Where the need for testing starts?
August 19, 2022
Precision-made testing has been at the heart of our offering to customers for many decades. Still, the need for testing is not created equally. Meaningful testing is driven by strategic purpose.
Let us share a few examples of the typical testing requests we have received – and how the need for testing, in fact, originates. In our opinion – there’s a wide spectrum of reasons.
The most typical request for testing comes from negative customer feedback – or worse yet, a reclamation that the product has not delivered on its promised performance. When these kinds of requests come in – testing takes place because it is mandatory. The damage has already occurred, and testing offers a last-ditch attempt to salvage the customer’s satisfaction or the company’s reputation.
More rarely, we’re required to test a product thanks to positive customer feedback. That’s when our customers start to wonder – can this “excellent performance” be used as the unique selling proposition (USP) for our product? If so, how can we use it to differentiate from other competitors? How can we strengthen our messaging around the good customer experience we’ve received?
In practice, this means using precision-made testing results that support these messages as significant proof in sales and marketing materials – and building in meaningful content.
Yet another type of requests we see comes primarily from B2B sales when a company is trying to answer specific questions about a product’s durability or functionality. The precision-made testing is part of a longer project-based sales process that helps move the potential customer through the sales funnel, winning confidence and closing the deal.
Yet, the sales process slows down if there is a lack of completed testing. And potential customers are not willing to move forward with any purchase without having full knowledge of the product’s properties available.
The ideal case is when a company requests precision-made testing from testing specialists as the basis for building its competitive advantages based on its own strategic marketing. By using precision-made testing, it is possible to discover those differentiating factors that have significant value to a chosen target group. These differentiating factors then form the basis for meaningful messaging that underlines the product’s unique performance properties.
And by starting this way around – a customer saves time and money in the long run by proactively building competitive advantage as part of the strategy – rather than chasing for reasons to prove a product meets its specifications as a reactive afterthought.
So, when it comes to testing – consider where your testing requests fall along this spectrum.
