exceeding your customers’ expectations...exceeding your customers’ expectations aacrao april 1,...
TRANSCRIPT
World Class Service: Exceeding Your Customers’ Expectations
AACRAO
April 1, 2012
• Background on the University of Minnesota
• Strategic plan for providing world class service
• Low cost ways to build customer service
• Our challenges and future projects
Presentation outline
University of Minnesota
Twin Cities campus • Located in the heart of the Minneapolis - St. Paul
metropolitan area
• Largest of the five campuses
• Made up of 17 colleges and professional schools
Student Enrollment
• Undergraduate 30,610
• Graduate 13,562
• Professional 3,625
• Non-degree 4,760
• Total: 52,557
Faculty and Staff 18,899
Organizational structure
President
Senior VP Academic Affairs & Provost
Vice Provost Undergraduate Education
Academic Support Resources (ASR)
One Stop Student Services
Office of Student Finance
Office of the
Registrar
Office of Classroom
Management
Continuity & Compliance
ASR-IT
Modes of service delivery
Customer Service
Web & Portal
In-person
Phone
Outreach
One Stop’s Mission Statement:
To provide quality professional
service in the areas of enrollment,
financial aid, billing, and payments,
in support of students’ academic
and financial objectives.
Creating world class service
Customer service standards Measures of success Teamwork Hiring Training
#1
Teamwork
Create an environment
of inclusion
• Engage and involve your employees – Staff meeting updates (discuss hot topics)
– Empowering professional judgment (gift certificates)
– Give them leadership of a committee
– Peer recognition
– Hiring committees
• Support from management – Be available
– Follow-up on issues
Know your team
• To make them feel special you have to get
to know every person (ex.regular 1:1’s)
• Look at everyone’s individual strengths
(Strength’s Finders) – What similarities, differences, and gaps exist?
– How do you utilize those without defining people
solely on the inventory?
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EXECUTING INFLUENCING STRATEGIC THINKING RELATIONSHIP BUILDING
Theme Counts
The results of teamwork…
• Staff are: – happy to come to work
– eager to give you their energy, creativity, and loyalty
– more productivity and satisfaction
• Staff have a good impact on students through: – Outstanding service
– Genuine care and concern for students
– Consistent expertise
• Students show a more positive perspective about
your institution and their experience is improved.
Appreciation and recognition
•Schedule perks
•Shirts
•Retreats
•Celebrations
•Thank you cards
•Immediate acknowledgement
•What do they individually like
•Peer recognition
#2
Create quality customer
service standards
Positive themes from student surveys
• Patient, friendly, courteous, knowledgeable, and helpful
• Handled problems in a timely and professional manner
• Responded quickly to e-mails with thorough and relevant
information
• Offered good advice and encouragement - showed they care
• Made SURE answers are correct – if they didn’t know, found
someone who did
Continuous improvement
Themes from student surveys:
• Give accurate, consistent, and complete information to students
• Avoid bad mannerisms (i.e. frustrated tone of voice and actions)
• Maintain professionalism in all circumstances
• Know who handles what in departments - decrease the
‘bouncing back and forth’
• Anticipate questions and explain answers thoroughly - you know
more than the student
Taking service to the next level
Ongoing formal project:
• Created Quality Standards Development project team – Oct 2008
• Quality service project kick off with staff – Dec 2008
• Collected data on customer expectations – Jan-March 2008
• Set quality standards with staff – April 2008
• Define standards and measures of accountability – Sept 2009
One Stop service model Understanding our
customers: Do we know
the students, parents,
staff, and faculty for to
whom we provide
service?
Quality Standards: The
operating priorities that
ensure a consistent and
high-quality customer
service experience
Delivery Systems:
Staff, setting, process
Integration: the
alignment of all the
components, ensuring a
seamless customer
experience
Needs
Emotions
Stereotypes
Wants
(Approach taken from: Disney Approach to Quality Service)
satisfaction
helpful
peace of mind
courteous
guidance
confident
prepared
respect
simplicity
clarity
knowledgeable
accountability
friendliness
follow-up
personalized
control
relaxed
confidentiality
independence
concerned
consistency
happy
easy access
fun
certainty
ease
understanding
empathy
calming
accuracy
efficiency
accessibility
patience
supportive
up-to-date
appreciative
feel welcomed
responsible
convenience
timely
caring
One Stop customer expectation
word sort
Identified a word or phrase
that described
each of the groupings
and write that
word or phrase on
the corresponding line
below each box.
Which themes arise when looking at quality service?
