CEU’s customer service

In today’s ever more-competitive educational marketplace, one might ask if the College of Eastern Utah is acknowledging who its customers are and whether or not the college is pleasing its customers time after time?
Bill Dillion (NACAS, 1995) wrote “with more people questioning the value of higher education than ever before, and only an estimated 56 percent of America’s college students graduating from the institution where they began as freshmen, it is reasonable to conclude that customer service from the education itself to the food service and even how the buildings and grounds are maintained should be a major interest to college and university administrators.”
Thousands of dollars are spent recruiting new students to campus each year with those students’s expecting a quality education. Those students become CEU’s customers. However as of late, the only customers that receive the red carpet treatment are the dignitaries when a special event is hosted by CEU.
Case in point: budget cuts, parking lot closures, declining enrollment and disastrous grounds plagued campus the past few years. There’s not a lot that can change the budget cuts or parking lot closures. However when a campus event like graduation or the 65th Anniversary are hosted, faculty, staff and students are seen picking up garbage, pulling weeds and planting flowers.
What happened to making the campus look nicer for the customers who visit it on a daily basis? What happed to the way campus looked when students came back to school this fall? Maybe the enrollment woes of late would be helped if the overall educational package offered by CEU would include a pleasing campus environment.
Take a moment and think about how many current students would recommend CEU to a friend. List the positive and negative attributes they would tell a friend. Has every interaction met the student’s expectations with competent, efficient, friendly employees who assumed responsibility for pleasing them at the point of service? Are the student’s convinced that CEU cares about their satisfaction and goes out of its way to accommodate them? Are all the buildings and grounds kept in pristine condition and meeting the expectations of the students on a day-to-day basis and not just for special occasions.
The Forum Corporation revealed that only 14 percent of customers who stop patronizing a service business do so because they are dissatisfied with the quality of what they bought. More than two thirds defect because they found the service people indifferent or unhelpful.
The Harvard Business School found in a recent study that a quick recovery from a service failure could create more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place. Consistent, friendly service and quick responses to service failures have won loyalty for their customers.
The best colleges in the nation offers a package deal promising a quality education where people care about every student’s (customer’s) satisfaction. Higher education is a critical service industry with administrators, faculty, cafeteria workers and grounds keepers among those whose combined efforts deliver a crucial service to students … the future leaders of our shared world.
CEU must serve them well in every aspect of their educational package. Trust, commitment, empowerment, and teamwork are more than just cliches. These traits are critical ingredients to the overall student success, which is monitored every day with every employee and every customer they serve.