Following some oral surgery in preparation for a tooth implant
that took place in the morning the surgeon called the patient in the early
evening just to see how he was doing. There had been no call from the patient
about any problem or discomfort. The oral surgeon simply wanted to check on his
patient and let him know he cared. This is a solid example of service after
service.
In the retail world there is a concept of service after service.
This is the activity in which a customer service specialist contacts a customer
following the sale to show concern and care.
A store, in fact any business that cares about retaining its customers
employs a practice of checking in with its customers after the initial sale.
This is done to maintain service contact with the customer to show concern and
care. Businesses, most business care about retaining their customer since they
know that there is a real cost to obtaining new customers and once they have
the person as a customer it is easier to sell to him again.
For example, when I bought a new car, the salesman called me back
within a week of my driving off the car lot in my new Subaru. He asked if
everything was okay and if the service I received was to my expectations and
liking. He also extended a discounted oil change and a request that I complete
a survey that would grade his and the dealership’s service and preparation of the
new car. The oil change was a way to say thank you and get me to come into the
dealership to spend more money having the car serviced at the place where I
bought it. The survey was one that went
into the dealership itself as well as Subaru North America so it could grade
the service being provided by the dealership. This was a part of the systemic
approach to service being taken by Subaru that started at its advertising the
cars for the dealership through to the checking on the satisfaction of the
buyer.
Subaru controlled the full process of the buying of the car from
the initial ad and brochures through the actual product and even the way the
car was sold. It provided the salespeople with training on how to sell the cars
and process the sale itself. It wanted to make sure that its name would be
strong in the customer’s appreciation of the car and company. It left nothing
to guess since the service people and mechanics also underwent training to make
certain they took care of the cars appropriately. They also controlled the
pricing of parts and the service after sale. Subaru knows that its reputation
depends not on just the initial contact through advertising as well as the sale
but what happens with its products (cars) after the sale. Subaru realizes that
the initial sale is only a small part of protecting its name brand and keeping
its customers for the next sale of a car in the future.
The sense of service after sale is another way that colleges and retail
customer service are different. Colleges do not seem to care all that much
about service after the sale because they seem to believe that the sale ends at
admissions. It does not, it is made every day, every contact with people in the
school is a separate sales, point of contact/sales event. But schools do appear
to end the sale for the most part as soon as the deposit in in to hold the
seat.
In fact, once the deposit is in the student’s account, the college’s
contact with the student shifts from a sales approach to an academic one in which
the customers are treated as if they are no longer all that important. The
communications tend to move to what you have to do and here is the bill. When
the colleges should be stitching the students into the school by sending notes
thanking students for choosing the school along with helpful information,
surveys about their experience in selecting the college and offers to help
solve any issues that might cause them any problem with finally arriving at the
college, they send bills. The schools act as if the deposit is a sure indicator
that the student will show up so there is no need for service after sale but
there is always a difference between the number of deposits and the actual
yield, the number of students who actually show for classes.
In separating
retail customer service from academic customer service one need only look at
point of sale versus points of sale concepts. Yes, points of SALE in higher
education. Colleges and universities are
definitely involved in selling their schools, images and seats to students –
their customers. That’s what they do. They sell the school to students to bring
them and the money they and society spend into the school. That’s how schools
pay bills and salaries, buy equipment, benefits, heating, cooling, lights and so
on. It makes colleges feel better to call sales recruitment or enrollment
management, but the euphemism does not hide the reality. Colleges sell
their image, products, services and benefits to students and their families but
our point of sale is very different and that helps distinguish academic
customer service from retail.
Retail
whether of hard or soft goods is all about the point of sale. The sale must be
completed during the period of opportunity or the sale is lost since the period
is fixed and finite. If a person comes to a store for a blue shirt if the sale
is not made while he or she is in the store, there is no sale at all. The point
of sale is therefore fixed and limited to the time in the store. Thus customer
service in the retail world is also fixed and limited. Service begins when the
customer enters the store and ends when he or she leaves. And it is all focused
on the sale itself. Service is to get the customer to buy something.
The usual
scenario is the customer enters a store, passes through the decompression
zone where he or she might be greeted by an official greeter such as
was done well by Wal-Mart years ago. (They have since replaced the official
smiling grandma and grandpa greeters with bored apathetic floor workers
decreasing their initial customer service interactions.) The customer then goes
onto the sales floor seeking the product he or she came to the store seeking.