Empathy • concerned
•understanding
• sympathetic
Knowledgeable
• responsible
• confident
• accurate
• accountable
Consistency • clarity
• accuracy
• prepared
• knowledgeable
One Stop quality standards:
words that embody the core of One Stop
• Knowledgeable – Professional, experienced, informed
• Empathetic – Understanding, sensitive, compassionate
• Friendly – Cheerful, approachable, kind, welcoming
• Efficient – Timely, accurate, well organized, resourceful
Bringing quality standards to life
Expectations
Action Related quality
standard
Convey a positive
attitude
Friendly
Do not assume Empathetic
Be comprehensive Efficient,
knowledgeable
Listen actively Empathetic
Requirements
Action Related quality
standard
State your name at the
beginning of a call
Friendly, convenient
Include an opening
sentiment in every e-mail
Friendly
Enter a comment after
every interaction
Convenient, accurate,
efficient
Check implications of all
three silos
Accurate, efficient,
knowledgeable, convenient
Ways to infuse the quality
standards in daily work life
• Training manual
• Any new or refresher training should have an
element that discusses how you will accomplish
the standards with this new knowledge.
• Display in your office
• Service monitoring
• Peer recognition
#3
Hire the right person for
your organization
Make your ‘staff’ your brand
No matter how good your services are, you
can’t achieve true excellence unless you
• Attract great staff
• Develop great staff
• Keep great staff
Define the perfect candidate
Personal Qualities
• Courteous
• Empathetic
• People oriented
• Take initiative
• Stay calm as they work on problems
• Communicate well
• Team players!
Define the perfect candidate
Skill set needed for service oriented person – Bachelor’s degree
– One year customer service experience
– Experience in registration/financial aid/student account receivable
– Public speaking
– University of Minnesota experience
– Previous college work/Lead worker experience
– PeopleSoft (Oracle)
– Strong communication skills
Resumes
• Neatness – application/resume
• Spelling and grammar – errors may be an indication
of laziness or a lack of education
• Organizational skills – was the resume organized
with the most important information first?
• Employee gaps – Watch for dates that only reflect
the year, not the month
Examples of interview questions
• What aspect of your work life do you feel passionate about?
• How do you define quality service to students and co-workers and
how would you as a One Stop Counselor provide it?
• What is your definition of teamwork? Give an example where you
felt you contributed effectively to a team.
• Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a
very upset customer or co-worker.
• When have you felt the greatest pressure to compromise your
personal integrity?
• What would you be looking forward to in this position?
#4
Design an effective training
program for new and
existing staff
Training program process
• Formal training on student life-cycle
• Testing knowledge after each stage of life-cycle
– Role playing
– Real student scenarios
– Asking other staff questions
• Mentorship and shadowing
• Completion party!
• Continuous refresher training
Prepare staff for the unexpected
• Anticipate every possible scenario
• Train for the ordinary tasks
• Prepare staff for unusual situations
• Create talking-points
Evaluation
• Formal evaluation of training knowledge
• Evaluation of training program
• Informal training evaluation from trainers,
mentors and other staff members
• Call monitoring evaluation
• Comment queries
• E-mail spot checks
#5
Analyze your measures
of success
Measures of success
• Point of Service Comment Cards
• Annual Student Survey
• Quantity/quality of compliments
• Web usability testing
• One Stop website comments link
• Annual Student Veteran Survey
• Bi-annual Internal Customer Survey
• Phone, email, and comment monitoring
One Stop organizational
productivity measures
• Wait time in phone queue
• Wait time for walk-in customers
• Turn around time for email inquiries
• Transaction speed and volume
• Timeliness and accuracy of fax and mail requests
• Number of transactions per staff
Student reactions
• “Excellent service, not only did you take care of the
problem, you took care of me as well.”
• “The staff here are great, pleasant and go the extra mile.”
• “You say “no” in such a nice and informative way.”
• “One Stop is terrific! I’ve never seen anything like it! You
all know so much. How do you do it? You must be in
training all of the time! You guys should run the federal
government.”
• “You could give some stores a few lessons on service.”
Continuous improvement of high
quality service
• Be aware of fluctuating needs of students
• Streamline procedures and services
• Analyze past practices & eliminate
inefficiencies
• Improve the content and timing of e-mail
messages and letters
Strategic Planning
• Creating values
• Keep with the knowledge of all available
resources
• Staff utilization and creating equal workloads
• Office adjustments during busy time
• Clear problem escalation paths
Low cost ways to build customer service
• Web resources
• Publications
• Webinars
• Social media
• Greeters during busy time
• Track every interaction
• Recognize staff when you see something
immediately so it reinforces repetition
• Refresher training on soft skills w/ role playing
Our challenges and future projects
• Dealing with difficult customers
• Proactive vs. reactive work with students
• Coaching staff
• Staff recognition
• Social media
• Mobile
• CRM
• Keep the quality standards on the top of mind
Julie Selander Interim Director
612-625-6579
Carrie Otto Assistant Director
612-625-6051
onestop.umn.edu
Contact information