Sunday, October 26, 2008

How to Determine Your Campus and Facilities Customer Service Effectiveness


It always amazes me how we all forget that the environment of the campus, the correlative objectives of the college are extremely important to students. The way the buildings, grounds and things like signs appear are direct connections to the affective return on investment students use to decide to stay or leave a college. They feed directly into the Affective Return on Investment (AROI) that feeds directly into attrition/retention decisions.


If your buildings or grounds look anything like these photos from customer service audits I conducted on college and university campuses,you are losing students. You need to assess your campus’ customer service values and fix them to retain more students. And retaining students is the key to success in these miserable economic times.


WHERE TO START?

It is a simple reality that you need to start somewhere. You may as well begin from knowledge of the customer service strengths and weaknesses at the campus. Find out what bugs students the most. What areas are least customer service-oriented?

It also makes it all more relevant. Most people on campus know the problem spots. They hear about it from students or have experienced it themselves. Few surprises? Except in many areas they have all become so used to that they do not see the problems any more. These surprises that we uncover during a mini or full campus service audit are usually from what I call the worn rugs phenomena.

You know when you look at someone else’s house such as when you are house hunting. You may see that the people who live there have worn paths into the rugs as they make the same trips every day. But when you mention that the rugs may need to be replaced, the homeowners do not see it. That is because they have worn then rugs down incrementally, day by day, trip by trip. The owners wore them down slowly, millimeter by millimeter so they did not see the problem develop.

In the same way, people get into habits of behavior they do not realize they have fallen into. It was not a big change so it was not noticed until perhaps someone else looked. Even co-workers have gotten use to it so they may just see that as “that’s who he is. Always been that way and no problems really.” Or it could be a policy that began in making something better but as it has been used over the years, or as its implementation shifted imperceptibly, it now hurts, not helps students. Or it is a procedure, a process or form that we all know so well that we expect everyone knows it. So we don’t even bother telling students about it or explaining it so it is really understood. Like add/drop procedure and forms at most schools. Or the school FAFSA code. Or where some out-of-the-way office is on campus. Or who now does what Dotty did after she retired. If we know, they should to. Right?

Or it could be buildings that once looked bright and welcoming but have been allowed to get dingy and cluttered over the years. A smudge on the wall here. A few too many posters there. A light out and replaced with lower wattage over back there. A door that is hard to open. Offices changed location but no signs let people know that. Bathrooms with graffiti, leaking faucets and broken stall doors. Trees whose limbs have grown huge and old that could fall onto benches right under them. Small shrubs that have grown into tall and thick bushes that bock signs and provide cover for someone who might wish to do another harm. Walkways that are cracked and so uneven that people trip. Or student lounge or study areas that have lost their chairs and tables and then ones still there are dirty and shabby.

WHERE AND WHAT TO ASSESS

These and much more are physical customer service issues we have found in our audits and workshops. So, you may want to look at all the service issues, human and objective correlative. Here’s a list from our brochure of what we look at when we do a campus customer service audit to give you some guidance.

Reception Areas

Admissions

Counseling

Financial Aid

Registration

Registrar's

Cafeteria

Bookstore

Review these areas as well as every level of customer service such as:

  • wait time - how promptly people are recognized and served
  • acknowledgment of student presence and manner of the recognition given,
  • welcoming and comfort level generated,
  • how courteous your people are,
  • how questions are responded to,
  • requested information provided promptly and graciously,
  • accurate directions given,
  • general demeanor, and attitude toward customers,
  • availability of information at point of contact,
  • point of contact knowledge of college and/or where to get it if not available,
  • accuracy of information,
  • use of campus jargon or argot versus standard language,
  • language use, attitude, syntax, grammar, tone,
  • customer-first attitude,
  • time to completion required for successful interaction,
  • helpfulness and accuracy of written materials at points of contact,
  • location and availability of information and media,
  • processes used with customers,
  • orderliness of the interaction and area of interaction,
  • telephone protocols used by customer contacts to aid or detract from service to campus callers,
  • general telephone skills
  • Audits also look at the environment provided for students in these areas and offices from layout and space through lighting and clutter as they affect the customer's sense of reflected value and service from entry to the campus through moving through it and finally the exiting experience.

Study everything then provide realistic solutions to increase enrollment and retention.

The issue for you then becomes one of how to bring these service problems, human. policy, procedural and physical forward without ticking off too many people. You do not want the training to suffer through resistance due to feeling as if you picked on an area. Nor, maybe equally important, you certainly do not want to become the enemy because they just might decide to get you. You know how academic politics and infighting can get. As the old joke goes, why are academic battles so vicious and nasty?....Because there is so little to be won.

