Hypothetical: which brand is best?

[Cheizz]

Hypothetical situation

Manufacturer A
50 malfunctions of their product
50% of these cases are handled swiftly, with no hassle or additional cost for the customer

Manufacturer B
100 malfunctions of their product
100% of these cases are handled swiftly, with no hassle or additional cost for the customer

Do you review a manufacturer based on the quality of their products (number of malfunctions in the first place), or based on customer service (even though that may be needed more often)?

 

[rongoodman]

You should have a "Neither" option. Both rank far below design and features.

 

[Cheizz]

I deliberately did not include a 'neither' or 'both' option.

 

[Wibble]

Also

• "kit that is cheap and nasty over expensive quality kit"
• "Recreational tat aimed at slatwall dive shops"
• "Non-essential kit features allegedly solving problems that don’t exist"
• "Change for the sake of it kit"

There are others ;-)

 

[arew+4]

That would depend on the impact off failure, merely an inconvenience manufacturer B, potentially life threatening I would hope for better than manufacturer A. You don't give a failure rate so I am assuming equivalent failure rate. A better metric might be mean time between failures, or failures per 1000 working hours or such, especially in the case of computers etc.

 

[Wibble]

The effect of maintenance— some things are far better designed than others due to cost or simple design choices. Quality normally trumps price.

 

[Cheizz]

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to list all possible measures of 'quality'. I was just wondering why so many people rave about manufacturers just because their customer service is so great.
Again, don't get me wrong; I am not implying that customer service isn't important. For me, though, the reason why one would need customer service is as important (or maybe even more so) that the customer service itself.
Or simply put: if there is no reason to get a repair or replacement in the first place (not talking about regular service here), then the level of customer service is not that big of a deal, IMO.

 

[OTF]

So you're asking quality vs customer service.

Usually they go hand in hand. It's unprofitable to make bad products but spend lots of resources supporting them well. If you make quality stuff then you get fewer failures so it pays to put time and effort into making problems right for customers. But that usually means higher price.

 

[arew+4]

When the average product gets so good, failure rates less than say 0.5% the difference of a product with a failure rate 0.1 vs 0.2 really comes down to customer service. It's more of a case of if, rather than when.

 

[Belzelbub]

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to list all possible measures of 'quality'. I was just wondering why so many people rave about manufacturers just because their customer service is so great.

In the scenarios you laid out in your initial post, I'm not sure how to answer as the population is missing. I don't know if a total of 100 units were sold, 1,000, 10,000,... That makes a big difference. 100 failures is twice the 50 failures, but I don't know if that means 5% vs 10% or 0.005% vs 0.01%

I've been in the manufacturing business for nearly 25 years. A lot of it in complex electronics, or other complex mechanical systems. The best you can do in many cases is approach zero defects, and always try to improve.

From a user perspective, the actual failure rate is mostly irrelevant. What matters is that they had a failure, and whether the company stood behind their product or not.