Let’s Rewrite The Meaning Behind Customer Service in Higher Education

By: Haley Vasarella & Kristin Armstrong

City Population: 14,000 people

University Population: 14,000 students

12,000 Undergraduates

New Freshmen: 2,150

Transfers: 750

Most popular Majors:

1. Accounting

2. Marketing

3. Undeclared

Students drawn in mostly from a 70 mile

radius of the University

Orientation Experience

Plan-It Purple

1 Day - Summer Orientation

Club U-Dub-Dub/TRANSFERmation

2 Day - Fall Orientation

Kick-Off

R U Purple!?

Academic College Meetings

Hawk Fest

Welcome Concert

Customer ServiceGoogle Search Definition:

“The assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or uses its products and services.”

BusinessDictionary.com Definition:

“All interactions between a customer and a product provider at the time of sale, and thereafter. Customer service adds value to a product and builds enduring relationship.”

Used in a sentence:

The customer service representative kept the caller on the phone and chatted pleasantly with him while correcting the mistake made in the customer's online billing statement.

Urbandictionary.com Defintion:

“A job which causes your anus to hurt because you’ve been bending over backward and taking it from whiny, complaining, bratty idiots all freaking day long.”

The Great Divide

“Higher education has focused less on the

process of good customer service and more

on the final product of producing educated

graduates. Colleges and Universities have not

been as concerned about whether students

felt satisfied while completing their degree

requirements.” - Boyd (2012)

Demetriou (2008) argued, “Satisfaction is not

an appropriate gauge of quality in higher

education. Within the business realm, the

customer is always right while in an

education setting the student is not always

right”

“If the quality of the initial encounter is good,

and the ongoing relationship is strong,

satisfaction and loyalty remain high”

- Bejou (2005)

“Education is clearly a service, not a product

… in higher education; they have to be

mindful of, responsive to the characteristics,

needs, and expectations of the student”

- Vaill (2008)

Barriers

• Needing a cultural

shift and helping

other faculty and

staff to see the

need for customer

service.

“While some departments excel, others are infused with a ‘don’t bother me’ attitude”

“Cranky clerical folks, arrogant faculty, harried receptionists, clueless student workers - you

name it, we’ve got ‘em!”

• We don’t offer effective

customer service

training.

• We don’t know how to

assess our current

service gap.

Why Customer Service?

Changing Expectations

Revolving Retention

Increased Competition

Efficiency

Experience Means Everything

Experience Means Everything

Principles of Customer Service: The Higher Ed Version

● High Quality Services

● Service Oriented

● Understand the audience

● One of a Kind

● Golden Rule

● Do it Right the First Time

● Ask for feedback AND listen

Three Step Approach

Parents, Students,

Staff

Who Are They? What Do They

Want?

How Have They

Changed?

Quality Customer

Service

Technological Shift

● Relationship Marketing Building (Constantinides and Stagno, 2012)

● Case Study by Hayes, Ruschman, and Walker in 2009 found a notable relationship of those who logged onto the social network site and the chance of them applying

● Reuben in 2008 looked at Ohio State University’s Facebook Page and noted:

○ From 2007 to 2008, the page had 6,904 members using the page

● In 2012, Bazaarvoice surveyed Millennials and found that:

○ 51% are very much influenced in their decision by recommendations made on user generated content on social media

Social Media and Higher Education

Social Media Lived Out - The Hawk Squad Experience

1. Know your stuff

2. Know your resources

3. Embrace mistakes

4. Putting your best

face forward

5. Team-work makes

the dreamwork

Warhawk Culture

• The 10-foot Rule

• On-Stage

• NO Clumping

• Know Your Resources

• Keep it Positive

• Go the Extra Mile

• “It’s My Pleasure”

• Be Warhawk

The Do’s and Don'ts of Customer Service

Make eye contact

Feel free to shake

hands

Talk to everyone

Have fun

Approach people

Stare

Hold the handshake too long or

have inappropriate touching

Get so caught up in talking to

everyone that the

conversations are awkward

Be over the top

Invade the “bubble”

Development

• Form Standards

• Embrace the uniqueness of the individual

• Practice

• Constant Assessment

Moving ForwardThe essential questions that need to be answered when participating in

customer service...

