Survey: Implications of Insufficient Equipment Testing

Results from our first annual QA professional's survey.

Many of the difficulties facing today's QA professionals arise from consumer and competitive pressures to produce increasingly robust devices under increasingly shorter release cycles. The resulting test backlogs often leave companies with a difficult decision: miss a release date or release insufficiently-tested equipment? Unfortunately when this choice plays itself out, the outcome can be much more costly than imagined.

In late 2006, Fanfare commissioned King Research to help identify the true costs that accompany the networking equipment QA and release processes. The big learning: it's costing manufacturers more than just money when they short-change QA and testing.

Survey Inputs

King Research surveyed individuals with responsibility for purchasing or installing networking equipment for their work or home networks. A total of 821 individuals who purchased or installed networking equipment for their work (IT) or home networks in the past 24 months responded.

Key Learnings

Shocking Numbers

Perhaps the most surprising feedback from the survey is that 37% of IT and 46% of home users of networking equipment reported functionality problems with products purchased in the past two years. Understandably, these users express skepticism about vendor abilities to meet their expectations. In fact, a meager 3% of respondents indicated they had experienced "flawless" performance from their networking equipment.

The High Cost of Technical Support

Of those who experienced functionality problems, there is a high incidence of requesting assistance through phone support, no matter how technical the user. More than half of these calls were reported to last an hour or longer — an important finding since phone support is typically the most expensive and time-consuming service alternative for a company to provide. When you consider that a technical support engineer can draw a $90,000 annual salary, providing this level of service to correct problems that could have been proactively caught in QA comes at quite an expense.

First Step for Problem Resolution

Two Words No One Wants to Hear: "Dissatisfied Customers"

Worse still, 37% of responders reported that even after receiving assistance, their issue could not be resolved. Of this number, approximately one third exchanged the defective product for a different brand, which doesn't include those who returned the device without replacing it. So in addition to the costs of technical support, manufacturers must factor in consumer dissatisfaction, product replacement and the potential loss of brand preference — not just for the device in question, but for future product considerations as well. Clearly, releasing insufficiently-tested products bears much more significant costs and potential damage to long-term customer relationships.

Summary

The findings in the King Research survey underscore the growing need to address the quality of high-tech devices that impact our lives and interactions with technology. It's clear that quality problems are hurting device manufacturers, not only in terms of increased support costs, but also with the loss of business or credibility when a customer turns to a competitive brand.

But the good news for equipment manufacturers who are paying attention: there is unquestionably market share to be gained by turning quality into a competitive advantage.