So you will need to determine a strategy through which you can bring out deficiencies without angering or hurting someone or just leaving some important examples and problems to the side so as not to get you or the program destroyed. This can be difficult to carry off but it will be worth the effort when it succeeds. It may be an area you will want to outsource through a consultant since a consultant doesn’t have to worry as much about bothering someone.

When I do an audit for example, I am able to go over the issues with less concern for the school since I do not know these people and will be leaving by design. Moreover since there will be others who will see the issue and agree with me, they often help me make my point since I am an outsider and cannot be picking on people I do not know. But if you cannot bring in an outsider right now, the information above will give you a good start on conducting a campus audit.

Want more information on audits? just contact me and I'll be glad to help you in any and all ways I can. There is also more on audits in The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education.


“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.” Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.” Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute


AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention, enrollment and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939


How to Target Twitter


If you aren't yet where your students are, you are really close to nowhere at all. Social networking can be a very valid and valuable part of your communication strategy with students. Here's a very good intro to using Twitter from Marketing Sherpa, an online resource for marketing ideas. Just substitute college for publisher and it all flows well.

How to Target Twitter: 8 Ways to Build a New Audience in this Niche Community


SUMMARY: Publishers looking to social networks to connect with new audiences are finding Twitter, the short-form content platform, as a key channel to reach some of the most engaged networkers.

We talked to publishers who have established successful Twitter presences to find out how to get started and become good citizens of the community. Includes tactics for:

o Studying your potential audience
o Establishing a publishing strategy
o Growing your audience
o Supplementing your existing editorial and social-media efforts


For the full piece, click here


“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.” Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.” Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute


AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention, enrollment and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Get Published!!

We are into some tough days ahead. Revenues and support are being hit hard by the economic freefall. The times are demanding that we all focus more on retention so we can retain some dollars in our budgets.

So using the two heads are better than one so many heads must be even better, I want to turn the blog over to you. It is time for you to get published and for your college, university or career college to be recognized for what it is doing to help itself.

Write about the retention efforts at your school. The problems these efforts face and the success you and your colleagues have achieved. What are you doing to increase the numbers and success of students so they stay?

What works? What doesn’t?

Special populations, the issues they bring and how to serve them?

Are there any specific issues we can all try to help you and your school solve?

What are the issues/concerns students/faculty/administrators and staff are sharing/ How is the college addressing them?

Got a program that works well? Brag a little!

To make it all even more fun, we will publish your replies and then open them up to others to elaborate or comment. Use a little crowdsourcing.

So let’s hear from you. GET PUBLISHED
.....................................................................................

“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.” Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.” Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention, enrollment and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

10 Quick, Inexpensive Steps to Increase Retention


If you haven’t noticed, the economy has gone to hell. No hand basket though a HUGE government hand out. And as a result, many colleges will be there with their hands out looking for some more revenue. If you read any of the higher ed news you may be aware that we are not going to do well financially.


Our continuing faulty focus on admissions (“all problems can be solved by more students”) is going to be the “sub-prime mortgage of higher ed”. Enroll/sell the school as hard as you can to potential students who may not have the intellectual and emotional responsibility and drive to make the later classroom and financial payments. Cut the entry-level costs with financial aid packages that make it cheap enough to start school to hit admissions/ sales quotas to students who were previously interest free in your school. They may start but they likely will not be able to make payments down the road. Bundle enrollment goals any way you want, they will not have long term value for most schools.


Fewer people will be able to afford education. Enrollments are going to be shaky in all but maybe not so bad for community colleges due to their lower cost against a good education yielding a great ROI. New students will be tougher to acquire and the competition for them will be fierce. Selectivity will become even more of a variable that will depend on whether or not increased admission goals are or are not met. Not met…Got tuition money? Breathing? We select you!


This in turn will cause more problems on campus. More need for remedial/developmental work. Increased faculty aggravation leading to growing disdain for the administration and students. Most of the “selected” students will drop out anyhow so there will be a short term tuition increase if it is all collected ahead of classes. Or a growing cash flow and collections problem since when students leave owing money, they seldom have any desire to pay. DSO numbers will grow exponentially. And what is worse, since expenditures are predicated and encumbered on predicted first day fall term forward calculations of annual tuition, fees (and if public, state/community support) schools will be spending too much in semester/term one and panic/slash, cut/freeze/RIF/reduce/terminate/curtail starting in January.


