Monday, July 30, 2012

Why Should We Care About Academic Customer Service?

Why should we care about academic customer service and hospitality? Two simple reasons. First, students care about academic customer service and they act on it. Second, your school's revenue and ability to succeed depend on it. So, if you are in admissions, population management or have any budgetary concerns, or reading the question and nodding as if to say “Yuh why should I care? That’s touchy feely foolishness that businesses talk about. This is not some retail store after all. This is a college, an academic environment, not a business.”

You may want to brush off your resume. If service and hospitality are not top priorities throughout the school, it may have a tough time making enrollment and retention goals. And if population goals are not met, fiscal objectives cannot be met. And, everyone has to be concerned about the school’s fiscal condition. Lost revenue can mean frozen or lost positions, budget cuts, postponed equipment, defrayed maintenance, decreased levels of maintenance… Bottom line, more work and less money.

Quick momentary reality check. Right now, many of you are looking at the population projections for the Fall. Some of you are happy. You'll hit your goals. But from the phone calls I have been receiving, many colleges are concerned that their numbers may not hold or even if they do… They aren’t quite good enough.

For them and even for the successful schools, would an additional 12% increase in potential enrollment have helped? That is the percentage of enrollment lost in the enrollment process due to perceived weaknesses in your customer service. Research shows that 12% of potential enrollment is lost as soon as a potential student who had indicated an inclination to attend makes direct contact with the college. They are not treated well so they do not choose to come to the school.

These are enrollments the school had – but lost. All the hard work was done and the money spent to attract the students. Then they came into contact with the campus and…..It could been an additional 12% initial enrollment with just a bit additional attention to customer service for students and staff.
Would an additional 12% make for easier meetings with your staff, colleagues, supervisors, Board members…. Twelve percent more? 

Take your projected enrollment, multiple it by 12%. Than multiply that number by tuition cost. That number, those revenues are not touchy feely. That is a clear statement about the value of customer service at the college now.

And not to scare anyone, but customer service will have a 76% affect on your ability to retain the students the school just worked so hard to bring in. Seventy-six percent! You do the math.

Here is the formula:
Multiply your total population x your annual attrition percentage which by the way is all students that leave independent of what year they are in. (Too many schools calculate attrition rate on freshman year losses which does not account for the fact that schools lose students from all classes all the time.) . That will tell you the number of students you lose each year. Multiply that times your tuition (or if you want to be a bit conservative times a semester's tuition)  That'll tell you how much money you are losing from students dropping out of school. Now multiply that large number by 76% which will tell you how much money you lose from poor or weak customer service to students.

So if a school had 1000 students at the national average of 48% it loses 480 students annually. Multiplied by a tuition of $10,000, the school is losing $4,800,000 a year. (Even assuming that the losses take place after they pay for the first semester that is at least a loss of $2,400,000.) Multiply that by the 76% lost due to poor customer service and we can see that weak academic customer service accounts for $3,648,9000 a year.

Surprised how much money you are losing due to weak or poor academic customer service? Imagine if you could recapture some of that money by providing good customer service, good academic customer service as listed in the 25 Principles of Good Academic Service. (Want a copy? Just email and ask.) 

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 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 best selling book The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education. 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Technogical Based Customer Service has its Problems

More and more schools are relying on technology to provide academic customer services to students. In some cases, this works well. Students seem to like being able to find and registered for courses on line for example but in many other situations, technology is not succeeding well. Two major reasons are that technology does not provide the hospitality students carve. They often want to work with a person in getting services they feel they need. Technology does not allow for the personal touch at all. That takes away the possibility of any hospitality from the interaction. That is a major problem for students.

