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The Best Information Center on Any College Campus

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David DeCenzo, the President of Coastal Carolina University, wanted to improve customer service on the campus. He knew how important academic customer service is to enrollment and the University. President DeCenzo wanted to provide faster, friendlier and more accurate help for students. He was intrigued by the idea of a concierge service to help students and turned to newly hired April Betsch to explore the idea. April ran with it. She set up focus groups with students to explore the concierge concept. She focused on one very pertinent question. “What frustrates you most about Coastal?” The responses surprised her. One of the items that came up often was the campus map. It was very frustrating for students especially new ones trying to find their way around because the map listed buildings by their names while their schedules listed them by an abbreviation. They could not find their way to classes easily. Campus maps by the way are often bad because they are cre...
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Call Backs - The Right Way to Get Back to Students

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There is actually something worse than delivering poor or weak service. And that is promising great service and then not delivering. Or mollifying the customer by telling him or her you’ll look into the situation, will get it resolved and either do not get it resolved or not get back to the customer. Say a student or customer  com es to you and asks for help. Perhaps a student leaves a phone message or an email account of the problem asking for you to assist in a problem he or she has. You get back to him or her by telephone but miss the person. So you leave a message. I am sorry to hear that you feel you may have a problem… ….. (Yes we do use the conditional all the way through to protect ourselves as the HR and lawyers taught us to do . May, perhaps, could, maybe, might, possibly, or  com binations might possibly may perhaps have an issue …..But never simply say,  holy sh%t, he did that?  Never  com mit or accede. That’s the way to please the lawyers but perha...
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Class Distinctions on Campus Hurt Morale and Customer Service

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After a webinar  on customer service  I gave  last week , an email question came in from one of the participants.   It dealt with an important issue of class distinctions in universities and colleges  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. I believe that is a mistake on a number of counts. First, it hurts any possible sense of a team throu...
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Admission Attrition Costs Quantified

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CSFactor 2 CSF2 = [(SL x CA = -E) + CSL1] There is a universal law that it should take less energy to sit on a flagpole than to climb it. Seems logical. Climbing it numerous times to gain four different views would require burning more calories than shinnying up once and sitting up there to look around for the views. Yet there are certainly those who seem to have not learned the lesson. Colleges that have not yet focused on the value of retention which can be increased through some simple customer service training rely on the old  churn and burn approach . Keep bringing in ever increasing numbers of new students and don’t worry if they just drop out never to return.Just get some more.  These schools make admission folks in particular climb the pole over and over, burn calories and just plain burn out trying to meet ever-increasing admission goals.  You’d think some universities had never heard of flag pole sitting on a pillow called retention. Or the stabilizing...
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Figuring How Much Revenue You Are Losing Due to Attrition

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Following a recent workshop presentation on customer service and retention, I was asked by one of the attendees if I would supply the way I figure ROI from retention and customer service. She wanted to  compute how much money customer service issues were costing the university so she could  show literally that poor service costs money. She was not the only person who has asked for the formulas I use in my work so I decided to post this one for everyone’s use. The following is about Customer Service Factor 1 (CSF1) The Value of Retention (or the Losses from Attrition). CSF1 helps a college figure out how much revenue/money it is losing from its actual attrition. The formula is expressed as CSF1 = [(P X A= SL) X T] In the formula,  P  represents the total school population; not just the starting fall freshman number. Most schools use the fall incoming freshmen numbers and that is an error. The assumption is that attrition occurs most in the first six weeks of the ...
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Is the Customer, the Student, Always Right?

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Which of the following is true? The customer is always right. True  False  If there is a question, refer to number 1. True  False It has been an inviolable adage found in the backrooms of most retail outlets and restaurants that both number 1 and number 2 are correct. The customer is always right. It is therefore our role to do all we can to please the customer; to make her feel we accept that she and her business are number 1 to the store or institution by fulfilling every wish if at all possible. To go the extra mile to make the customer happy. To indulge, pamper, spoil and if necessary, to even pander to each whim to assure the customer is satisfied and will come back. This has been the concept that has been central to Business 101 and been hung on posters and fliers in backrooms across the country almost since it was reportedly created in 1908 by French hotel owner César Ritz (1850-1918) when he stated ' Le client n'a jamais tort'  - 'The cust...
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It is not an Admissions Problem but a Retention Problem at Southern Illinois and Other Universities

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Southern Illinois University at Carbondale has an enrollment, and thus a revenue problem. Student population is shrinking. They have lost around 50% of the freshman population over the past three  years.  Official fall 2017 enrollment at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is 14,554, a decline of 9% percent over 2016.  Their new Chancellor, Carlo Montemagno is saying it is “ because we are not offering programs that are distinctive and relevant to today’s students.”  But is that the reality they are facing at SIU-Carbondale? They are losing 56% of every entering class the graduation rate is only at 44%.  The University also recognizes that it is not necessarily a problem of underprepared or incapable students because it stated there is “a continuing increase in ACT scores for new freshmen and ongoing growth in freshman retention rates” which is at 68% freshman to sophomore year which is not all that great really. The University if losing almost a third of e...
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