Monday, May 16, 2011

Get a Speaker on Customer Service in Colleges and Universiites

Academic customer service is a primary factor for student success, retention and graduation. In fact, up to 84% of all students drop out due to academic customer service issues.  But it is not the customer service touted by the business gurus.  Yes, your college is indeed a business with payrolls, unions, contracts, budgets, fund balance and profit and loss. But it is also a unique academic enterprise with a community, culture, folkways, traditions and ethos that make it unlike any other school or business. For example our customer is not always right - as we know from tests and quizzes we give! Actually, our customer is essentially not a customer at all but more of a professional client whose care and growth are in our hands How we apply that care and manage the students’ experience will determine if  they attend, stay to graduate, dropout or transfer, become an advocate or critic, supporter or detractor. Academic customer service matters.

As you think about convocation, an October customer service month or a workshop speaker consider inviting the expert on academic customer service to your event. Dr. Neal Raisman is the expert speaker, trainer, and solution provider to over 450 colleges and universities in the US, Canada and Europe seeking to improve their student experiences, enrollment, retention, and morale.  Dr. Raisman’s book The Power of Retention is the #1 book on academic customer service EVER.  Here’s what one school’s associate dean of students said about an academic customer service workshop.

Dear Dr. Raisman,
      I don't even know where to begin! Your presentation at Temple University was positively wonderful!!! Please excuse the excessive use of exclamation points, but I want to be sure that you hear the emphasis.
      The time that you devoted in advance of your presentation, getting to know us and learning about our performance through the students, made all the difference. Your humor, including the chance to laugh at ourselves, certainly added energy and entertainment to what could have been just-another-workshop.
      Many thanks for such a quality presentation and for bringing such good information to our community! Hope to see you again in Philadelphia.

Katie D'Angelo                                                                                                                                           Associate Dean of Students   Temple University
Contact us today at info@GreatServiceMatters.com or call at 413-219-6939 to find out how you 
can grow a student friendly culture through academic customer service on campus. Please do not 
delay – dates are filling fast for the Fall. 
Get a free copy of Dr. Raisman’s new book Customer Service Factors and the Cost of Attrition.
Please share with colleagues 

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