Building a Service Culture in Schools
Henry talked about creating a service vision, communicating the service vision to employees regularly, conducting a customer service audit, and providing training for all employees over the last two weeks. This week, Henry will share two additional suggestions for building a legendary service culture.
Model the Service Vision
As school leaders, we should show our staff members what service focus looks like. Our behavior sends a strong signal to people that we are committed to the service vision or not.
As Henry has said in the earlier post, it starts and ends with the leaders of the school. The school leadership initiates the service vision and then trickles it down to all school members and then moves its way back to the leaders. Senior leaders cannot get their staff members to commit to something that leaders won’t commit to themselves. After crafting the service vision and as leaders continue to communicate the vision to the employees regularly, there are basically two significant tasks: example and continuity.
First, walk the talk. Let me share an incident that showed a department head setting an excellent example of delivering stellar service.
A bus monitor must have said something nasty to a fourth grader in the school bus. When she reached home, she went straight to her room and cried profusely. The parents came to know about it. She was afraid of riding with the bus monitor in the bus again. She was hurt and intimidated. Because of that, the father drove her to school the next day and then complained to the Office Manager, Sarah, who oversaw bus transportation, procurement, school nursing, and front desk. Sarah couldn't swap the bus monitors as this bus monitor's journey was the farthest, and the bus monitor lived near the most distant point. It would be unfair to have any bus monitor to exchange with her. Besides, Sarah needed time to investigate the incident. Therefore, Sarah and a few other operations staff members took turns to accompany the student on the bus for her commute – back and forth. She didn’t ask the bus coordinator to deal with it. She didn’t delegate the entire task to her direct reports.
The accompanying with the student lasted for two weeks. Sarah did most of the days. She was a single mom with a son in the first grade. It must be tough on Sarah and her son during those two weeks. She had to wake up about 4ish and traveled to the location of the student to accompany her. After the investigation, Sarah found out that the bus monitor was at fault. The bus monitor was removed. The Operations Director, Sarah’s boss, has constantly reminded the canteen staff, the security guards, and the bus monitors/drivers to respect and care for students. He walked the talk. He, too, accompanied the student. Both the office manager and the operations director temporarily became bus monitors. This incident was an act of modeling the service vision.
Remember the 10-20-70 rule? We talked about the 10-20-70 rule last week. This rule says that when we are learning something new and then developing it into a habit, as a recap, 10% of it comes from formal training. The 20% is observing what our leaders are doing, and we will be most likely to emulate the behavior.
School leaders are in it for the long haul. It is incredibly difficult to maintain a customer-focused culture without a steadfast commitment.
It cannot be a one-month initiative or even a one-year drive. It has to be continuous. It is like breathing; we cannot hold breath for too long without any subsequent damage. At SSIS, Henry emphasized the service culture throughout his entire time there.
Align Your Strategic Decisions with the Service Vision
Let the service vision guide your strategic goals and decisions if you want a customer-focused school. You may have to change your strategies, tactics, policies, and procedures to align everything around the service vision. Aligning with the service vision means it is necessary to re-consider your school’s goals, hiring, training, processes, and leadership. Allow me to cite two examples here quickly.
For example, when it comes to hiring, we tend to emphasize experience and focus too much on skills. More importantly, is to hire for service culture fit. We need to hire people who have a passion for implementing the school’s service vision. It is easier to train someone to develop their skills, but it is harder to create a person’s friendliness and empathy.
Schools fittingly spend a considerable amount of money on professional development opportunities for our staff members. It is vital to provide ongoing training on educational and technical skills. However, it is essential to take one step further. We ought to relate every PD opportunity to the service vision.
All too often, leaders unconsciously undermine the culture they are trying to create by making a decision that does not match the vision.
The suggestions that Henry has provided will help you get started to lead your team in legendary service.
How does it look like, and how does it feel like when you effectively lead your team in legendary service? A majority of your staff members take the initiative to implement the service vision, and they are obsessed with delivering legendary service.
In the following two examples, the staff members took the initiative to provide exceptional service to their customers:
International schools have rolling enrollment. Parents of younger children are often concerned or worried about their children’s adaptability on the first day of school. Some kids cry; some ask for mommy. The admissions staff have an agreement with the homeroom teachers that they would check with them on the new kids in their class. The admissions staff then report back to the parents around 10 am and then again after lunch. This gesture gives the parents peace of mind. If the kid has been crying, the admissions staff will inform the parents what the teacher, teaching assistant, and other students are doing to help the new student assimilate to the new environment. Do you think the parents feel more assured? You bet.
Dursley went above and beyond his call of duty. Suzhou is where he worked. The city does not have an airport, and the nearest airport is Shanghai and Wuxi. To take an international flight, foreign teachers have to travel to Shanghai. This is before the invention of Didi. There are taxis, but it was somewhat nerve-racking, especially when you tried to catch a ride to the airport with your check-in luggage bags. Concerned about catching the flight on time, one foreign teacher asked if Dursley could help find a private car to the airport. Dursley willingly helped her. The teacher was very appreciative. You know what? People usually tell other people about it when they receive good services. She told another teacher about it. The other teacher told five. Before long, all foreign teachers were getting help from Dursley. It was not just making arrangements for the ride. Sometimes, the teacher was waiting at one spot, and the driver was waiting at another location. He sometimes had to coordinate between the teacher and the driver. He continued to help the foreign teachers until he left for another school.
