Sunday, June 27, 2010

Eight Guaranteed Ways to Increase Student Retention part 2 Academic Customer Service and The Seven


customer service for colleges, student retention, student success, academic customer service, attrition, increasing student retention

 
Academic Not Retail Customer Service
Colleges and Universities are quite unique professional service providers that do not respond well to retail customer service notions. And they should not. Retail customer service is about providing veneers of service at the point of sale for a tangible product. In fact, retail customer service is all about the brief point of sale moment which runs from “may I help you” to “cash or charge and come again” and handing the customer a purchased item. And even if the piece of clothing a clerk helped a customer buy is the wrong size, the consequence of that poor service is not significant. The item can usually be returned or a badly cooked meal sent back for another and the employees.

Even the combined retail-service situations of a restaurant or a vacation is a limited, time bound occurrence even if it may have more than one encounter. A customer comes to a restaurant for a meal or to a hotel for a limited stay. The customer may encounter more than one point of sale/service provider; for example, a maître d, waiter and busboy or bellhop and front desk personnel and perhaps even a person in a cartoon character outfit but these interactions are very limited both in time and singularity of experience even if a person may come to the hotel again in the future. And none of the encounters will have a lifetime effect on the customer.

The academic community is also significantly different than a store. There are managers called administrators but they do not have full, or often all that much real power to enforce their decisions on the community. In retail for example, a manager could decide that her department will only sell white shirts and everyone will wear white shirts with the name of the company embroidered over the pocket. Employees might feel strongly that selling only white shirts is a dumb idea but they would not have say over the ordering of the merchandise. Employees might grumble about the decision but if the company supplied the shirts for free, they would be called on to wear them.

In academia the faculty would never allow any manager or administrator to ever even think of them as employees never mind actually calling them that even though in business terms everyone is an employee of the college. The administration could never decide that the faculty will all teach one course for example. In fact, the administration really has little say in what will be taught, who will teach it and what the course content will be in most colleges especially those with regional accreditation. That is a faculty prerogative and decision and a very dangerous area for any manager/administrator to enter. And as for telling everyone including staff and other administrators what they will wear and how they will dress…Enough said.

Of significant difference is the reality that in the college community it is accepted to actually believe that some customers should not be there and it is the job of the faculty to actually weed out, to remove customers from the school even if they have the funds to pay full tuition. It would be unheard of in retail for employees to say and have accepted a position that the customers just are not good enough and we need to get rid of those who are not “store material.” The idea that a customer would have to apply to a store to be allowed to shop there is a notion excessively foreign to retailers. Or, if an employee in a store was overheard to tell a customer that “this is something you should have known before coming into the store so I am going to have to tell you to leave until you have the appropriate level of ability to buy this shirt” he would not be employed for very long after that.

Retail customer service just does not apply directly to college. Pone major reason is that the academic community is not a retail environment. Its “customers” are more like clients of a consultant or patients of a doctor than buyers of commodities. As a consultant and trainer4 for example, I am called upon to access the needs of a college for example and then let the client know what they are and how to address them. If I do not do so, I am not be honest and could lose the trust of the client school. I am expected to provide the good, bad and even the ugly to the client as well as provide solutions to issues causing poor or weak customer service leading to attrition and lowered morale. If the client chooses not to follow recommendations that is the client’s prerogative. This is also similar for a doctor. The patient goes to the doctor for a reason and expects the professional physician to be honest and complete. If the patient needs to exercise and lose weight for example, the doctor needs to tell him or her and it is then the patient’s decision to do so or not. If the patient chooses not to follow the instructions of the doctor, or a student chooses not to read the text, he or she will not do well on the next exam, physical or collegiate.

Colleges or universities, no matter if two or four-year institution, are all providers of professional services all of which have significant effects on an individual’s life. Though some believe that the sale ends in admissions that is not true at all. Unlike retail establishments, colleges and universities have multiple points of sale every interaction with the school, every hour, every class, every day, week, month and years. Students decide after every contact whether or not the school is really providing the services he or she invested in, paid for with tuition, time and effort. Every one of them, every contact can become a decision point for a student. Students decide each and every class whether or not they will go to a paid for class today, tomorrow or ever again. Or if he or she “buys into” what the professor is “selling” in class. Or if they “buy” that the school really cares about me as an individual. Or if they credit the day-to-day service they receive in encounters with staff, administrators and faculty as worth the cost of the effort and emotions they have to expend to obtain assistance they believe is due them as customer students.