The physical appearance and ease of shopping is a part of customer service. The
sales floor is set up in a way to try to maximize sales in a well thought out
customer service point of sale store such as a Nordstroms, Whole Foods and many
other smart sellers who realize that making their goods look appetizing and
desirable increase sales.
The customer
finds the shirt he is looking for often with no assistance from an employee. At
best, the employee is stationed behind a sales desk with a register. If the
customer approaches to ask the location of shirts, the employee does engage in
some very low level service. “Hello, may I help you? Men’s shirts. They are
over there” perhaps smiling and pointing. Perhaps the service increases a bit
when the employee says “come with me” and guides the customer to the shirts.
“What size?
Color? Long or short sleeve? Ahh, here we are? May I ring that up?’ Back to the
sales desk. That’ll be $xx. Cash or charge? Thank you very much. Thanks for
shopping…….Come again” with a smile. This is a level of service often related
to a commission sale which can often lead to greater service as well as a
suggestion of a tie or pants to go with the shirt. The increased service can
thus lead to an increase sale size which can benefit the salesperson in a commission-based
environment especially in big ticket items sales such as a car.
On the lower
side of service the customer finds the shirt himself. Takes it to the sales
desk. Hands it to a bored cashier who asks “cash or charge?” Rings it up.
“Thank you. Have a good day. Come again.”
In either
scenario as soon as the bag with the shirt is handed over to the customer, the
sale ends and so does customer service in most stores. In a high end store such
as Tiffany’s a guard greets and checks you out as you enter and leave. Always a
wonderful touchy feely moment. Service over.
There are of
course less intensive soft sales which follow the retail pattern discussed
above but in an intensive soft sale such as food at a restaurant in which
product and service combine there are a few more points of sale and points of
sale customer service (PSCS).
Point of Sale Customer Service (PSCS) One - The sale
starts with parking and
entering the establishment as it did with the hard product sale but this
is quickly followed with the first PSCS in the form of a formal greeting. There
is the greeting as with all sales who in this case a maître d’ or seater who
welcomes you and asks something. This is true for all food sales and they range
from “Good evening, welcome to…. How many in your party/your reservation is
under….” to “You by yourself? Two?” The customers are led to seats where they
are told “the waiter will be with you soon.”
PSCS Two Initial Point of Sale – The
waiter comes to the table, provides menus and “sells” drinks and appetizers.
“Hi my name is Bart. I’ll be your waiter tonight. Can I get anyone a drink?
Okay. An appetizer to start you off.” The service is more personal since part
of the sale is for Bart to increase the tab while increasing his tip. Since
there is a direct connection between the customer’s perception of his service
and the pay-off for the waiter, he will, or at least should be more attentive
to customer service. So he starts with the Give a Name technique as he provides
his name though he does not try to get the customer’s name just a larger tab
with drinks and appetizers knowing that the total sale will be the basis for
his percentage tip.
PSCS Three Follow-up and Point of Sale – This is
when the waiter moves the customer to the entrée for the meal. He will take the
order often reassuring the customer that he or she has made a good choice so as
not to raise any cognitive dissonance issues in the choice-making process. The
re-assuring at this point of sale is an important part in developing a
relationship for the tip.
Point of Sale Two and PSCS Four – The soft
product, the food, is delivered and eaten. The customer will now formulate his
or her definition of the success of the sales process with determining the
value of the food itself. The food is the actual product with the waiter’s
efforts as part of the customer service essential to secondary valuation of the
experience. If the food is not up to expectations, the entire sale will
founder. The waiter’s services will depend in large part on the product itself
finally. There is no way to fully separate the product from the service in a
restaurant situation just as they valuing of the food experience will depend on
the service and
expectations of the product and service as discussed in the section of The Power of
Retention on the famous, or infamous, service but satisfying food at the
restaurant Durgin Park in Boston.
Point of Sale Three and PSCS Five – The
entrée dishes are removed and deserts are sold. If the product and service
experiences have been good to this point, the possibility of upselling to
desert is better than if either the service or product have been weak to this
point. Weak service and the customers will want to leave sooner than if service
has been good. Weak product and there is no probability of extending the sale
to include desert and increase the tab as well as tip.
