U Becoming Four Seasons U and a Quiz for U

This is a quick one with a simple but very powerful message and a quiz. One you’ve heard from me before but is worth hearing again from Isadore Sharp, the founder and CEO of one of the top 100 companies to work for - the Four Seasons hotel and resort chain. Also one of the top hotel chains in the world.

The Four Seasons hotels are famous for thinking about how to make a customer’s stay more pleasant and worthy of return stays. For example, Sharp was the first to have free shampoo placed in his hotel rooms. He wanted to make it easier for people to feel like home at the hotel and that the four Seasons had thought of everything for their convenience and pleasure. He and all his people make certain that guests receive consistently excellent service so they are pleased to be able to spend more for a Four Seasons stay than most anywhere else and want to come back whenever they can.

Shampoo you and I can get most places. Even breakfast at Hampton Inn but alas even my first choice Hampton Inns do not match the service of a Four Seasons. Or so I have learned from others not yet having had the opportunity to stay at one. Hilton, Hampton and Marriott more my level I have to admit.

Sharp‘s secret? Here is what he said to Fortune Magazine.

Personal service is not something you can dictate as a policy. It comes from the culture…How you treat your employees is how you expect them to treat the customer.

Second Four Season’s secret – hiring people with the right service attitude followed by training and more training and then some more. Then they are treated as someone with value who contributes to the quality of the hotel and guest experience. Employees are paid fairly, promotions are heavily from within, and all employees get to stay in Four Season hotels anywhere in the world for free.

But what really makes employees feel valued is they are empowered to fix a situation when it arises. They do not have to get permission to help someone or check with a supervisor. The assumption is they will know the rules and culture so use your best judgment and help the guest. And if they have an idea, they are encouraged to bring it forward themselves.

Compare yourself to the Four Seasons and other Top Companies to work for. If you are an administrator or manage, you are the you. If you are not an administrator or manager, grade your senior administration.

These are yes or no questions.

1. Would staff and students agree you have a CULTURE of service to students and others? yes___ no____
2. Do you know peoples’ names? yes___ no____
3. Do you now names of five staff outside of your office area? yes___ no____
4. Do you know the names of at least two maintenance or service staff? yes___ no____
5. Do you come back at night to talk with evening staff? yes___ no____
6. Do you walk the halls and talk with employees and students daily? yes___ no____
7. Do you treat all employees as you do faculty and oh yuh students assuming you treat them well to retain their support? yes___ no____
8. When you hire, do you go from the resume or dig down to get the people with a service attitude to hire people who like students? yes___ no____
9. Has there been customer service training held on campus yet this year? yes___ no____
10. Has there been customer training for management this year? yes___ no____
11. Was there customer service training on campus last year? yes___ no____
12. Were your last five hires promotions from within or external hires? yes___ no____
13. Do your folks get raises at least equal to yours? yes___ no____
14. Do employees who have been at the school at least six months get free coursework? yes___ no____
15. Are employees encouraged to use imitative in solving student issues? yes___ no____
16. Do all employees have an opportunity to bring ideas to the president? yes___ no____
17. Do students know your name or who you are? yes___ no____
18. Do you say hello to every student or employee you pass in the halls, parking lot or anywhere on campus? yes___ no____
19. Have at least five employees come up to you and started a conversation with you outside of your office in the past two weeks? yes___ no____
20. Is your 5 year average annual employee turnover rate 12% or less? yes___ no____
    

How many yes responses here? Go back and check some of your yeses. Be as honest as you can with yourself. Sure the quiz is going to help determine your final grade but let’s use this as a practice exam so you know where to improve. Multiply each yes by 5 and determine your grade.

If you are willing, please send me a copy of your responses to the questions I'll tally and post an average of all. Click here and send the results.

Let me know how I can help your college become more like the Four Seasons and the other 99 top companies to work for. Be very pleased to help. Been training schools since 1999.

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research training and solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits; workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

The DIY Movement in Customer Service Training

The DIY movement is making it into customer service. I have recently been receiving a large and increasing number of requests from colleges for information on how they could plan and conduct their own customer service workshops and training. So far today, during break time for many schools, I received six such requests.

This is both heartening and from a selfish point of view, discouraging on two counts. The heartening aspect is that after years of promoting customer service and retention as key issues, having a best selling book on the topic, sending out articles, writing my blog and talking at numerous conferences a year, it seems that people are getting the message. That is wonderful. It is also great that people feel they can turn to me for help and guidance.

