Customer Service for Higher Education – Is It Time to Evaluate?

Rating of Customer Service

How do you rate the current customer service of your higher education student and academic services?

1. We provide exceptional customer service.
2. We provide adequate customer service, but it could be better.
3. We need significant improvement in our customer service.

No matter which of the answers you chose, how did you know to answer it that way?  If you had to guess at or assume the answer, it may be time to do an evaluation of your customer service.  If you chose #3, it is past time to do an evaluation of your customer service. And no matter how you rate it, how does that service affect student success and student retention? It does both, but that is another story.

Elements of Higher Education Service

There are important elements of exceptional customer service:

1. Knowing your students and other campus communities and understanding their needs;
2. Knowing what services and resources you provide to meet those needs;
3. Conducting systematic reviews of customer service staff, services, and processes to maintain and improve their quality, equity, and efficiency;
4. Delivering what you say you deliver or promise to deliver; and
5. Conducting follow-up and/or measure student satisfaction levels.

Assuming you have a pretty good idea about the first two items, let us look at that third element: systematic reviews. To review the services, there must be customer service standards. Each office (registrar, financial aid, student financial services, admissions, etc.) should have their own standards of course, set by the staff of those offices.  Often, those standards are set through discussions among office staff members in an office retreat setting.  There are several steps to take in discussions about and setting service standards:

1. Review the office services, concentrating on the specific campus communities served using their perspectives: students, staff, faculty, alumni, and parents.
2. Document the steps that make up each encounter, live or online, with those campus communities.
3. Discuss and document how services can be improved.
4. Set and record customer service standards based on how those improvements can or must be made.
5. Review and update those standards on a regular basis using an ongoing series of staff discussions or retreats.
6. Have your customer service evaluated on a regular basis. The evaluation can be done by social media or email surveys, in-person or on-line comments, or consultants who know the structure and operations of each respective office.
7. And perhaps most importantly, follow-up on the evaluations. Do not just say it has been done. Make changes where improvement is needed.

People and Systems – Services

Customer service is based on both systems and people.  A broken or underperforming system may be the result of staff (underperforming?), technology (outdated?), processes (inefficient?), or even structural (office space?)  You may need to make improvements in some or all these areas. If you have staff who are not able to meet the necessary standards or who are in the wrong position for their skills and strengths, then personnel changes may need to be made. Technology may have to be updated or office space may need to be reimagined. In any event, ongoing training, reviews, and support of those dealing with the many campus communities with which we deal are crucial to successful and excellent customer service.    An evaluation of your customer service will lead to improvements in that service, and that improvement can lead to higher levels of customer (students and others) satisfaction and higher retention of students and staff.  As indicated, that is another story yet to come.