PCSC Six Finalizing the Sale- The bill is
presented either after or without desert. There may be another minor upsale
attempt with “coffee anyone?” but that is normally a signal that the bill is
about to be brought.
In fact,
coffee that will just delay the completion of the transaction may be the last
thing the waiter who knows that another dollar or two will not increase the
final tip much cares about. The sale is concluded and it is really “cash or
credit” to get to the tip time. “Thank you for coming and have a nice
day/evening” and the sale is fully concluded with the receipt of the payment,
the tip and the customers leaving. Sure the restaurant would like good word of
mouth and that is also the result of the service and especially the product but
there is not a real expectation that the customer will return for the next meal
of the day or even the next day. There will be time between the sales and
purchases.
A company
that is often pointed to as an exemplar of customer service is Disney. Their
soft product sales approach is even easier than in the restaurant and is not
really applicable to the academic sale scenarios, academic PSCS that follows.
In fact, Disney has a fairly easy customer service to provide. They have a
fairly captive audience that has prepaid to use the facilities or they cannot
get into the park. Pre-payment helps keep customers in the park even with horrendously
long waits for rides. Not only do they not have to worry that one of their lead
employees wearing a character costume will not say something that will harm
sales because Sleeping Beauty, Goofy, Mickey etc. are not allowed to talk, just
perhaps hug. And the employees have to go through a rigorous training program
to assure that each and every one of them acts exactly alike right down to
giving the same looking autograph to park goers. This could not happen in
academic.
And Disney
does not have to worry that a character actor will not smile since their smiles
are painted on. In the stores, the scenario is the same as above for hard goods
with the restaurants like the soft goods. The hotels are a bit different but
somewhat similar to food PSCS since they are often pre-paid so customers are
less likely to leave and leave their money behind as well though tips are
important.
Disney
compared to academic customer service and PSCS academic service is not analogous.
Disney is easier. Imagine telling a faculty member he had to smile all the time
never mind be nice to students and their parents, and be out on the campus
saying hello to everyone or get fired. Don’t see it happening.
It is
obvious that the initial point of sale for a college is admissions but that is
just the first, not the only sale. Students need to be sold again and again if
a school is to retain them through graduation and turn them into alumni donors
which is clearly a goal of many if not all colleges and universities. The
points of sale, of concern, follow from the efforts of the admissions process
and people and then include most every class, process, interaction and show of
hospitality of student and college or university personnel. The sale is not one to make more money except
at the end of a semester, term or year when a bill becomes due again. The sale
is to reinforce the
engagement between college and student based on the students’ appreciation of
the faith in the engagement and the academic
customer services rendered. The sale does make it easier to increase
tuition if the customer feels he or she is being well sold of course.
The final
good of college is an intangible we know as education leading to hope for a job
and thus a better life that becomes embodied in the only close to tangible
thing college provides – a diploma. This good is thus both hard/durable because
the tie between college and graduate cannot be broken as well as
soft/consumables such as classes and direct services and hospitality like at a
restaurant.
Higher
education sells belief and hope in the experience called college that leads to
retention and graduation. Schools do not provide any tangible service product
as do other professional services that fill a tooth or mend a bone, cure an
illness or prepare and serve food to be eaten during the sitting. Colleges make
promises and then grade their customers as opposed to how most every other business
does. They have the customers grade the product and/or service. Academic institutions have evaluations such
as in-class evaluations of professors but they are only responded to in the
extreme when a faculty members scores are so very low that someone needs to do
something. Schools do not produce products based on what customers want or need
but based on what they think they want to give them and what we feel they need.
Sometimes that means just what a school needs to deliver to give someone
something to do and save budget and positions or because a professor wants to
teach a course whether the customer wants or needs it.
Colleges can
do this because their products are intangibles that have been pre-sold and
pre-paid for as required necessary credentialing to be able to succeed in a
career and society. Colleges have also situated their business into the
position of expertise that is not to be questioned. In fact, question it too
much and they can even find ways to fail the customer.