The second problem is that technology is not always done well on campuses as can be seen in this excerpt from a campus audit we did at a major urban university. Web sites which carry most of the technology access are quite often jumbled and have search protocols that default to Google searches rather than be coded to take students to the proper location on the school’s own website.  Type in register for classes for example and you get a list of entries that have registers in their information but one is not simply taken to where he or she can register. Or to find a page to get the information one needs, you have to go through many layers of pages to get to the appropriate one. Every college that depends on the web site to provide access to technology would have a page that simply lists all the functions that students could want with direct links to the functions. Students should not have to search for them

We have also found on too many campuses that the technology is too often implemented without enough forethought or even communication. In fact, on many campuses we have found distrust of the new technologies that are supposed to help students but were not worked through with staff who need to be able to assist students as they deal with the new on-line service.

An additional primary area of concern seems to stem from schools being in a transition in its customer service delivery model.  Schools appear to be moving from a direct person-to-person customer service approach to an online and/or person augmented online service model. And they are deep into the transition but are not communicating the reason for the shifts very well. It is unclear whether this shift to the online service model prompted a reduction in the workforce or a reduction in staff prompted the move to online service delivery. It is not clear whether the shift to on line service is because person-to-person delivery was not working well or that on line services will work better. Moreover, it is not at all made clear what the services will do to help the customer and the providers of services ion offices. This leads to a distrust of the motives of a school in a shift to technologically provide services. The end result are problems as are discussed in the audit excerpt that follows. What we found at this university is applicable to many other schools as well.

Students are being driven to the web to perform more and more of the services themselves which seems to be working in some areas such as registering for courses. Students did indicate that they may even be willing to be more individually involved in taking care of their needs for service in an online environment and many of the service actions that would have been done in a person-to-person environment appear to have been embedded in the University’s website; however, the effectiveness of that site to provide a high quality of customer service is questionable. The belief that students wish to take care of their own services online may have some validity, but it also may not be representative of many of the University’s students who are from environments that may not be as computer savvy as the University expects or wishes. When making the decision to rely heavily on technology, it is important to consider the demographics of the population being served … Students from some backgrounds may have greater problems navigating not just the online environment but the University itself. They require more person-to-person interaction to effectively understand and navigate the administrative requirements related to the University experience.

There also appears to be a segment of the student population which simply prefers person-to-person contact and will avoid the online self-service environment. Many of these will be from the populations mentioned above. Some will represent adult students who have not grown up in an online environment and do not know how to navigate (or prefer to avoid) the online services. Finally it needs to be said that the online services themselves are handicapped by the website itself. From the user’s perspective, the pages that make up the website are not intuitive and not set up for easy navigation. The search function in particular does not work well at all and frustrates many students seeking to work on the website... Although an attractive site from a visual/design perspective, the information available on the University’s website has many layers making finding specific information needed to complete transactions difficult.  For those who are not computer savvy, the website is simply very challenging to use effectively.

It was noted earlier that staffing levels may have prompted the move to online services, or the move to online services may have prompted the reduction in the workforce.  In either case the staffing levels observed during the audit is also a concern. In individual meetings and focus groups with staff, the reduction in force came up each time as well as the speed and what they saw as random implementation of new customer service technologies to replace staff. Staff felt that there was a great deal of money being invested into new but untried and unvetted technologies that were just being imposed on them without their involvement or at times even prior notification. The level of frustration among the staff was palpable. Of particular concern was the speed at which things were changing at least as much as people losing their jobs. They simply did not feel that they had enough time to adjust to changes and were afraid that if they did not adjust they could be replaced.

This leads to a certain level of resistance and distrust of the new technologies to provide service which in turn leads to a lowered morale among the staff which will cause a diminution of service quality. People who feel they are not being consulted on changes in their area and who are at least somewhat fearful about keeping a job do have lower morale and that will play out in their interactions with students. …

The overall transition may actually be a constant factor in the evolution of customer service at the University. As the University continues to move more of its services online, we believe there is also a significant segment of the population which may be resisting the online environment. It is our observation that there is a diminution of the quality of customer service delivered to students not necessarily because of the behaviors of staff who deliver the services, but more likely because of the ineffectiveness of the system.  Some staff members expressed their own frustration with not being able to assist students/visitors except to direct them to the online services. This may be an institutional directive or it may be an individual interpretation. 