The somewhat disheartening aspects are that

1. it has taken so long to get some schools to realize that academic customer service is important;
2. many have not yet gotten the message
3. schools want to try and do it on their own rather than hire a wonderful, informative, helpful, very experienced consultant with a Boston accent who wrote the best selling book on customer service, has done most of the research and writing and makes sure all training sessions are fun, reasonably priced and worthwhile for the school.
   

Okay, I got that self-serving comment out of the way so now I can tell you what is important if you are going to try and do it on your own.

At Least 5 Things To Consider When Planning Customer Service Workshops

1 Determine your definition of customer service?
Just what are the behaviors you will be seeking to have your audience perform? Are they ones that will achieve the goals of the institution whatever they are? It is a set of behaviors, a group of continuing processes and actions that are customer service. Not a result as too many of the commercial books try to propose. You are not simply seeking to make a customer think about your college as a place to come to for an item or a single service or two. You need to develop a definition that recognizes that students “buy” the school everyday, every class. And what they are purchasing is not a simple object but a totally intangible concept we call education, skills needed for another even less concrete unknown called the future. They are buying not one class but an entire on-going experience that demands they invest not simply money but emotionally and affectively.

Any definition you use needs to be one that encompasses the entire community. Service is not just for staff to provide. Most schools think that “front line receptionists, clerks and the such need to be concerned with customer service. The reality is that this is a trap. If there is not real buy-in from the president on up, there will be a full breakdown in delivering service to students and the college community itself. So the definition and goals must be more universal than just for front line personnel.

2.Figure out how to overcome the resistance to customer service as an idea Academia has real problems with the idea of customer service. Faculty, administrators, and even some staff will believe that a college is different than a retail business and they are right. But they will then conclude that retail and business ideas have no place on a college campus. Academia is different than commercial enterprises. We don’t sell anything. Students aren’t customers. I am not a sales person. Admissions is important perhaps but trying to please students to keep them…Isn’t our job to separate the wheat from the chaff, real college material from those who don’t belong?

It is necessary to have an approach that helps your college see that academic customer service is not the same as what is found in a store. For example, they are correct that the customer is not always right at a college. If they were, why bother with tests and quizzes? Why would they even be attending the school if they were always right? They would not have a wrong collection of knowledge, actions, thoughts to be explored, corrected and replaced.

It can be pointed out that we are engaged in a business after all. You can use my analogy as quoted in University Business (March 2003)

"Colleges are starting to see higher education in business-like realities. They are realizing that revenue depends on selling the college (recruitment) to its customers (students and parents). Sales (enrollment) are made based on the college's brand (image), product (courses, programs, degrees), and creating a connection with the customer (customer service)."

You can also remind them that it takes revenues to make up a budget. The budget pays for salaries, benefits, raises, equipment, technology, marketing, fixed capital costs like offices and all other expenditures to keep the business…I mean college running. Among those who will argue that college is not a business and it is not there to make or worry about money, there probably aren’t too many people at the school that work for the pleasure of it alone. Paychecks count for something.

But the argument needs to be made carefully and through analogy if you are to keep from setting off a spark that will explode the entire training program you wish to provide. You might want to check out some of my blog entries for help here. www.academicmaps.blogspot.com

3. Move discussion from student as customer to student as something else. The idea of a customer is one that will just bring your audience back to the college is not a business problem. So shift the language. That also shifts the discussion. By using a different term for students, I like clients, you alter the traditional argument. As a college VP I worked with said too often, he who defines the terms wins the argument. So find a new term and definition for students and shift the dynamics from the old language and approach of student as passive receiver of information to something closer to what they really are now – people who wish to be involved in the process and even control it at times.

4. Understand the problem areas and Issues Issues It is a simple reality that you need to start somewhere. You may as well begin from knowledge of the customer service strengths and weaknesses at the campus. Find out what bugs students the most. What areas are least customer service-oriented. For example, when I do a workshop or training sessions for a school, I always want to come to the campus at least one day ahead. That way I can walk the campus(es), talk with students and members of the campus community and look for problems. I learn a great deal that way and use that information to focus the work.

It also makes it all more relevant. Most people on campus know the problem spots. They hear about it from students or have experienced it themselves. Few surprises? Except in many areas they have all become so used to that they do not see the problems any more. These surprises that we uncover during a mini or full campus service audit are usually from what I call the worn rugs phenomena.

You know when you look at someone else’s house such as when you are house hunting. You may see that the people who live there have worn paths into the rugs as they make the same trips every day. But when you mention that the rugs may need to be replaced, the homeowners do not see it. That is because they have worn then rugs down incrementally, day by day, trip by trip. The owners wore them down slowly, millimeter by millimeter so they did not see the problem develop.

