To increase retention on campus the school has to also
increase its customer service by listening to the voice of the customer. That
is, listening to the
The voice of the customer is a very important one to hear.
Too often we use our own voices, our own expectations and needs what we think
students want or need and place them upon students. We actually think that we
know what is best for students when we don’t even ask them for their thoughts
and opinions. Some say in loco parentis
is dead. I think it just been replaced by an assumption that we understand
students better than that they may understand themselves and therefore we don’t
listen to the voice of our customers. That is not to say that we don’t
necessarily go about campus sometimes and hear what students are talking about.
It means we do not actively engage the students in specific data collection
processes such as surveys to understand what they need and what they want, as well
as what they don’t want. And then do something about it.
To really listen to the voice of the customer it is
necessary to elicit their comments thoughts feelings and statements of need and
expectations as a starting point. This can be done the usual route of surveys,
but can also include analysis of social media and web-based comments. Whatever
method is used the comments need to be collected broadly and in as large in
number as is possible. Then the voices need to be analyzed and the results
segmented into usable categories for example physical campus, classroom,
specific points of service, and so forth.
Surveys are generally tricky things. And in higher education
they are generally done quite poorly. We overthink them. We make them too
complicated, try to be too inclusive. As a result we make them complicated and
at times not purposeful. As I have looked at surveys used on campuses that we
have conducted either workshops or full audits on, I find that they are too
often focused on trying to prove what we think we already know. Too often they
are simply too long as well. As a result we do not gather good information. We
do not listen to the voice of our customer.
In another article, I outlined a very simple survey
that can be done to start to listen to the voice of your customer. In addition
to that there can be more structured surveys done in four different locations.
That can be a general survey of students’ feelings and attitudes towards the
school. There can be point of service surveys such as in the financial aid
office, the registrar’s office, the bursar’s office, and other points of
service on campus. The surveys are more specific to the functions and
operations of the point of service operations. These surveys generally are more
informative than the general sorts of surveys that are done across campus
because the results can be put into practice more quickly.
One point of service that is surveyed in most schools but
not really turned into the voice of the customer because they are not put any
hierarchical order are carried out in class evaluations. Most schools have some
sort of an evaluative survey that they use at the end of the semester or
quarter to evaluate courses and professors. Unfortunately as a result of the
politics on campus, these surveys do not necessarily allow the voice of
customer really to be heard. They may be “overheard”, that is they can be
looked at and thought about but they are not necessarily put into any mobilized
action as a result of the surveys. Too many colleges are simply afraid to use
the information that is collected in individual classes to try to interact and
inform the performance of the faculty member or meet the needs of the students
in their learning in class. This is because they are afraid of retribution from
the individual professor or from a faculty grievance.
The voice of the customer from in-class evaluations can be
strongly heard as a result of the surveys if they are taken in the aggregate as
opposed to using them to focus on an individual professor of an individual
class. What I mean by that is that when it may not be possible or plausible to use
the survey results in class to change it, a specific professor’s methodology, attitude, or
pedagogy, a school can take all of the surveys taken classes such as English
101 and compile an overall voice of the customer. By looking at all of the
courses, the fear of retribution from a single professor or the union can be
strongly mitigated while still exposing strengths and weaknesses of the whole
group of professors teaching that particular course. If for example it is found
that after all of the evaluations of English 101 are analyzed, 60% of the professes
do not use PowerPoint well, a workshop can be created to teach the teachers
better ways to incorporate PowerPoint into their classroom instruction. This
would be an instance of listening to the voice of the customer and resolving
their expectation that something will come out of the survey.
An additional way to gain the voice of the customer is
through analyzing web-based communications from and by students on social media
for example. When we were working with a large university to help them create a
one-stop service center that would meet expectations of students, their
parents, the general community, and campus we studied what was said about the
University service on social media. We found a specific website that was created by students that
spoke out against the way the school was treating them. The site was called “the
shaft” which was a fairly explicit statement about how students felt they were
treated at the institution. We also looked at social media sites such as Rate
Your Professor to learn how students view the University and the service it
provided.We also did a thorough search on Google for each and every comment and
reference to the University by students. As a result were able to gain an
introductory picture of service at the University and some of the issues that
we would be facing and correct through the implementation of the new one-stop
shop.
A thorough search of social media and monitoring what
students have to say about the school, especially any rants that they make can
provide very sharp assessments of the way the institution’ is treating students
as well as noting their needs and expectations. In fact rants and criticism are
two of the most important information gathering sources alongside collecting
all complaints that a school can use to start identifying its most obvious
flaws. In fact any survey that is done should try to elicit flaws and
complaints as much as is possible because you cannot correct a problem until
you hear about it.
In an earlier article I mentioned the simple survey method
that proves to be very efficient and effective in getting student responses.