Admissions and Pet Rocks

This above is the disastrous pet rock financial approach to funding the institution. If admissions sells and bills 100 pet rocks on Monday at $10 each. And on Tuesday the school spends $5.46 to process each of them. Then on Wednesday the school budgets and starts to spend the $4.54 profit/tuition money it plans to get from these 100. But on Thursday 72 have decided to return the pet rock. How many pet rocks were actually sold? How much money does the college now have to actually spend?


IT IS TIME FOR COLLEGES TO STOP SELLING AND ACCOUNTING WITH PET ROCK/ADMISSIONS CONCEPTS OF REVENUE IF THEY ARE GOING TO BE FISCALLY AND ACADEMICALLY SOUND.


Yes, the problem above is that the 84% (which is the percent of students who drop out due to poor customer service) students dropped out. Not that they started but they left. If they had stayed, there would have been 100 pet rocks sold. So it is just not the sales that matter. It is the retention of the buyers. Obtaining a new student costs money as in the scenario above, Retaining students which is the real secret to success costs nothing or very little.


To help kick start some thinking on retention. Here are

10 Steps You Can Start Today to Improve Retention

on Your Campus


  1. Use the 15 Principles of Good Academic Customer Service. These are the basics for most all of it. Don’t just put them on the wall. Use them. Train to them and then assess how they are used. If you would like a copy, click here
  2. Everyday is day 1. Make everyday the first day of classes. Students decide to return each day so create the excitement and provide the help you gave students the first days of the term each and every day.
  3. Turn your school into Cheers University where everyone knows your name and everyone’s glad you came. Give everyone the greeting Norm gets and even make room for the Cliffie’s of the world.
  4. Smile and at least make believe you like students. It sooner or later becomes a reality. It may be hard to learn the right way to do it but smile damn you smile anyhow.
  5. Orient for success. Provide students skills they will need to succeed at the school. Spend the orientation time on money management, time management, study skills and getting focused on careers. If you need help, let me know. We have some modular curricula.
  6. Throw out lifelines. Make sure students know where and how to use help like counselors and advising. Don’t have your own, hire an external group to do it. We can recommend a couple that are good.
  7. Do or get a customer service audit of your campus and then make needed changes to improve. Not sure what to check out, click here.
  8. Listen to students and all employees. Not just faculty and administrators.
  9. Make customer service training and recognition a constant on the campus. If you don’t have the capabilities to do it yourself, hire someone. It is cheaper than losing students and/or employees.
  10. Attend seminars, speakers and read about academic customer service on campus then implement the ideas that fit. I recommend my new book The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education of course. I’ll be doing some webinars on customer service. Contact me for details.

“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.” Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.” Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute


AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention, enrollment and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. http://www.greatservicematters.com
mailto:info@greatservicematters.com
413.219.6939

Friday, October 10, 2008

Colleges Lose Billions of Dollars But You Don't Have To.....


32.6% of college students will drop out of colleges, universities, community colleges and career colleges before the year ends and take $136 billion out of higher education at a time when academic budgets are already feeling the hard slap of the economy. This also means that the tax payers have lost most of their investment in future college graduates and a stronger economy since most of the first money in is from federal and state funding.

Your school may only lose a few 100,000, maybe a million or two, or three…. What will that translate to? Cuts, jobs lost, equipment canceled, salary freezes, benefit reductions, release time gone, larger classes, fewer sections, more deferred maintenance,,, general morale shot. But it does not have to be.
The exact amount that your school will lose can be easily calculated. Just use Customer Service Factor 1 which calculates dollars lost due to attrition. (The following is excerpted from my new book The Power of Retention: More Customer Service in Higher Education)
CSF1 = [(P X A= SL) X T]
In the formula, P represents the total school population; not just the starting fall freshman number. Most schools use the fall incoming freshmen number and that is an error. The assumption is that attrition occurs most in the first six weeks of the freshman year. That may have some validity for the freshman year but the reality is that students are leaving colleges and universities in any one of the average six-plus years of a four-year degree and in the four-plus average years of a two-year degree. Students leave a school throughout their experience at the college. In fact, some schools are beginning to realize this and worry about the sophomore bubble. But they really need to worry about the super soph sluff, the rising junior jilt, the junior jump, super junior split, the fourth year flee and so on. Every year, every semester, in fact every day is a chance for a student to drop out. Colleges need to be concerned with every student every day of their attendance, for it could be his or her last. So we look at the total population.