In the same way, people get into habits of behavior they do not realize they have fallen into. It was not a big change so it was not noticed until perhaps someone else looked. Even co-workers have gotten use to it so they may just see that as “that’s who he is. Always been that way and no problems really.” Or it could be a policy that began in making something better but as it has been used over the years, or as its implementation shifted imperceptibly, it now hurts, not helps students. Or it is a procedure, a process or form that we all know so well that we expect everyone knows it. So we don’t even bother telling students about it or explaining it so it is really understood. Like add/drop procedure and forms at most schools. Or the school FAFSA code. Or where some out-of-the-way office is on campus. Or who now does what Dotty did after she retired. If we know, they should to. Right?

Or it could be buildings that once looked bright and welcoming but have been allowed to get dingy and cluttered over the years. A smudge on the wall here. A few too many posters there. A light out and replaced with lower wattage over back there. A door that is hard to open. Offices changed location but no signs let people know that. Bathrooms with graffiti, leaking faucets and broken stall doors. Trees whose limbs have grown huge and old that could fall onto benches right under them. Small shrubs that have grown into tall and thick bushes that bock signs and provide cover for someone who might wish to do another harm. Walkways that are cracked and so uneven that people trip. Or student lounge or study areas that have lost their chairs and tables and then ones still there are dirty and shabby.

These and much more are physical customer service issues we have found in our audits and workshops. So, you may want to look at all the service issues, human and objective correlative. Here’s a list from our brochure of what we look at when we do a campus customer service audit to give you some guidance.

We recommend you audit

Reception Areas

Admissions

Counseling

Financial Aid

Registration

Registrar's

Cafeteria

Bookstore

Review these areas as well as every level of customer service such as:

wait time - how promptly people are recognized and served

acknowledgment of student presence and manner of the recognition given,

welcoming and comfort level generated,

how courteous your people are,

how questions are responded to,

requested information provided promptly and graciously,

accurate directions given,

general demeanor, and attitude toward customers,

availability of information at point of contact,

point of contact knowledge of college and/or where to get it if not available,

accuracy of information,

use of campus jargon or argot versus standard language,

language use, attitude, syntax, grammar, tone,

customer-first attitude,

time to completion required for successful interaction,

helpfulness and accuracy of written materials at points of contact,

location and availability of media,

processes used with customers,

orderliness of the interaction and area of interaction,

telephone protocols used by customer contacts to aid or detract from service to campus callers,
general telephone skills

Audits also look at the environment provided for students in these areas and offices from layout and space through lighting and clutter as they affect the customer's sense of reflected value and service from entry to the campus through moving through it and finally the exiting experience.

AcademicMAPS studies everything then provides realistic solutions to increase enrollment and retention.

The issue for you then becomes one of how to bring these service problems, human. policy, procedural and physical forward without ticking off too many people. You do not want the training to suffer through resistance due to feeling as if you picked on an area. Nor, maybe equally important, you certainly do not want to become the enemy because they just might decide to get you. You know how academic politics and infighting can get. As the old joke goes, why are academic battles so vicious and nasty?....Because there is so little to be won.

So you will need to determine a strategy through which you can bring out deficiencies without angering or hurting someone or just leaving some important examples and problems to the side so as not to get you or the program destroyed. I do not have great ways to do this since as a consultant I don’t have to worry as much about bothering someone. I will be able to go over the issues without causing as much danger since I do not know these people and I will be leaving by design. Moreover since there will be others who will see the issue and agree with me, they often help me make my point since I am an outsider and cannot be picking on people I do not know.

5. A Retreat is not Running Away One way you might think of offsetting some of this is to run part of the workshop as a retreat to identify customer service issues on campus. After you define customer service in academia, set up the paradigm for discussion of students and service on campus, gotten some people to understand the value of engaging in customer service you may want to consider running an early session of the training as a customer service retreat during which everyone will get involved in determining what steps and actions can be taken to improve retention on campus.

There are many ways to facilitate a retreat of course. But, the retreat must start with some basic information, definitions and identification of issues and problems on campus. When Susan Mesheau, Executive Director of U First: Integrated Recruitment and Retention at the University of New Brunswick, Canada wanted to introduce greater focus on customer service and retention of students, she had me come and facilitate a retreat with faculty and administrators. Susan wisely realized she had to get buy-in and direction from principal campus colleagues to achieve her retention and service goals. And what better way for her campus than having the future implementers involved up front. She understood her campus and wanted to get them to own part of the process. It was a long and at times tough day, especially when we almost lost support over some of the arguments mentioned earlier but I was able to keep the focus and forward motion. The results were impressive and shared. Two factors that should help UNB move forward.