The survey has only one question. “If you could change one thing at the college
tomorrow what would it be?” It is a question that we use on our Campus AttitudeSurveys used when we analyze a school. By hearing from students what they are
bothered by, what needs to be fixed, we can hear the voice of the customer. Though
you may not want to hear more problems, you will certainly know what it is you
need to fix. You will be listening to the voice of the customer through the
needs and expectations that have been pronounced.
Take all of the comments that you have collected, place them
into a hierarchy by the number of times an issue was mentioned and begin solving
the first issue, then the second issue and so forth. Since it is important that
students realize that their voice has been heard, it is necessary to let the
students know when you have sold the issue.
Additionally, you will need to analyze the results, segment
them into larger categories such as physical environment, classroom issues,
food service issues, issues with particular offices, etc. and place them into
hierarchical order by the number of times and strength of student response. If
for example under point of service issues students say that they cannot get a
particular office to answer the telephone and 70% of the students say this it
is obviously the first issue to respond
to. Then you can organize workshops to teach people the appropriate use of the
telephone.
By the way, you will find that this will be an often voiced
concern, that is that telephones are not answered, when people answer they are
rude, and too often people use voice mail as a way of avoiding talking with
individuals on the telephone. We have heard the voice of students on many
campuses as we do workshops or conduct campus retention audits and this is one
of the most common concerns they speak
about.
It is also important to break the responses into segments by
length of time on campus. In general new students will have fewer complaints
than students who have been there longer. Interestingly you might very well
find, as we have found often at schools we have audited, that first year
students are satisfied with the institution during their first year on campus. This
changes between freshman and sophomore year during the summer. Second-year
students are the most dissatisfied with the institution. Once students pass
into their third year in a four year school for example they have already made peace
with many of the areas that they might have complained about. They have invested
two years and if they haven’t left by this time, they are willing to put up
with problems because they are getting closer to that goal so they actually
complain less.
No matter what approach or method used to gather the
information you need to create questions that focus on getting responses from
students. What this means is you need to create information gathering vehicles
that will elicit a more complete response than a simple yes or no whenever
possible. So obviously another way of beginning to hear the voice of the
customer is actually hearing the voice of students. That is getting out on
campus and talking to students, asking them how things are going while realizing that if you do this for the most
part students are going to play to the customer. They will not necessarily
complain but say everything is going “okay”. When someone says things are okay it
is just a phatic statement. You have to delve a little bit more. When we do on
an audit for example we will often hear students say things are okay. Then when we start listing other areas such
as the financial aid process, or how things go in the registrar’s office or do
your faculty meet their office hours, we start to get responses
Too many times administrators or faculty believe that things
are going very well because they don’t hear complaints. This is generally
because we like to think things are going along okay. But the research shows
that 80% of executives in businesses thought that their companies were
providing excellent customer service while only 10% of the customers thought
this. What we find in working with schools is that some administrators
recognize that customer service is not that strong at the school while
approximately 27% of students think customer service is fine. But it should be
noted that these are students who have not dropped out of the school. If you
added in the average 50% drop rate at most institutions, and realize that
customer service reflects 76% of the reason why students leave, the actual
percentage of students who are comfortable and happy with the school drops
quite a bit.
How do we know this? When we do academic customer serviceaudits we make sure that we listen to the voice of the customer. We survey
them. We interview them. We search out their rants on social media. We take all
of this information, analyze it, segment it into a hierarchical structure so we
can really understand what the students are saying their needs and expectations
are. You can do much of the same at your school and that we emphatically
recommend that you listen to the voice of the customer if you want to improve
customer service and retention at your school.
If you want more information on NRaisman & Associates or to learn
more about what you can do to improve academic customer
service excellence on campus, get in touch with us or get a copy of our new book From Admissions to Graduation: Achieving Growth Through Academic Customer Service
If this article made sense to you, you may want to contact N.Raisman & Associates
to see how you can improve academic customer service and hospitality to
increase student satisfaction, retention and your bottom line
UMass
Dartmouth invited Dr. Neal Raisman to campus to present on "Service
Excellence in Higher Ed" as a catalyst event used to kick off a service
excellence program. Dr. Neal Raisman presents a very powerful but
simple message about the impact that customer service can have on
retention and the overall success of the university. Participants
embraced his philosophy as was noted with heads nods and hallway
conversations after the session. Not only did he have data to back up
what he was saying, but Dr. Raisman spoke of specific examples based on
his own personal experience working at a college as Dean and
President. Our Leadership Team welcomed the "8 Rules of Customer
Service", showing their eagerness to go to the next step in rolling
Raisman's message out. We could not have been more pleased with his
eye-opening presentation. Sheila Whitaker UMass-Dartmouth
If you want more information on NRaisman & Associates or to learn
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