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 and retention.

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 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 best selling book The Power of Retention. 

Monday, July 16, 2012

Customer Service is not the Same as Hospitality

Hospitality metaphor of businesspeople rolling out red carpet
There is a significant difference between providing services and hospitality. Services are actions we take to allow our customers, students, to get done what they need to do. They are obligatory. Hospitality is making students (and the general college community) feel welcome and valued. These are different in not just function but in form as well.

Services are provided by the offices and institution to allow students to get their required actions done such as paying bills, registering for classes, getting their tests back and the sorts of everyday functions that the institution and students are dependent . Hospitality is the smaller yet equally significant actions we take to make people feel they are happy on campus. Things such as saying hello to everyone we encounter; making eye contact, smiling at people and just doing what needs to be done to make people feel welcome on campus. In other words as Principle 1 of the Principles of Good Academic Customer Service states “Every student wants to attend Cheers University and every employee wants to work there!  “where everybody knows your name and they’re awfully glad you came” (If you want a copy of the collected 25 Principles of Good Academic Service just email me by clicking here.)

Let’s try a graphic example of the difference. The picture below is from a campus service excellence and hospitality audit we did on a major university. It is the treasure’s (bursar’s) office entry door where students once paid their bills in person.


Note that the entry door has been blocked by a large structure that will not let anyone enter the office. This structure is a device intended for students to drop off their checks without having to go into the office. Here’s some of what we said about this new “service” in our report to the university.

Treasurer’s Office
The Treasurer’s Office (which is the current name for the Bursar’s Office) elicited many negative comments from students. They uniformly do not like that fact that the entrance to the office has been shut off to them by a unit in which they are asked to just drop off payments by check. They do not like having to just drop off a payment with no way of verifying that the check has been left. They want to be able to get a receipt for their payments since there have also been problems with the posting of payments in time to avoid late fees. They also want to be able to interact with someone when they have to discuss payments and late fees which they feel are excessive and set up in a manner to cause extra payments to the University as a result of late fees which they believe are caused by the University’s approaches to boiling and some bill pay issues on-line. Furthermore they are outraged that if they owe money their school Cards are shut off leaving them without access to some services and even the ability to enter their own dorm which requires the use of the school Card

We agree with the students a do not understand why the Treasurer’s Office has become off limits to students. By making it a self-service operation it limits the customer service that students have come to expect and want especially when it comes to something as important and sensitive as their bills and payments for the University. Granted the University is trying to move students more and more to the web and bill pay online as well as trying to shuttle them off to one stop Solution Center but we do not believe this is working well or to the benefit of the University’s service level. The most obvious message from the blocked entrance to the Treasurer’s Office is a clear statement that the University or at least the Treasurer’s Office does not want to provide some basic service in a person-to-person format which students want when it comes to their payments. We do not understand at all the University’s decision to block off the Treasurer’s Office from student access and strongly recommend that it be reconsidered. It sends a terrible anti-customer service excellence message and blocks students from conducting a basic service in which they feel a need to interact with a person. Some of the staff that work in the Treasurer’s Office did comment that they are not at all happy with the situation either and feel they are giving students short shrift on service. They also are not happy being the object of so many student complaints and wish to be able to meet with students to help them.

The new drop off center does provide a service but does so very poorly. It is still a service center but it is certainly not a hospitality center. Hospitality is blocked from being able to be delivered in fact. Moreover, the blocked doorway says that there is no welcome available or any real customer service as well. There is no one there to provide the hospitality and services that students want and expect. Many times students want hospitality even more than the service. What makes them feel welcome on campus is a person smiling and offering help as we see in the reasons why students leave a campus.