I hope some of these ideas and information might help do-it-yourselfers plan and then carry forward their objectives and training sessions. These are not all the considerations and issues of course but I believe they are a start. It is not easy to present and convert academics to customer service in higher education. But then, that difficulty has provided me a base for my services and success. I hope you will have similar experiences.

Oh yes, do a lot of reading. There really isn’t much out ther5e on customer service in higher education so I do not feel self-serving in recommending my best selling books Embrace the Oxymoron: Customer Service in Higher Education and/or What Does Customer Service Have to Do With Enrollment? Frequently Asked Questions for Higher Education Administrators. But you can also obtain a solid amount of information without spending anything by reading them over 80 entries in this blog www.academicmaps.blogspot.com

Feel free to call me 413.219.6939 or email at nealr@GreatServiceMatters.com . If I can help you overt the phone or email, it will be my pleasure. If you want to discuss my doing a workshop, retreat, audit or whatever you need, I will be very happy to discuss that.

AcademicMAPS has been providing customer service, retention and research solutions to colleges, universities and career colleges in the US, Canada, and Europe as well as to businesses that seek to work with them since 1999. Clients range from small rural schools to major urban universities and corporations. Its services range from campus customer service audits; workshops, training, presentations, institutional studies and surveys to research on customer service and retention. AcademicMAPS prides itself on its record of success for its clients and students who are aided through the firm’s services. www.GreatServiceMatters.com 413.219.6939 info@GreatServiceMatters.com

10 Steps To Better Customer Service You Can Start Today

As part of the marketing for a video web seminar Boosting Enrollment and Retention Through Customer Service on November 12 ,,2007 I did for Magna Publications, they sent me the following 3 questions. They are fairly common and I thought the answers might be helpful as well as the list of 10 Things You Can Start Today to Improve Customer Service on Your Campus. (I have been told copies of the seminar on dvd are available from Magna.)

1. About how many of the 150 colleges that you’ve worked with have struggled to provide adequate customer service?
2. Is providing customer service on a college campus different from providing customer service at a mall or in a corporation?
3. Can you give us one example of something every campus could do to improve its customer service?

Here is my response along with the Ten Steps You Can Start Today to Improve Customer Service on Your Campus. I’ll be writing on each in the next week or two.

My Summary Response

Of the 151 schools, colleges and universities I have worked with since 1999, approximately 150 have struggled with customer service. The other school just gave up and decided that losing enrollment and employees was inevitable. For them it was. They did not care about customer service.

Students not Customers - More like Patients

The struggle begins with the very idea of customer service for most colleges. The term is one that academic communities feel is wrong for them. “Students aren’t customers after all” is a phrase I hear quite often. And there may be some truth to that since students are not customers but more like our clients. Clients are actually different from customers. A customer is an individual who is interested in making a purchase and then moving on. A client is seeking improvement and enhancement or repair so they can move on. Sort of like when a patient sees a doctor. And in education we are really in the role of doctor (PhD or not). Our students are our patients/clients coming to us to improve their intellectual and occupational health.

And like some doctors who view their patients as cases and income, some schools see students as people who need to be taught so they can receive the revenue they need to be able to do what they really care about. These schools struggle not only with customer service but with retention, revenue and fund raising. The indifferent, supercilious, doctor ends up spending too much time and money on both malpractice suits and attracting new patients. Schools do too. Colleges and universities that struggle rather than embrace academic customer services spend a major amount of time and money recruiting replacement students and employees as well as the “morale malaise” rather than meting the mission and goals of the institution.

Mickey U?
There are some schools that try to engage the campus in customer service as defined by Disney, Enterprise, Starbucks, or another corporate entity. They are finally and most unfortunately doomed to disappointment. This is because though they can make some good service and courtesy adjustments the reality is that though some of our characters could pass for Goofy, Donald or even Mickey or Cinderella, a college is finally a different sort of Futureland. Academia may indeed be a wonderland but not one in which our clients just come for a week of fun and rides or a store in which students are just interested in buying a pair of shoes and leaving.

A retail store or hospitality service provider serves its customers for a short period of time and for a limited purpose. At a Disney for instance, a customer is there to get away from reality and just enjoy oneself for a day to a week. Their goals are narrow and simple. Make me smile. Make me forget work, reality and my cares. Help me escape my life.

A student attends a college for almost opposite reasons. The goals are broad and long-term. They include engaging reality and learning about it. They are in a university or school to embrace a goal of career, a place in the real world. Students seek not to be made to smile and be happy all the time but to be challenged with ideas and intellectual stress that might cause angst and discomfort that will allow them to engage the world. Sure they wish to enjoy their years of study and customer service like smiling and providing good directions can help. But finally it is the preparation for the world outside of academia that is the real client service we provide. And our client service needs to be directed to that goal and our higher education world.

