mortiz0010

Two of our most called for consulting work are our Service Excellence Audits and Mini-Audits. They are also the areas of our work that receive the most requests for details on what they include and do. So, we decided to devote a posting to what Service Excellence Audits are. Simply putting it, an audit is a complete study of the extant state of service excellence (academic customer service) at a college. We study every relevant point of contact between the institution,its people and the campus with students to determine strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in the college's service to students. We also study the college’s appearances and physical services such as signage which are known as its “objective correlatives” to assure they are providing and presenting services that will increase the students’ ability to navigate the institution and feel welcome and comfortable. We use a two-part study approach: off campus to test the customer service provided potential and current stud...

All the talk about money, job losses, and deficits as well as schools cutting budgets, jobs, sections and people is definitely having an effect on student and family attitudes and their anxiety levels. One cannot get away from the economic news of Trump's new budget, increasing college costs and the difficulty of completing FAFSA's now that the IRS has closed access to past tax records for parents, never mind the pundit chatter. People cannot help but be affected and make money a larger issue than it normally would be on campus. This is creating new demands for service and services assistance.    And in most every case, schools are not meeting the demand in either style or substance. The past week, we made actual person to person telephone contact with 50 bursar offices in colleges and universities posing as students or family members. We focused here as a result of the fiscal anxiety we are hearing from families. We called 78 schools. At 31 schools, we left a voice ...

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I will be speaking at a few conferences this Spring and Summer.. Eductional Policy Institute's Retention 2017 Conference May 21-23  St. Louis University, MO I will be talking about the National Survey on the  State of Academic Customer Service on US Campuses ; what it tells us we should be doing; how to do it immediately and at little or no cost to increase retention starting tomorrow.. NISOD’s International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence May 27-30, Austin TX. I will be talking about how to bring academic customer service into the classroom and get faculty to sign on to it National Small Colleges Enrollment Conference which really is great for bigger schools too. July 17-19 in Daytona Beach, FL I will be keynoting here and talking about how to increase both admission and retention success using simple and low or no cost techniques and programs that are guaranteed to increase enrollment and population.. I will be giving...

It is March and the brackets for the NCAA Tournament have just been announced making me think about admissions. That might strike seem as odd, to think about admissions from basketball but it makes sense if you just realize a couple of things. For example, in basketball, two common defense setups are the man-on-man and the zone. In the man on man, each defensive player has a specific opponent to guard. And the defender stays with that player no matter where on the court he goes. In the zone defense, the defender works on whatever player comes into the zone he or she is assigned to.  In customer service, these approaches also come into play. The man-on-man or woman calls for a service provider to stay with the customer no matter where he or she roams to. If it is a clothing store for example, the service provider would go with the customer from say dresses to blouses to shoes to socks back to shoes to sweaters and back to shoes again. The provider is usually in a commission situatio...

Just a quick note today to suggest you consider attending the EPI Retention 2017 Student Success Symposium May 21-23 at St. Louis University.   I have attended these conferences in the past and found them to be goldmines of good ideas and ways to increase retention. they are also very well run by EPI and Scott Swail, president of EPI. You will not be disappointed  This year's conference will feature plenary presentations by retention experts and professionals from around the US and Canada, as well as pre-conference workshops. Confirmed speakers include: Zora Mulligan  (Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education) Jay Goff  (Saint Louis University) William Serrata  (El Paso Community College) Peter Dietsche  (University of Toronto) Chris Shaffer  (Shawnee State University). Watson Scott Swail  (Educational Policy Institute).         I will also be presenting on my latest study of customer service on American campuses...