Academic customer service recognizes that what the school sells it will deliver. It accepts that every contact with the institution from the campus and web to professors in the classroom, staff in offices and administrators anywhere provides an opportunity to “resell” the college and tie the student more strongly into the school. Or tell the student this school does not care about you, you are not important making the student less engaged and readier to “quit this place”. Academic customer service is in everything we do from advising to scheduling courses needed to move on and graduate, returning calls and emails and yes, it does include smiling and making students feel wanted and valued. It does not believe that the customer is always right however. We have quizzes that tell students that and rules and regulations we must follow. Moreover, academic customer service is not about making students happy but realizing their investment and that does call for some strictures on behavior and having to follow rules or suffer consequences. Academic customer service is not just about the point of sale but preparing a student for the career and life they come to a school to prepare for.

When done well, a student might not always be happy at the school but will believe that the investment is worth it. When done well, retention increases. When not done well, attrition is high causing revenue to run low and budgets to be cut happens as most colleges and universities. If academic customer service does not seem important, recall that 84% of students leave a school due to poor service and take their tuition and fee dollars with them.

7 Academic Customer Services Guaranteed to Increase Retention

1. Focus on Objective Correlatives
2. Enrollment Ends at Graduation
3. End the Shuffle
4. Attend to Attendance
5. Mentor Each Student
6. Deliver on Promises
7. Train Everyone in Academic Customer Service


The author Dr. Neal Raisman is the leading presenter, researcher and consultant on customer service for retention in colleges, universities, community and career colleges in the US, Canada and Europe. He and his associates have provided retention solutions for over 300 schools and businesses that want to work with higher education. Dr. Raisman is the author of over 400 articles and four books including his latest bestseller The Power of Retention; More Customer Service for Higher Education available from The Administrators' Bookshelf in hard copy and digital editions.

If you would like to discuss a retention issue or see if he is available to come to your school or business for a workshop, presentation or other retention solution such as a full customer servicing audit,
CALL 413.219.6939 OR CLICK NOW FOR A FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULTATION ON ANY RETENTION OR CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUE. Start improving your enrollment and revenue NOW.
413.219.6939 or email info@GreatServiceMatters.com



-->


-->

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Eight Guaranteed Ways to Increase Student Retention part 1 Engagement, Contracts and Very Human Resonses

academic customer service, college customer service,retention, attrition, college students, graduation,
This is part one of a multi-part article on guaranteed ways to increase retention.
The decision to leave a school is not often a rational one. Students do not sit down and work through a decision-making model to determine if they should stay or go. Just as emotion played a major role in their choice of a college, emotion plays a major role in choosing to leave. In fact, the decision is almost never, if ever phrased as “after weighing the pros and cons, I have determined that I will leave the institution. No, the normal statement is closer to “f..k this place, I’m outa here” most usually in direct response to some precipitating incident like an interaction with someone at the school. Retention and attrition are emotion-laden issues.
It is often true that during an exit interview at the school a student will cite “personal reasons” for leaving. They know the college will accept that as a valid reason and may not probe much more. What the student is really saying is “I am telling you it is a personal reason to get through this and leave without having to go through someone trying to talk me into staying. Most often, what “personal reasons” really means is “personally I can’t stand this place. You don’t treat me well…. You don’t give a damn about me; just my money….You don’t have the courses I need when I need them…I can’t get help or answers when I need them…I just get shuffled from office to office…This is not what I was sold….My issues are ignored…This place is just not worth the time, money and investment so just let me get the heck out of here…So personally, I hate this place!”
These are emotion-laden personal relationship issues that can be resolved quite easily through an appropriate application of academic, not retail but academic customer service solutions. In fact, our annual survey/study of why students leave a two or four-year college or university shows quite clearly that 84% of all drops are due to college customer service issues.

