mortiz0010

Studies have shown that 76% percent of all attrition finally comes back to some aspect of academic customer service. Students leave a school because they do not receive the service they expect or need to succeed and feel a true member of the college community. But academic customer service is not the same as retail. In academic customer service for example the customer is not always right, such as on tests and quizzes. But they are right in demanding the services to which they feel entitled from being treated as a valuable and worthwhile member of the community from parking and food service through to scheduling, classroom decorum, teachers who know their name and all the other aspects that feed into their demand of a good return of three major investments – financial, emotional and affective. What are the four basic indicators of a successful school in its operations, budget and well-being? Population, Population, (No surprise here) Population and Customer service levels....

Davidson College is ending its program of providing a laundry service for its students. It was that students could drop off laundry and get it back cleaned and folded. It was a real service for students. The College says it is going to use the approximate $400,000 it spent a year on academic-related things like scholarships, internships, research, the entrepreneurship program and community-based learning instead of the laundry service. I think the College may be making an error which will result in lowered student satisfaction with the College and could affect retention. It has been found that when consumers are used to getting a service and it is discontinued that the company loses clientele. People do not like to give up a perk or service they were used to getting. But Davidson is making the error correctly in the way it is going about dropping the service and there are lessons to see in its approach that may restrain some of the negative reactions Washing your clothes is not a big...

As a result of the growth in on-line, for-profit and traditional colleges drive to increase enrollment and leave no admissions unturned all competing for the same students, the balance in power has been shifting form the schools to the applicant/students. Power in this context means “that you can dictate terms and make others do what they otherwise wouldn’t ” according to Claes Fornell in his book The Satisfied Customer. It once was that the schools has all the power in the process. Students played by our rules and jumped over every bar we wanted or we would not take them. The schools still have the power to make applicants play by their basic rules but that is starting to shift as colleges do not want to lose even one applicant to make the final numbers. One could argue that the common application form is an example of giving away power to make students do it our way. Now convenience for students applying is the issue; not following our rules. The sh...