• What is the goal for my role?

• Who is my customer?

• What messages are we trying to tell our customer?

• What is the best way to get our message through to the customers?

• What skills do I have that are going to benefit the customer?

• How am I going to know if I have been successful?

• Is there anything I learned today that I can take away and implement at my

institution?

Let’s Put It Into Practice . . .Take Following Negative Statements and Turn Them Into Positives:

1) Just go down the hall, take a right, walk about 50 feet, take a left and it should be there.

2) You will have to ask someone else about that.

3) The campus is pretty fun.

4) It is a suitcase college, but I like it.

5) We are going to have something for lunch. . . I’m sure it will be good

6) I have no idea the answer to that question

7) That event will happen sometime after lunch

Let’s Get Animated

• Come up with two skits:

• A good interaction with a student/guest

• A bad interaction with a student/guest

References

Bazaarevoice. (2012). Talking to Strangers: How Social Influences Millenials’ Shopping Decisions. Retrieved November 24, 2014, from http://resources.bazaarvoice.com/rs/bazaarvoice/images/201202_Millennials_whitepaper.pdf

Bejou, D. (2005, March/April). Treating students like customers. Biz Ed Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.aacsb.edu/publications/Archives/marapr05-toc.asp

Boyd, R. (2012). Customer Service in Higher Education: Finding a Middle Ground. The Mentor An Academic Advising Journal. Retrieved March 3, 2016, from https://dus.psu.edu/mentor/2012/06/customer-service-in-higher-education/

Constantinides, E., & Zinck Stagno, M. (2012). Higher Education Marketing: A Study on the Impact of Social Media on Study Selection and University Choice. International journal of technology and education marketing, 2(1), 41-58.

Demetriou, C. (2008). Arguments against applying a customer-service paradigm. The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal, 10(3). Retrieved from http://www.psu.edu/dus/mentor

Hayes, T. J., Ruschman, D., & Walker, M. M. (2009). Social networking as an admission tool: A case study in success. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 19(2), 109-124.

Kotler, P. (2003), Marketing Management, international edition, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Kuper, S. (2014, October 29). 4 Reasons Why Customer Service is More Vital to Higher Education than Ever Before. Retrieved March 3, 2016, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141029184627-10447704-4-reasons-why-customer-service-is-more-vital-to-higher-education-than-ever-before

Maringe, F. (2006). University and course choice: Implications for positioning recruitment and marketing. International Journal of Educational Management,20(6), 466-479.

Neff, Jack (2010), “Nielsen: Facebook’s Ads Work Pretty Well. When Social Ads Collide with Stated Interests, Awareness Goes Up,”

Noel-Levitz. (2009) Scrolling Toward Enrollment We Site Content and the E-Expectations of College-Bound Seniors. Retrieved October 18, from https://www.noellevitz.com/documents/shared/Papers_and_Research/2009/EExpScrollingTowardEnrollment09.pdf

Reuben, R. (2008). The use of social media in higher education for marketing and communications: A guide for professionals in higher education. EduGuru.

Vaill, P. (2008). Beware the idea of the student as a customer: A dissenting view. Retrieved fromhttp://www.people.vcu.edu/~rsleeth/NotCustomers.html

Wallace, K. (2010). 15 principles for complete customer service. Customer Service Manager. Retrieved from http://www.customerservicemanager.com/15-principles-for-complete-customer-service.htm

Zackal, J. (2016, January 29). Changing the Culture of Customer Service in Higher Education. Retrieved March 31, 2016, from https://www.higheredjobs.com/articles/articleDisplay.cfm?ID=814