Annualized tuition is the number a school should use to figure its real attrition. Not the retention between the first and second semester or the freshman and sophomore years which are very popular ones. That leaves out all the students who already dropped out before the end of the second term or semester. That number fudges failure. For instance, if a college began a year with 100 new freshman and 99 left in week one but the remaining student stayed the whole year and returned for a sophomore year, the freshman to sophomore percentage would be 100%.


In CSF1, A equals attrition. Again not just from freshman but an annualized attrition rate. And this rate is to include ALL students who leave for any reason. It does not matter if the student says he or she will be back. They are not in the population bringing in revenue until they actually do return. If they pay a place holding fee, that does not count them as a student until they are actually back in classes.

Fudge with the numbers if you have a need for delusion or are insecure, unethical or want to keep the Board feeling better, but when you use the formulas, be fully honest. It will help you understand why the budget is not working or may suddenly implode. No one likes surprises, especially ones that have parentheses around them in the budget and lead to freezes, cuts and the like. Using the formulas honestly can help forecast a reality to avoid surprises and initiate work on retaining students to maintain fiscal and operating health.

SL stands for students lost annually from total population and revenue production. And T equals annual tuition at the school.
So here is what showed up when we analyzed CSF1 for Mammon University. You may know it. Its motto is Omnes Por Pecunia. Anything for a Buck.

Its total population was 500 students
Annualized attrition was at 39.6%

So SL (students lost annually) was 198.

Times an annual tuition of $13,000.

So, the formula becomes:
[(500 x 39.6% = 198) x $13,000] =
a revenue loss of ($2,574,000)

To carry this forward, we can plug in other numbers and see how an increase in retention could add to the bottom line and thus the ability to pay for full time faculty, staff, their benefits, increases for adjuncts, instructional equipment, tutors, research release, new curricula and programs, maintenance, and so on. All those pesky costs that make a college or university better.

If attrition dropped by 5% for this school, and we substitute 5% increased retention for attrition percentage in the formula.
CSF1 = [(500 x 5% = 25) x 13,000] = $325,000 more revenue.

Plug your school’s numbers in, and see how increasing retention affects your budget and instructional strength while attrition will sap the ability to meet budget and mission. from The Power of Retention: More Customer Service in Higher Education
Most of the billions of dollars, lost futures, economic growth and tax revenues can be avoided. All your college needs to do is engage is some real academic customer service. Yes, that’s right. ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE. Yup! Treating students as if they really do matter. Like they're your clients. That’s Academic customer service starting with as strong a focus and effort on retaining students as enrolling them in the first place. It costs your school at least $5,640 to recruit a student. Why lose them by not expending some inexpensive time and about $25-50 a student to keep them.

Hmmmm. A $25 investment against the loss of thousands, maybe millions. If only the Congress could have gotten that good a deal for the economy we’d be in much better shape.
72% of all students leave a school due to weak attention to their real needs as educational clients and customers. It’s not good grades they are really after. That’s an academic misapprehension as wrong-headed as the old “look to your left, look to your right” or “this’d be a great place to work if it weren’t for the students…”

Another delusion is that academic customer service is like the forced smile of an underpaid clerk in a store. College is not a retail store. Here the client can be wrong. Just look at test scores. But students want to feel as if they are valued and important. Students and their families want what the schools have promised but do not always deliver – fair return on significant investments of money, time, emotion and association.

Colleges sell themselves as Cheers U and the students really expect to feel as if they do know their name and really do care about them. They may be Cliff or Norm in real life but want to feel as if they have meaning and value. And it can start with some of the easy how-to’s of academic customer service from signs on campus, facilities through Capt. Kangaroo’s, Smiling like Bill Schaar, telephone protocols, give a name-get a name and other academic service techniques. But it needs to start now if your school wants to save its budget.

“We had hoped we’d improve our retention by 3% but with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington

“Neal led a retreat that initiated customer service and retention as a real focus for us and gave us a clear plan. Then he followed up with presentations and workshops that kicked us all into high gear. We recommend with no reservations; just success.” Susan Mesheau, Executive Director U First: Integrated Recruitment & Retention University of New Brunswick

“Thank you so much for the wonderful workshop at Lincoln Technical Institute. It served to re-center ideas in a great way. I perceived it to be a morale booster, breath of fresh air, and a burst of passion.” Shelly S, Lincoln Technical Institute


AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention, enrollment and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits, workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939