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

Strengthening the Arms. Legs and Organs of the Collegiate Body

Orwell’s proposition ten in Animal Farm with Snowball’s amendment, “All animals are created equal – but some are more equal than others” is alive and well today. Probably right at your campus!

As a customer service consultant, I have found the following to be rules of behavior at most every college and university.

The people who do the most primary customer service contact work

• get the least amount of training at the school
• get the lowest pay although great responsibility
• need the most resources to do their work often get the fewest resources
• as well as the least adequate, often oldest equipment.
• are key to the institution’s success get the least recognition for their work,
• are the ones who also receive the smallest amount of concern for their happiness.

They also have a primary responsibility for customer service, enrollment and retention. They are often the ones who have first contact with students as well as the most recurring interactions outside of the classroom. They are also the people who serve everyone else at the institution and therefore are among the most important people at the school.

We are talking about the staff. The people who come to the college every day, greet and meet students, take care of their primary needs from registration and billing to eating and sleeping. The people who solve or cause student happiness and/or distress. The people who can make or break an institution’s enrollment and retention numbers. The people whose love or hate of their jobs will make your job a delight or living hell.

Staff at colleges are in a arduous role. They are among the hardest working people at the college and, except for adjunct faculty, the lowest paid. Faculty have numerous rights, privileges and perks that should make them feel valued, but too often make too many them act imperious to the staff. Faculty and some administrators can see the college and the staff as if they were there for them. Since so many administrators come from the faculty, they too often have not learned how to work well with staff.

And yet, the staff are most often overlooked or simply taken for granted at colleges and universities. Granted, it may be true that the faculty are “the heart of the college” as I have been told many times. But without the arms, legs and vital organs of the staff, the heart is a dead, lifeless piece of offal within the body of the school.

Overworked, underpaid and under-recognized staff have always been those who do the work to make others’ lives easier. The are the front line service providers to students as well. They are also the ones who keep the institution moving. Try a couple days without them and see what happens. Not a pretty sight. They end up doing the same essential work day after day for which they gain little status or real recognition. That can easily become tedious and unrewarding.

A depressed staff leads inevitably to weak, apathetic, even poor customer service. Yet, most colleges do little to either formally or informally recognize and show staff members that they are valued as individuals and professionals. Certainly some colleges have a program to “recognize” a staff member or two for contributions over many years. Maybe a special parking space for a week or a plaque at pre-graduation ceremonies. but these do not address the day-to-day feelings of inequality in recognition, perks and pay that lead to staff malaise.

Customer service audits I have done for colleges found that a great many customer service issues have their have roots in staff malaise. People who feel unappreciated, over worked and on the periphery of an organization do not feel a part of it. It has been found that staff do feel frustrated, unrecognized and discouraged that their hard work goes unacknowledged while others who they feel do far less, claim the glory and recognition.

Colleges need to establish a partner relationship with staff, their significant internal customers. One of the critical aspects of establishing a partnership relationship is including everyone on the team in the flow of information. In academia this is extremely important since the coin of the realm is information. Generally, staff are not included in the information flow and are thus left outside of the partnership. They are not seen in their singularly important role with students. In most every case, staff members who answer telephones, greet people at desks, man the registration and bursars windows, etc. are the real point of contact between student and college. Yet, they are so often the last to know about changes in college policies, curricula, and other information that affects their interactions with students.

Okay, how to get staff in the loop. Start with involving them on college committees – and not as secretaries. Staff often know the college better than anyone else. Their work touches every aspect, every form, and every policy, just about everything at the college. They have a massive amount of real information and advice to bring to the table. For example, at one college, it was taking so long to register a student that many were simply walking out the door. When I called higher level administrators together, they suggested they would study it and get back. In other words, they did not have an answer.

So I assembled a group of staff people who worked in the enrollment/registration process. Within an hour we had identified poorly written and redundant forms and activities, forms and instructions, unnecessary information being requested, poor staff assignment practices that slowed things down and conflicting rules and directives. We had also decided what we needed to keep, what could go and rewrote directions. The time and frustration of the registration process was cut by 34% starting the next day. Staff began to feel as if they really were a part of the college with something to contribute. Customer service also improved overnight.

Simple lesson. Staff are people with extreme value and ability.

They need to be recognized for what they do – and do well.

Class Distinctions on Campus Hurt Morale and Customer Service

After a teleconference on customer service I gave today, an email question came in from one of the participants. It dealt with an important issue of class distinctions in universities, colleges and schools that hurts morale and retention. The issue is an extension of George Orwell’s description of colleges as an animal farm. As stated by Dean Snowball.