 
The drop off  box might make for quicker “service” for students since they will not have to wait to see a person, be welcomed (we can only hope) and complete their business., But quite often it is the hospitality of service that students crave even more than the service itself. In this case, students need to feel they have actually paid their bills so they have an added feeling of comfort that there will be no problem. That calls for someone in a bursar’s office to greet the student, meet with him or her, look over the bill and payment and assure the student that all is well. That is an example of the service being provided as well as hospitality.

There are many other examples on every campus in which services have taken over for hospitality. Let’s just look at the example of a faculty member passing back papers or exams. The usual way papers and exams are given back is they are handed to each student at the end of a class. The giving the assignment or test plus correcting is the service. The way they are handed back is the hospitality and another service. Normally the service is finalized when the names are called, the papers are handed back and the class dismissed. The service is completed but not the hospitality.

The hospitality comes in when the faculty member goes over the exams with students and offers extra help to understand the answers. Additional hospitality is extended when the professor hands back the exam and if the grade is not as high as possible, the faculty member asks the student getting the exam if he or she could use some extra help. The offer is an example of hospitality. The extra help when provided is the service. The offer is as important to the student as the service received. The offer says the faculty member cares and wants to help. The student receives a message that he or she is important since the faculty member has taken time for a personal comment beyond what is on the paper or exam.

The personal contact and offer are examples of academic hospitality and when the students want and need. If a student did not do well on the paper or exam he or she may want extra help but even more the student wants a recognition and offer of that extra help.

All campuses provide services. (Some much better than others.) But most every campus should know how to provide hospitality and service. Every campus can begin by doing simple things such as smiling at students, saying hello to them as they pass by and rethinking all their services to assure that they also provide hospitality as well as a perfunctory service.

Moreover, every service should be reviewed to make certain that it does not just provide a mechanical function as the treasurer’s office above but increases the contact between student and the school.  This is certainly true for the use of technology to replace services that were provided by a person.

Too many schools have embraced technology to provide basic services. Some are good and helpful such as some on-line registration systems but too many others have put the web between students and people to the deficit of hospitality. Too many technologically-based services cut out hospitality and replace it with perfunctory service. That is not good. More on this later.

IF THIS ARTICLE MAKES SENSE TO YOU, YOU WILL WANT TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE BEST-SELLING NEW BOOK ON RETENTION AND ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE THE POWER OF RETENTION: MORE CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION  by clicking here
N. Raisman & Associates is the leader in increasing student retention, enrollment and revenue through workshops, presentations, research, training and academic customer service solutions for colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as businesses that work with them 
We increase your success
                                CALL OR EMAIL TODAY 
                             www.greatservicematters.com
                             info@GreatServiceMatters.com 
413.219.6939

Academic Customer Service is not Necessarily Hospitality Too

There is a significant difference between providing services and hospitality. Services are actions we take to allow our customers, students, to get done what they need to do. They are obligatory. Hospitality is making students (and the general college community) feel welcome and valued. These are different in not just function but in form as well.

Services are provided by the offices and institution to allow students to get their required actions done such as paying bills, registering for classes, getting their tests back and the sorts of everyday functions that the institution and students are dependent . Hospitality is the smaller yet equally significant actions we take to make people feel they are happy on campus. Things such as saying hello to everyone we encounter; making eye contact, smiling at people and just doing what needs to be done to make people feel welcome on campus. In other words as Principle 1 of the Principles of Good Academic Customer Service states Every student wants to attend Cheers University and every employee wants to work there!  “where everybody knows your name and they’re awfully glad you came” (If you want a copy of the collected 25 Principles of Good Academic Service just email me by clicking here.)

Let’s try a graphic example of the difference. The picture below is from a campus service excellence and hospitality audit we did on a major university. It is the treasure’s (bursar’s) office entry door where students once paid their bills in person.


Note that the entry door has been blocked by a large structure that will not let anyone enter the office. This structure is a device intended for students to drop off their checks without having to go into the office. Here’s some of what we said about this new “service” in our report to the university.

