Customer Value
How do you create value for your customers and what might you consider doing differently?
One way to create value for customers is to expand our focus by making ourselves available throughout the day into early evening for admissions counseling.
Great idea Raymond. Increasing your availability to be mor convenient to your students schedules is great way to demonstrate that you want to make the process easier for students to fit into their lives.
I'm usually the person who takes a call from a customer looking for information - I have found that after I have advised the customer that a rep will be calling them back I check back with the rep just to make sure the customer didn't get overlooked.
Thanks for sharing, Janis. It sounds like you recognize the importance of following up with the reps to make sure they have assisted students in the way they've been promised. How has this practice helped your office?
We strive to create value for our customers in a varirty of ways, as noted below:
1. We listen to their needs and what they are telling us, as well as what they do not tell us.
2. We under promise and over deliver.
3. We check back with our customers relentlessly to see if they have additional needs or wants that we should be aware of.
4. We ask the obvious questions, and then challenge the assumptions that our team has about them vis-a-vis our customer experience.
It looks like you have a number of clearly defined customer service standards, Adam. This is great and can be very helpful in ensuring all employees understand and deliver customer service in ways that are expected. Great work.
My department is the communications department; we are the frontline department of the Admissions Team. We answer the phones on the first ring and treat each student/ potential student with the same respect by giving them our full attention. If their admissions counselor is unavailable, we offer to take a message or transfer to voicemail. If the student does not wish to do either, we make sure we get them to another counselor to assist them immediately. Taking care of the student is our top priority. One technique we did implement to ensure that all student messages are returned is that we set a follow up in our student database to ensure that the counselor is advised and run a report 3 times a day for past due messages left.
I Make sure that i established a relationsip. Iremeber one important thing about each of them and thier needs
Sophia, thanks for sharing this. It sounds like you make sure to engage your students and also make note of some of the things that interest them. This will help you re-connect with any follow up calls.
Dr. Jean Norris
We create value within the classroom on the first day by discussing course objectives, as well as the reason we are using certain chapters, methods, and we also ask for the student's expectations, which can then be revisited on the last day of class to see if they were obtained.
I believe we need to reevaluate being more accessible in the evening hours. We as a technical college work around a student's schedule, and many work during the day.
I enjoy being positive and honest with them up front so they know my expextations of them. It has worked fine so far. I wouldn't do anything differently.
Leann,
Great approach Leann. Providing your students with a positive and honest approach is a good way to build rapport. Thanks for your post.
Dr. Jean Norris
I will take more time to listen to the student complaints and make change in my department to help and provide better costumer services. New ideas always help.
Every quarter we conduct student surveys to see what the students think about our school, our staff and our faculty. We then have a meeting to go over the results and try to figure out a ways to address any issues as well as recognize those employees who are going above and beyond to make sure a student is happy with their education journey at our school.
I always go above and beyond my job descriptions to create the the ultimate and most rewarding student experience. I help out a lot with student events which builds community throughout our campus. I help out other departments when needed which helps our campus out as a while.
Student surveys are a great tool for analyzing both areas of acclaim and opportunity. What has been the impact with using the surveys to build value for your current and future students?
I'll bet your students and your peers appreciate the extra effort! Student and community events are a great opportunity to build value and to generate positive PR for your campus. Keep up the great work!
I am a graduate of this school so I constantly put myself in the students and graduates shoes and try to remember what it was like for me as a student. That way, I can serve them in the way that I would like to be served. I feel that we do a good job with serving our customers. We try to provide as much information as we can and normally like to have them fill out paperwork in the office so we can help them and make sure everything is filled out correctly.
As for something I would do differently, I can't really think of anything except that maybe we do a little too much for them? I sometimes feel that some of the grads can't make a move or decision without us and I wonder if maybe we cripple them instead of give them wings.
