How to Raise the Service Standards in Your School
If you’re here you have probably gotten your score for the Legendary Service Assessment. If you haven’t taken the assessment, click the button below:
This article is for those of you whose score falls between 61-90 in the assessment. Your school and the leaders seriously need to raise the service standards. It’s time to put some things in place that will set your school’s customer service on the right foot. What can you do to improve the situation? Consider the following as a starter:
Create a Service Vision
A service vision is the cornerstone of a customer-friendly environment. It acts as a compass to guide every employee to move in the same direction. You can use the school mission and vision as your service vision. Some schools have core values. The core values can also be interpreted and linked to customer service. If the school mission, vision, or core values are difficult to convert into understandable service expectations, create a customer service vision.
Communicate the Vision to Employees Regularly
After crafting a service vision, communicate the vision to every employee – new hires and long-time employees. Vision statements are not only meant to be printed on nice and attractive posters or signage. They are intended to regularly remind middle managers, frontline employees, part-time staff, contractors, and even volunteers of the service vision.
School leaders should do these reminders in a variety of ways. Use different channels to communicate the vision, e.g., team-level meetings, one-to-one meetings, town hall meetings, posters and signage, and site visits to various departments and offices.
Conduct a Customer Service Audit
You won’t know where to begin without the intel or data. Conducting an objective customer service audit is essential. Create and then use customer satisfaction surveys to find out what your internal and external customers think.
Another way of conducting a customer service audit is to get feedback from your frontline employees especially the staff members at the reception area. They are very important members of your team. Parents and teachers often talk or complain to the reception personnel. Somehow, they are more candid when they talk to the receptionist. The staff members at the reception see and observe more than any of the other employees. Frontline employees usually have a lot of customer feedback information for you if you bother to chat with them. Hear them out.
Recruit a “secret shopper” to experience all the possible contact points from a parent and student perspective. These touchpoints are not just at the reception lobby. It is also the security guardhouse. The parking lot. The school’s website. For students traveling by the school bus, the touchpoint is the bus driver or bus monitor. For students whose parents or a chauffeur drive them to school, it is the crossing guard.
Provide Training for All Employees
After collecting your data, you can then decide what the priority might be. Is it implementing customer service training? How will you deliver it? By department or by roles or a combination of the two? Will it be formal or casual? Will it be conducted in-house, or will you hire a consultant? Get someone with school experience? Someone outside the school industry?
Training should NOT be a one-time event; it ought to be ongoing. It ought to be conducted for every person in the school regardless of their role. It should not be just formal training sessions but should be ongoing coaching and one-on-one feedback with direct reports. It takes time to develop what you learn into a habit. In my opinion, conduct customer service training that is relevant to schools as education is different from retail or other service organizations.
If you are interested in knowing where each employee stands regarding customer service, we have another assessment for individual employees. Ask your teachers or staff members to take the customer service self-assessment at our website: www.pdacademia.com. The assessment is also free.
Model the Service Vision
As school leaders, we must show our staff members what customer focus looks like. Our behavior sends a strong signal to people that we are committed to the service vision or not. Spend time connecting with employees. One of the best ways to do this is to be visible. In some organizations, leaders periodically spend time directly serving their internal and external customers.
In conclusion, these suggestions are something for you and your colleagues to help you get started on the journey towards creating a customer-friendly environment. Good luck! Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions.