Treasurer’s Office
The Treasurer’s Office (which is the current name for the Bursar’s Office) elicited many negative comments from students. They uniformly do not like that fact that the entrance to the office has been shut off to them by a unit in which they are asked to just drop off payments by check. They do not like having to just drop off a payment with no way of verifying that the check has been left. They want to be able to get a receipt for their payments since there have also been problems with the posting of payments in time to avoid late fees. They also want to be able to interact with someone when they have to discuss payments and late fees which they feel are excessive and set up in a manner to cause extra payments to the University as a result of late fees which they believe are caused by the University’s approaches to boiling and some bill pay issues on-line. Furthermore they are outraged that if they owe money their school Cards are shut off leaving them without access to some services and even the ability to enter their own dorm which requires the use of the school Card

We agree with the students a do not understand why the Treasurer’s Office has become off limits to students. By making it a self-service operation it limits the customer service that students have come to expect and want especially when it comes to something as important and sensitive as their bills and payments for the University. Granted the University is trying to move students more and more to the web and bill pay online as well as trying to shuttle them off to one stop Solution Center but we do not believe this is working well or to the benefit of the University’s service level. The most obvious message from the blocked entrance to the Treasurer’s Office is a clear statement that the University or at least the Treasurer’s Office does not want to provide some basic service in a person-to-person format which students want when it comes to their payments. We do not understand at all the University’s decision to block off the Treasurer’s Office from student access and strongly recommend that it be reconsidered. It sends a terrible anti-customer service excellence message and blocks students from conducting a basic service in which they feel a need to interact with a person. Some of the staff that work in the Treasurer’s Office did comment that they are not at all happy with the situation either and feel they are giving students short shrift on service. They also are not happy being the object of so many student complaints and wish to be able to meet with students to help them.

The new drop off center does provide a service but does so very poorly. It is still a service center but it is certainly not a hospitality center. Hospitality is blocked from being able to be delivered in fact. Moreover, the blocked doorway says that there is no welcome available or any real customer service as well. There is no one there to provide the hospitality and services that students want and expect. Many times students want hospitality even more than the service. What makes them feel welcome on campus is a person smiling and offering help as we see in the reasons why students leave a campus.

 
The drop off  box might make for quicker “service” for students since they will not have to wait to see a person, be welcomed (we can only hope) and complete their business., But quite often it is the hospitality of service that students crave even more than the service itself. In this case, students need to feel they have actually paid their bills so they have an added feeling of comfort that there will be no problem. That calls for someone in a bursar’s office to greet the student, meet with him or her, look over the bill and payment and assure the student that all is well. That is an example of the service being provided as well as hospitality.

There are many other examples on every campus in which services have taken over for hospitality. Let’s just look at the example of a faculty member passing back papers or exams. The usual way papers and exams are given back is they are handed to each student at the end of a class. The giving the assignment or test plus correcting is the service. The way they are handed back is the hospitality and another service. Normally the service is finalized when the names are called, the papers are handed back and the class dismissed. The service is completed but not the hospitality.

The hospitality comes in when the faculty member goes over the exams with students and offers extra help to understand the answers. Additional hospitality is extended when the professor hands back the exam and if the grade is not as high as possible, the faculty member asks the student getting the exam if he or she could use some extra help. The offer is an example of hospitality. The extra help when provided is the service. The offer is as important to the student as the service received. The offer says the faculty member cares and wants to help. The student receives a message that he or she is important since the faculty member has taken time for a personal comment beyond what is on the paper or exam.

The personal contact and offer are examples of academic hospitality and when the students want and need. If a student did not do well on the paper or exam he or she may want extra help but even more the student wants a recognition and offer of that extra help.

All campuses provide services. (Some much better than others.) But most every campus should know how to provide hospitality and service. Every campus can begin by doing simple things such as smiling at students, saying hello to them as they pass by and rethinking all their services to assure that they also provide hospitality as well as a perfunctory service.

