student satisfaction

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Build Goodwill with Co-workers and Customers - 11/10/26


All relationships are different.  We want to have good relationships with co-workers, after all – those are the people we spend the most time with each week.  We want to have good relationships with customers since they’re the ones that provide the revenue and inflows that allow us to Read more

How to Avoid “Groundhog Day” - 11/3/26


It’s Groundhog Day, where you’re living the same day over and over and over again. You have heard basically the same complaint from 4 different customers in the past week.  The bill is incorrect or confusing, and you’re having to spend a ton of time explaining things to the customer. You’ve Read more

Beware of Scary Telephone Customer Service - 10/27/26


As we near the Halloween holiday in the United States, it seems appropriate to discuss examples of scary customer service, particularly on the telephone.  Here are a few common issues that frustrate and annoy customers.  These are experiences to avoid delivering, and alternatives to adopt: The customer calls, describes their Read more

The Art of the Successful Script - 10/20/26


You’re the customer.  You go to the store, and they ask if you have a loyalty card.  You call the doctor’s office, and they ask for your birth date.   You walk up to the counter, and they ask if you found everything you were looking for. These are all valid Read more

The Key Building Block for Your Customer Relationship - 10/13/26


An automotive manufacturer gets supplies for their vehicles from all over the world.  They have arrangements, service level agreements, expectations for timing and quality of all the parts.  And when they gather all these supplies, they assemble the cars.  They test the cars.  Then they take pictures of those Read more

Be Flexible to Fill the Gaps - 10/6/26


The non-profit has the expected challenges.  There are only 3 people in the organization, yet, they have the same responsibilities of a larger company.  They have to do finance, sales, marketing; they deliver their services to the community, and they need to keep a pulse on what’s going on Read more

Is This Good Customer Service? - 9/29/26


A friend of mine reached out to me recently as she waited for the electrical technician to show up at her house to do some minor repairs.  She had never worked with this company before, but they sent a text about the tech who was soon to arrive. The message Read more

Ownership when Fixing Others’ Errors - 9/22/26


We were conducting training with a client recently, and one of the participants, Jackie, is in a role in his organization where he goes out to the customer site to investigate issues, address customer complaints, and fix problems.  While he’s at the site, he often gets an earful from Read more

Why “No” is So Important - 9/15/26


The employee told the caller: “I don’t think that is possible.” The customer eventually hung up, and redialed to ask a different employee the same question. The employee responded to the customer: “That’s probably not the best way to do it.”  Then, the customer kept asking question after question, arguing Read more

It’s Not “You,” It’s “I” - 9/8/26


During a business writing course that I took years ago, the instructor had us write an e-mail.  I can’t recall if it was written to a co-worker or customer, but after writing this e-mail, she had us count every “I” and “You.”  We talked about how we need to Read more

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Learn from Schools without Attending

Posted on July 20, 2010 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

Nothing like being in school and getting a report card – that moment of truth when you’ll be smiling or wondering how you’ll subtly get it in front of your parents when they’re in the best mood possible.

Well just like students get report cards, now many schools, colleges, and universities are getting them as well. These report cards are akin to Balanced Scorecards in the rest of the business world, but it’s interesting to note the unique twist that these institutions take in reporting their information. Many elementary schools’ report cards include information on student-to-teacher ratios as well as percentages of teachers who are board certified, and much of this data as well as performance data is listed versus district and state comparatives.

At the 4-year university level, they look at graduation rates, year-to-year retention rates, student loan default rates, student satisfaction scores, measures of student learning, end-of-program assessments, and job placement.

So what can you learn from these educational institutions? From the elementary schools perspective, they offer comparative information. They show how many dedicated resources they have for their students. They note qualifications/experience of their teachers. Do you measure and convey this information to your customers?

From the higher education perspective, they look at retention and loss, they gauge satisfaction, and they analyze impact on the customer. Do you track, measure, and analyze these three key pieces of information?

We all went to school to learn. Let’s take a minute as businesspeople to learn again.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/

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Educate on Profits

Posted on February 4, 2010 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

Peter Waller, Chief Executive Officer of Corinthian Colleges, was speaking about the recent performance of the organization in terms of its financials late last year (http://seekingalpha.com/article/186144-corinthian-colleges-inc-f2q10-qtr-end-12-31-09-earnings-call-transcript). And one of the key areas he addressed as a part of that discussion was the improvement in student satisfaction.

Before I go further, what this CEO did was to link (early on in his conversation) financial performance to student/customer satisfaction.

To put meat behind his belief in the cause/effect relationships between these two measures of performance, he noted several major initiatives focused on driving increases in student satisfaction such as: ‘Major increases in faculty development, increased investment in student services personnel, investments in new technology in the classroom, and increased wireless bandwidth at the campuses.’ He stated that "We will continue to focus on creating an outstanding experience to students at every campus and every program. We believe that if our students are satisfied and find value in our services; we will continue to grow and ultimately create value for shareholders."

This is a leader who understands the link between satisfaction and financial performance. He measures that link. He invests in those things which should drive up student satisfaction, knowing how that impacts business success. He gets it.

Many leaders discuss the importance of customer service. But do they measure it? Do they make strategic decisions which may – short-term – cost money or require resources? Do they change operations, processes, and people to improve student or customer satisfaction because they understand the link to profits?

If the answers in your organization are "No, No, and No," then your leaders may need to gain a better understanding of what truly drives long-term success.

Interested in improving your company’s customer service? See more information at: http://www.cssamerica.com/