Schools, Consultants, Customer Service…
November 12th, 2009
By Brian Fisher, AdmissionsQuest
Everyone on campus or in your office conveys messages and sells the school or your services. We all think we practice pretty good customer service. Do we?
Beth Black, Cherokee Creek Boys School, made the case for service in her presentation, “Everything I learned About Marketing, I Learned from a Mouse.”
In schools we assume our customer service is pretty good. But, in my school experiences, we never sat down and worked through constituent/customer service from beginning to end. What does it mean and what do we need to do make sure that we respond as well as possible in every situation?
Bluntly, we never had customer service philosophy or plan. We just assumed that everyone had good sense of customer service- responding to families in the best, most effective way.
Black took participants through the eye opening exercise of customer service from the customer’s perspective and the ways in which organizations can define and build systems and philosophies that keep the customer at the fore of every employee’s action.
The bottom line, “Quality service lives in the hearts and minds of the staff.”
Schools tend to become wrapped in their routines and daily events. Consultants with solo practices or small shops sometimes forget about a clean parking lot or warm entryway. We let our external connections slip.
Customer service basics weigh heavily in the equation; returning phone calls and returning e-mail matter more than ever.
The best anecdote of the meeting- the school maintenance man who greeted campus visitors and was equipped to provide an introduction to campus. The family- purposefully visiting this campus unannounced- appreciated the warm greeting. Their student enrolled.
Why customer service here and now? It’s a topic/concept that we often let slip in education. Education sells itself right? Not necessarily.
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Tagged:Beth Black, Cherokee Creek Boys School, constituent, customer, customer service, Everything I learned About Marketing, families, I Learned from a Mouse, Messages, services, students, ustomer service philosophy