Moreover, every service should be reviewed to make certain that it does not just provide a mechanical function as the treasurer’s office above but increases the contact between student and the school.  This is certainly true for the use of technology to replace services that were provided by a person.

Too many schools have embraced technology to provide basic services. Some are good and helpful such as some on-line registration systems but too many others have put the web between students and people to the deficit of hospitality. Too many technologically-based services cut out hospitality and replace it with perfunctory service. That is not good. More on this later.

IF THIS ARTICLE MAKES SENSE TO YOU, YOU WILL WANT TO OBTAIN A COPY OF THE BEST-SELLING NEW BOOK ON RETENTION AND ACADEMIC CUSTOMER SERVICE THE POWER OF RETENTION: MORE CUSTOMER SERVICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION  by clicking here
N. Raisman & Associates is the leader in increasing student retention, enrollment and revenue through workshops, presentations, research, training and academic customer service solutions for colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as businesses that work with them 
We increase your success
                                CALL OR EMAIL TODAY 
                             www.greatservicematters.com
                             info@GreatServiceMatters.com 
413.219.6939

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Websites and Academic Customer Service

      One of our 25 Principles of Good Academic Customer Service discusses one of the major points of service delivery, websites. It states  Websites must be well designed, easy to navigate, written for and focused on students and  actually informative. The following article is on how websites also need to have a great deal of customer service involved in their design, It is by Hannah Howard whose web site is www.longhomeleads.com and I am pleased to be able to share a good piece.


10 Reasons Websites Need to Focus More on Customer Service


Posted on by admin | in longhorn
Customer service is a major factor in a customer’s overall satisfaction with a company. Consumers want to be assured that the company will back its product or service and be there to assist them when they have a problem or question. Since so much business is being conducted online nowadays, there’s an even greater need to know that the companies we do business with won’t be giving us the cold shoulder when we call with a problem. Here are ten reasons why websites need to focus more on customer service:
  1. Competition – In e-commerce, and in all business, there is often little that sets one company apart from the competition. Pricing and product quality being essentially equal, consumer choice will come down to customer service.
  2. Consumer Confidence – When a consumer makes an online purchase, he surrenders the convenience of having a local merchant to deal with. He needs to know that there will be someone there for him when he has a problem since he won’t typically have anyone nearby to handle it.
  3. Social Networking – Word gets around fast these days, and that includes bad reviews about a company’s service. Nothing can shut down an otherwise successful venture like a bad reputation; and on the internet, a reputation can be established, and taken away, literally overnight.
  4. Volume – The amount of commerce conducted online is at an all-time high and continues to grow. The more transactions that a website handles, the more likely there will be mishaps – incorrect billing, wrong items delivered, product defects, lost orders, etc. The need for a strong customer support team increases with the volume of business a company does.
  5. High Expectations – Because of the wide open market that the internet provides, competition is stiff in virtually every service or business. Consequently, consumer expectations are high. There is zero tolerance in today’s business market for poor customer service.
  6. Low Perceptions – Conversely, with so many businesses outsourcing their customer service resources overseas, public perception of the average customer service rep is at an all-time low. Being a company known for great customer service can be the defining factor for why consumers choose you over everyone else.
  7. Availability – Customers now have so many avenues by which to contact a business – email, phone, online chat, Skype, and even social media – there’s no excuse for inaction or delay on the part of customer service personnel.
  8. Cost-Savings – Forward-thinking businesses learned early on that by providing online tech support via  FAQ’s, downloads, operator manuals and help forums, not only did their customer satisfaction index improve, so did their bottom line.
  9. Customer Loyalty – Repeat business is essential to the success of a company. There are only so many people that you can sell to one time. What brings people back, what sets a company apart more than anything else, is customer service.
  10. Representation – As click-and-mortar entities replace the brick-and-mortar legacy businesses, the face of the company becomes those individuals with whom the customer interacts. In most cases, that’s the customer service rep. The customer service representative is just that – a representative of who you are as a company. That’s no place to skimp if you want to succeed.