All members of an academic community are created equal, only some are more equal than others, and I’m not just talking about faculty here

Here is the question:

One of my co-workers would like to know what you think of a school policy that requires some staff personnel to log in their hours each day, while other co-workers (considered professional staff, mainly because they have earned a college degree) are not required to keep weekly time sheets. It is a matter that many consider unfair and somewhat demeaning.

And here is my response:

I believe that is a mistake on a number of counts. First, it hurts any possible sense of a team throughout the institution. Having two or three classes of people in a college makes a statement that the institution has a sense of a class system. Sort of like Orwell – All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others” A tiered structure like this has to have harmful effects on at least some of the people at the college. And that will in turn harm the levels of service to students and the internal community as well. I am willing to bet that this procedure also has a negative effect on employee and student retention.

The system also says that some people are more trustworthy than others. Those who do not have to punch in are by inference more honest than those we make punch in. We believe the non-punchers will not cheat on their time sheets. There is no evidence that this is true at all by the way.

It also separates “professionals” from “non-professionals”. Nothing is more destructive than demeaning the contributions of the staff who fall into the non-professional designation. Everyone is a professional and has value and a purpose within their work area and concentration and should be so recognized. Those who do not act in a professional manner, no matter what the title, role or salary, need to be replaced.

The systems are usually put into place because of management problems. Usually supervisors cannot manage and be responsible for their staff and their time reporting. Some are afraid to direct people to show up on time and work their hours. They are concerned that if they have to reprimand or direct someone to remedy their behavior, they will either not be liked or a bad worker will rebel, maybe even quit. They simply do not know or want to do the hard part of the job which is to direct and manage the staff. Breaks the “family” feeling after all. Need to train them to realize that they will be a family either way – just a dysfunctional family at some level, as are all families. And dysfunctional is not so bad after all. Just the norm.

Bottom line. Install a team and instill a drive to do good work by appropriate leadership and customer service to employees. Again recall that customer service does not mean pandering. It means treating people with dignity, honesty and when needed, clear, firm yet humane correction. If people are cheating on their time, correct them. If they cannot be corrected, that is an issue of integrity and honesty so start progressive discipline and have them move on rather than harm the entire internal community which in turn has a negative effect on retention and population. That would serve the community better than a caste system.

Hope that is not too blunt but it is what I know and feel. If I can help out again, just let me know.

Customer Service and Fund Raising

I just had the pleasure of attending a conference put on the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education where I was invited to present a talk on customer service and retention. It was a great conference by the way. Well organized, well run, great fun and solid learning! Great conference and one heck of a lot less stuffy than many. Thanks CCAE.

The folks are advancement professionals so as I thought about what to say in my presentation, I realized something very important. Yet so darn obvious. Here it is.

STUDENTS WHO DROP OUT OF YOUR SCHOOL, NEVER BECOME ALUMNI!

Thus schools lose on all three ends of the potential continuum when students drop out. Students lose their chance at a better life from the education they would get at your school. Tuition revenue is lost. Potential donations are lost. That makes the advancement peoples’ job that much harder. Fewer alumni; fewer donation sources. And considering that a major role of presidents today is raising money and alumni are a major source of donations, attrition adds to the job.

By the way, a university or college can use alumni giving percentage as a metric to gauge their customer service. People give to organizations like colleges that they like and make them feel good. The “liking” aspect is directly linked to how the college treated the alumni when students. If the school fulfilled the three ROI’s (financial, emotional and affective), there is a higher likelihood that he or she will donate as an alum. If the school made the experience feel like a four to six year root canal, odds are extremely high alumni will not donate. So, one way you can gauge how well you serve students and make their experience a positive one looking at the percentage of alumni giving.

These alumni participation metrics can be even more precise indicators if they can be linked back to specific majors, work areas, events, etc. If a particular work area has a very low internal give, that is a spot that needs greater attention and increased customer service to increase morale and engagement with the institution. If students graduating from a particular major have a lower participation rate then other majors, that could be an indicator of a service problem in that area. Of course, if it is a major like art or philosophy, you will need to factor in the potentially lower discretionary money of these graduates. Less income; less money to give to the school.

The metric also works for employees and how they feel they are served by the university. You can evaluate the morale of and service to the internal community by the percentage of internal participation in a university’s fund raising effort. The lower the percentage, the lower the morale and feeling of positive engagement levels. And considering that most schools have a less than optimal internal give rate and an increasing employee turnover rate….. Well, let’s just say that there is room to improve.

But again, all these alumni metrics matter not if students do not graduate. And employees who quit generally do not wish to donate either.

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.