The trade's route to real quality

I often get asked what I am a Dr of. Well, I have a PhD in economics. But my real area of professional focus and interest over the years has been in quality management.

Having read the Morning Advertiser​ every week since I joined Carlsberg UK (CUK) towards the end of 2008, I know quality is a word that is used a lot in the pub industry and particularly in relation to beer — but, in my view, not always in the right context.

The ancient philosopher Aristotle defined quality as: "The difference between things." In a modern context, it's like saying: "This pint of beer is better than your pint of beer."

Now, that was a definition made in 300BC.

In today's world the differentiation between things is not as simple any more. As quality became one of the competition factors for producers, so service providers had to change their focus from the engineering design board to the customers' minds.

They had to fully understand that quality is a perceived attribute and its common definition today is: meeting the needs and expectations of your customers. So it is all about understanding and then influencing the customers' minds.

I have read many articles in the trade press encouraging the use of the right glassware when serving beer and to clean lines properly. This is all of vital importance, but is it all the customers are expecting?

There is no doubt that now they expect more. To compete you have to do more; you have to delight and charm your customers by exceeding their needs and expectations — it is about making them excited about your business. You may think I exaggerate, but that is what all the other competing leisure businesses that work around you are trying to achieve.

At CUK we follow exactly this route: we continuously research our customers' needs and try to exceed them. For example, when I started we looked at the day to day problems facing our customers and wanted to use our expertise and resources to help them solve these problems. As a result we came up with We Deliver More.

Starting life as an online service giving licensees the tools to improve the quality of their marketing, retailing and ability to make cash savings, We Deliver More has now become the byword for how we work with customers and the way we view ourselves as a company. So our customers are not just getting a product from us — they are receiving a fantastic service that helps build their business. That, in my view, is real quality.

So the question I want to leave you with is: what can you do to make consumers excited about your pub? The quality of an outlet is not all about prices, whether you can smoke or not, or indeed watch sport. It is a perceived combination of many factors. Customers will come back for more if they perceive that the experience they get in your pub is better than their expectations.