The three major reasons students cited were
1. the College Doesn’t Care
2. Poor Service and Treatment
3. It Just is Not Worth It
The fourth most common reason was “financial or couldn’t afford it” but this was often cited in addition to one of the top three reasons. Financial was seldom cited alone. The drops just did not feel the cost was worth the investment. If they had, they said they would have stayed. So though money and the ability to pay is a major focus of many school dropout prevention programs, it is really not where the attention should be placed. Indeed, if students feel the cost could be worth the investment, they will do what they must to stay in school. In fact, a College Board study Who Borrows Most? Bachelor Degree Recipients with High Levels of Student Debt by Baum and Steele (2010) indicates that students will indeed take out loans to stay in school and graduate even though the debt may finally saddle them with a life-long burden. But if they do not feel the debt is worth it, they will drop out.
The Contract and Engagement
Call them students or whatever euphemism one wants, the fact is that students are consumers of what the college or university has sold to them and provides. Students and their families have been sold on a set of promises ranging from a vague mission to better their lives and the world to the usual marketing images of “personal attention from a caring faculty and staff with small classes and all the services needed for you to be successful in your studies and future career...” As a result, they pay out thousands, tens of thousands, a hundred thousand dollars to attend the school and receive what they were sold. This offer of services, acceptance of the offer and exchange of money for the services preferred is the very essence of a contract between two parties. The contract does then creates a set of obligations upon the service provider (hereinto called the college) to furnish the customer (hereinto called the student) said promised services (attention, small classes, personal attention, caring, problem resolution, instruction, training, tutoring, access to faculty/administrators, assistance, support…). The customer is obligated to fulfill the obligations of payment and follow college policies as might be in a student handbook or course syllabi which are addenda to the contract and create sub-contracts in themselves.
If the college does not provide the student all that was promised/sold by the marketing and admissions process to entice the student to attend and pay, the student’s expectations are broken as well as the contract. The result is that the customer becomes angered that the contract has been broken and will normally try to get the services promised or just decide it isn’t worth it and leave.
Dropping out is the traditional response. Though in our increasingly heated and litigious society, this will likely change. There will be a student who has paid tens of thousands of dollars to purchase a set of promised and contracted for services but has not received them and he or she will bring a suit against the school to recover costs, time spent as well as future earnings lost. All the student will have to do is show the marketing that for example promised small classes and then the section of X he had to attend in a lecture hall with 250 others. Or promised tutoring by professionals but was unable to get the tutoring or was given a non-professional peer tutor; or went to the faculty member’s office hours and the professor was not there on a number of occasions or simply said he or she did not have time to help and the student who subsequently failed the required class. Or given indifferent or even inaccurate advising and a course offering schedule that does not even have the required courses offered. Considering the increasingly skeptical and even negative attitude of the public toward higher education as discussed in Squeeze Play 2010, a jury of college student parents would likely find the student’s case that an expansive contract was breached to be compelling.
The contract also sets up asset of human expectations including the sense of trust. Entering into a contract requires the customer to extend trust to the service provider thus setting up a sense of an engagement between the college and the student. This extends the sense of trust just as an engagement to be wed sets up a strong need for trust in one another. If an event occurs to break or disrupt the faith, a very negative emotional response is the likely result. The engagement is off as in “I quit. I am dropping out of this place.” If there is not a full break, just a major frustration as caused quite often by the campus shuffle, the relationship becomes quite tentative requiring an infusion of good will and attention from the one who broke the engagement. This normally does not occur so the event just sets the process in place that will lead to the engagement being broken for good as a result of other problems that tell the student he or she is not important or the experience is not worth the further investment of time, money and trust in the school’s word.
But again, the decision to leave the college, university, community or career college is not a cool, rational one. It is as emotional as one party to an engagement catching the other lying to him or here, or worse faking interest. So the retention programs that do work are ones that focus on the emotional engagement process that tie the student into the school better. These are ones that generate attachment and a sense that we care to increase the students’ trust that the engagement will last and the contract met.
What student’s want is proof that their buying into the school and its promise of engagement are for real. They want the school to fulfill its promises and especially the one that it will focus on their needs and success and in so doing show real care about them. They want evidence that the school is reaching out to them and not just making them do all the reaching. They want to feel important, cared for and valued. These are all issues that pertain to the human, the emotional dimensions and not to intellectual ones. These are all issues that fall into the realm of academic customer service.
The author Dr. Neal Raisman is the leading presenter, researcher and consultant on customer service for retention in colleges, universities, community and career colleges in the US, Canada and Europe. He and his associates have provided retention solutions for over 300 schools and businesses that want to work with higher education. Dr. Raisman is the author of over 400 articles and four books including his latest bestseller The Power of Retention; More Customer Service for Higher Education available from The Administrators' Bookshelf in hard copy and digital editions.
If you would like to discuss a retention issue or see if he is available to come to your school or business for a workshop, presentation or other retention solution such as a full customer servicing audit, CALL 413.219.6939 OR CLICK NOW FOR A FREE 30 MINUTE CONSULTATION ON ANY RETENTION OR CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUE. Start improving your enrollment and revenue NOW.
413.219.6939 or email info@GreatServiceMatters.com