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What Are 'Quality Signals'?

• When performance is difficult to see, hear, feel, or otherwise notice, Quality Signals provide important reassurance that the offer is performing as intended.
• Quality Signals are elements of an offer designed to increase the user’s perception of Quality in a direct, tangible way.

Josh Kaufman Explains 'Quality Signals'

Car aficionados love the roar of a powerful motor pushed to the limit. There’s just one problem: advances in manufacturing have resulted in better isolation between the engine compartment and the passenger cabin, which reduces engine noise. The sound is still there, but the driver can’t hear it.

If you can’t hear the motor when you hit the accelerator, does it really make a sound?

Many major car manufacturers (like BMW, Ford, Porsche, and Volkswagen) have adopted a workaround: they play engine noise—in some cases, artificial engine noise—through the vehicle’s audio system when the driver presses the accelerator and the engine reaches certain RPM thresholds.

Some drivers don’t like the artifice, but there’s a good argument to be made for the auditory sleight of hand: engine noise is an important aesthetic signal of Quality that increases customer satisfaction. People enjoy the sound, even if it’s engineered.

Quality Signals are elements of an offer designed to increase the user’s perception of Quality in a direct, tangible way. When performance is difficult to see, hear, feel, or otherwise notice, Quality Signals provide important reassurance that the offer is performing as intended.

Quality Signals don’t just increase customer satisfaction: having a “reason to believe” the offer is able to produce the promised results makes marketing and sales efforts easier and more effective.

Dish detergent doesn’t need to produce fluffy white bubbles in dishwater in order to work, but the presence of bubbles is a tangible indicator the detergent is present. Soap manufacturers like Procter & Gamble don’t add a “sudsing agent” to soap without good reason: the additional raw materials increase the cost and complexity of production, but increased customer satisfaction makes it a worthwhile investment.

Quality Signals are a form of Demonstration that’s built into the offer: they provide a noticeable indicator of performance, so users are less likely to undervalue the benefits of the offer due to Absence Blindness or unmet expectations.

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"Tis the same to him who wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were covered with leather."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, paraphrasing Shantideva, eighth-century Buddhist scholar

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