Academic Customer Service
As for retail customer service, attending a college is not at all like buying a pair of jeans. When someone buys jeans, he or she has a singular objective to accomplish. Get a pair of jeans and leave. One does not buy a zipper, pick out denim, choose buttons, stitch or hem style and level of pre-wear then take it all home to put it together. No. You go to a store, look at what is provided, choose a pair, pay for them and leave. It is easy to be nice to a person who is just picking out a pair of jeans, bringing it to your register and leaving. “Thank you very much. Have a nice day”. In college, students have to construct the jeans themselves and have to interact with many people and office to get all the pieces needed. Each course is a part of the final pair. Each course is purchased separately over a period of many years. Every day, every class becomes a buying decision. Should I go to classes today? Do I want to buy Algebra today or just skip it? And it is the student’s job to stitch all the course material together to create a final education and future.

10 Steps You Can Start Today to Improve Customer Service on Your Campus
Here are a few things every campus can do to improve its customer service very quickly.

1. Use the 15 Principles of Good Academic Customer Service. Don’t just put them on the wall. Use them. If you would like a copy, click here
   
2. Everyday is day 1. Make everyday the first day of classes, a new decision day for students.
3. Turn your school into Cheers University where everyone knows your name and everyone’s glad you came.
4. Smile and at least make believe you like students. It sooner or later becomes a reality.
5. Orient for success. Provide students skills they will need to succeed at the school.
6. Throw out lifelines. Make sure students know where and how to use help like counselors and advising. Don’t have your own, hire an external group like Student Resource Services to do it.
7. Do or get a customer service audit of your campus and then make needed changes to improve.
8. Listen to students and all employees. Not just faculty and administrators.
9. Make customer service training and recognition a constant on the campus. If you don’t have the capabilities to do it yourself, hire someone. It is cheaper than losing students and/or employees.
10. Attend seminars, speakers and read about academic customer service on campus then implement the ideas that fit. like Boosting Enrollment and Retention Through Customer Service on 11/12.
    

AcademicMAPS is pleased to provide the information, research reports and techniques for improving customer service, retention and enrollment through this blog. AcademicMAPS also provides colleges and universities speakers, training, campus audits, customer service surveys, and facilitators to improve the success of schools. Just ask us about what we can and will do for you. www.GreatServiceMatters.com info@greatservicematters.com or 413.219.6939

Customer Service Week and Religion

I get many requests to give talks and keynote addresses especially at colleges’ staff training day or week. Now I love to do these talks because it gives me a chance to get the word out on the value of customer service not just to student and retention and enrollment but also on staff morale, retention and productivity. I love them too because I still wonder if I should have stayed in stand-up and not gotten involved in teaching then administration. They give me a chance to use something we don’t have enough of in academia – humor. We take so much so seriously, especially ourselves. And sometimes, don’t take our customers and the services they demand to stay at the school strongly enough.

Proof? For one, we have things like Employee Development DAY or WEEK. Sort of like Tom Lerher’s National Brotherhood Week parody in which he sings "thank goodness it only lasts one week." Wouldn’t want to have to be nice to everyone too long after all. And we wouldn’t want to focus on developing new and better skills everyday just as we do in the classroom. That would be… well, what we say we do in colleges- educate people and help them grow to their potential.

Yes, it is great to have a day when we close most, at least some offices, and have people focus on customer service. Like I said, I love doing the talks and they do have some long term effects. Especially since I follow them up with check-ups to see how things are going. But the right way to do customer service training is daily with a good plan and reward system. The plan should come out of a review or study of what the real problems are. And then developing and constantly focusing on a simple message such as the Standing on One Foot part of my training or talks.

It is from the story of Rabbi Hillel for whom your own Hillel Center is named if you have one. A short version. He was challenged by an apostate student to tell him the meaning of the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel pulled up one foot and said “Do not do to another what is hateful to you”. I extrapolate. Do not do to another what you would not want done to your daughter, your son, your father or your mother. Husbands and wives don’t count as some prove too often.

Don’t do to a student or co-worker what you would not want done to your son, your daughter, your mother or your father. All the rest is commentary.

The commentary is important as I am sure all who have read the Torah (Bible Part 1) would say. And then there is very important interpretation and how to apply it running forward form all three major Western religions. But, variations of Hillel’s statement form much of the core of every religion and customer service as well.

But, as religion takes daily application, devotion and training, so does customer service and development. Sermons and teachings are often daily or at least weekly. We teach our classes at least twice or three to four times a week. Let’s give employee growth and development their due and focus on them every day. Be glad to help.