This scenario is most often evident when the bottom line is the primary focus of a business manager, as opposed to making the customers the primary focus. Most well managed businesses place the customer first with the bottom line controlled through good purchasing practices and appropriate selling prices and margins.

Just as when a business making small moves to save money on raw material purchases can lead to incremental degradation, small moves made to improve product quality and customer perception can grow a business, even in troubled economic times like the present. One approach is to create a profile of the customer base, then use this profile to imagine this is one customer, the only customer. What can be done for that customer to improve his perception of the company and their product offering? Often it is only a series of small changes that will make the business more important to that one customer, changes that may not cost a lot, if anything. Implement these changes in small steps and the business is on the pathway to continued success.

Placing himself in the customer’s shoes, seeing his business as the customer sees it, will give a business owner a different perspective. From that customer perspective can come a whole new approach to making the business and product indispensable to most of the customers.

Innumerable surveys have been done over the years in attempts to uncover what matters most to consumers of all types of goods. Most particularly in wholesale or commercial businesses, it was found that three items mattered the most to the customer: Customer service, product quality and price. Depending upon the survey parameters, either customer service or product quality was the most important item, with product pricing the last important consideration. Each of these items was deemed important, but pricing was always the least important. Quality does matter, the quality of the product and the quality of customer service; ordering, delivery, responsiveness to questions or problems, accurate invoicing, agreeable terms, order tracking and other aspects of customer service.

For small and medium businesses, one way to improve the quality of customer service and to maintain that quality is to outsource various aspects of sales and customer service. Hiring the services of a professional telesales outsourcing company, or an inbound/outbound call center can dramatically improve many facets of customer service. If the business is a service, this may also serve to improve the quality of the product offering.