But because
they sell a goal – graduation and a job – that takes a long period of time to
achieve, colleges are exposed to many more points of sale and points of
customer service than other businesses. In fact, the sale is not completed at
admissions or the first day of classes. Students make “buying decisions” every
day, every class, every hour, every contact with the school. In the morning or
evening when homework or a set of classes looms ahead, the student must decide
whether or not to spend time and effort to buy the classes and their
learning. Buying in this point of sale is not with money at this moment,
that’ll come at the beginning of the semester and has already been paid in most
cases but to purchase with effort and time. The decision to go to class, to
buy the class must also be made for every single class.
Attendance
is thus a good indicator of the strength of the desire to continue
buying and staying at the school. In fact, it should be argued that attendance
is one of the strongest indicators that the sale is being made or the customer
lost. Moreover, if a school really does care about retention it should have an
institutional attendance policy that says attendance is required. That is how
strong an indicator attendance is for a school.
Education is
an emotional sale with some pragmatism blended in about it as the pathway to a
better life and job. This is a sale that is based on
engagement, trust and faith that “if I give myself over to the college
it will get me to my goal of graduation and a job”. These two primary points of
service are each very important since they are all points of reselling the
school and its ability to deliver.
The sales
are based then on trust and faith. The currency is not dollars but buy-in.
These are emotional investments that require constant, continuous and
consistent selling to the customer through service and through and then after
the sale. This is to provide students the belief that there is and will be strong
emotional and affective return on the investment of trust if they but
buy us one more day, one more class, one more semester.
Thus it is
extremely important to recognize that every person, every contact, every
interaction with the school from the parking lot through people, policies and
procedures creates a point of sale and a point of sale customer service
situation. Every person from the president on up needs to realize his or her role
as a salesperson of the school. All offices must accept that they are also
points of sale and service. Faculty must understand that the ways they sell
their subjects, their information and training through lectures, seminars, demonstrations,
interactions and so on are all points of sale and service. Theirs are the most
important services of all. People who answer the phone, the website, cafeteria,
housing, maintenance, security, everyone and everything are points of sale. The
campus itself needs to sell the school after all the lack of a place to
park might very well mean "no sale" for the day as the commuter
student drives away in a huff. Or poor lighting in the halls can make a student
feel unwelcome or even a dirty bathroom can cancel the sale that because it can
say that the school does not care about its students. It is extremely important
that all of these PSCS go well to increase sales of the school leading to
increased retention and graduation rates.
A
longitudinal study of six-year graduation and attrition rates of over 1400 US
four-year colleges and universities of all sectors indicates an average of only
that PSCS is not going well. The study shows that American higher education is
losing an average of 48% of every cohort it starts. This is an average with
some schools losing much larger percentages of their enrollment to the point
that it is a wonder they can stay in business. Moreover since this is the
average over six years of six year graduation cohorts, an average his means
that on an average year 48% of all students are leaving higher education. If
any other business lost that many customers, that many sales, it would likely
be out of business a long time ago. Very few businesses, even one that
represents 2.6% of GDP can normally exist with such a high level of lost sales
and revenue.
Higher
education needs to embrace academic customer service and train at every point
of sale to retain students through graduation and its own revenue stream. It
also needs to realize that enrollment is not a point in time but an ongoing,
continuous process as shown in the diagram below.
A major error that most colleges and universities make is that
they envision enrollment as a process that starts at recruiting and an
application and ends upon acceptance of an offer to enter the school. This is simply wrong. Enrollment is an
on-going process that starts with the first contact of the school with the
potential student and does not end even at graduation. It continues with
enrollment into the alumni organization and onto a donor’s list.
There are four major enrollment events in a student’s life.
1.
the decision to attend
2. the show on
day 1
3. staying in
school and
4.
graduation.
If this article makes sense to you
you will want to get my new book
The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education
by clicking here
you will want to get my new book
The Power of Retention: More Customer Service for Higher Education
by clicking here
N.Raisman & Associates is the leader in increasing student retention,
enrollment and revenue through research training and customer service
solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US,
Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them
We increase your success
CALL OR EMAIL TODAY
TO INCREASE YOUR SCHOOL'S RETENTION
www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939
TO INCREASE YOUR SCHOOL'S RETENTION
www.GreatServiceMatters.com
info@GreatServiceMatters.com
413.219.6939
“We had hoped we’d improve our retention and with the help of Dr. Raisman, we increased it by 5%.” Rachel Albert, Provost, University of Maine-Farmington
“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, Faculty Member, Lincoln Technical Institute
“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, Canada
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