mortiz0010

Administrators thinking about having us come to their campus for a workshop or presentation been asking for a "nutshell" definition of academic customer service. So here it is. Academic customer service is far different than customer service in a retail environment. First of all, the customer is not always right as proven daily on tests and quizzes, and sometimes in their behavior. Academic customer service is far from coddling students too. And it is certainly not giving higher grades than are deserved. Academic customer service is meeting the needs and demands of students which are created by what we promote in our marketing. If we say we have small classes then providing them is a promise we have made. Therefore it is meeting the promises we make to students for such things as personalized help, excellent instruction and treating every student with respect and kindness. It means greeting each student with a smile and an offer to be of assistance and being glad to see th...

Higher education is not a sector well known for change. It is in fact a sector that is laughably slow to embrace any change at all while telling everyone else how they should alter their work habits, strategies, businesses, countries, culture and so on. Academia is also comfortable telling its clients what change they need to make to be successful in my class while using old notes from many classes ago. We have no compunction about telling students what they should do to change even if we are not going to do so. And it is done in interesting and competing ways. Each faculty member, every class sends out a different message to students. In humanities classes, students are told to open their minds and embrace new ideas but don’t try and shake mine even if I believe that Shakespeare was gay and all his plays send out a pro-gay agenda what with all the cross dressing and all. In math we are told to close down our minds and just accept that this is the right way to do this and...

There have been an increasing number of calls and emails from schools seeking training for their admissions’ departments the past six months. As a consulting group, we are pleased to help out. But I am amazed when we tell the schools they can save money and increase profits by focusing on retention. “Retention! No, we can solve all our problems if we enroll more students”. But they can’t enroll more students. That’s why they call us. But then they don’t listen. They still focus on a churn and burn approach. Enroll them. Bring them in. Greet them at the front door and wave bye to them and your revenue as they flee out the back. As a result, schools continue to have problems meeting revenue and mission goals. Let’s look at the realities. If an admissions department enrolls 50 students on Monday but only 25 show for the first day of classes, how many students were enrolled? 25. Yet you paid to have all 50 recruited and processed at an average cost of $5,640 each. That means an immediate ...