The post The growing need for a Customer Excellence mindset in Higher Education appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

The topic of whether universities and colleges should view their students, alumni and donors (Constituents) like customers is a debate that has been taking place for many years. Recently, TSI has noticed this debate is occurring with increasing frequency, especially in light of our recent Customer Experience training. Now more than ever seems to be the right time to continue the discussion of how to best utilize customer service/experience philosophies when working with Higher Education constituents.

The Challenge of Looking at Higher Education Constituents as Customers

Historically, many leaders in Higher Education abhor the thought of students as customers for many valid reasons. Anecdotally, I have found that the perception of Higher Education towards the concept of a customer is that customers are a number; customers are people that must be solicited or won over, and you need to sell to customers. Additionally, some feel that the merit of education should be separated from a financial transaction usually associated with being a customer.

In treating your constituents like customers, Higher Education institutions may feel pressure to lower their standards and values. While some of this vitriol may be warranted, Higher Education institutions should not dismiss important Customer Experience concepts since these can improve the service to their constituents.

The growing need for Customer Service in Higher Education

A critical factor in today’s higher education landscape is the continued decline in student enrollment across Title IV institutions in the United States. According to recent data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, postsecondary enrollment has been steadily decreasing, with undergraduate enrollment falling by nearly 8% between 2019 and 2022. This trend reflects a shrinking pool of traditional college-aged students, a rise in alternative education pathways, and shifting societal attitudes toward the value of a degree.

Higher education institutions are now competing not only with other universities and colleges (including for-profit and non-degree granting programs) but also with various career, social, and online education options, such as bootcamps, certifications, and skill-based training platforms like Coursera and LinkedIn Learning.

This competition extends beyond just recruiting new students. Alumni and donor engagement are increasingly critical for sustaining revenue. Institutions that fail to excel in student recruitment, alumni engagement, and fundraising risk flatlining or declining revenue streams. This, in turn, forces reductions in operational and capital expenditures, creating a feedback loop of restricted budgets and limited resources for future growth and engagement.

To counteract these challenges, innovative leaders in higher education are taking cues from the private sector. Businesses, particularly in competitive industries, are focusing on customer-centric approaches to foster loyalty and growth. They are investing in high-impact customer service strategies to create differentiated experiences that not only retain existing customers but also attract new ones.

So why should students/alumni/donors be viewed any differently than a business would view its customers?

Starting with the similarities:

1. Both are consumers – Students and customers are consumers of the product that is produced by the associated institution. For example, a student, when not in class, is consuming goods and services. Regardless of how the institution wants to classify these individuals, they define themselves as consumers since they pay, what they feel is a very high amount of money, in exchange for a service. As a result, they have high expectations for this service.

Think about how vocal students are when their Wi-Fi is slow; the course registration process has errors and/or takes too long; or the food in the Café does not meet their standards. Each of these seemingly small occurrences can influence how the student will share their experiences with their friends or peers, especially via social media, which enables other potential students to form their opinions as to whether they want to attend that institution.

A great example of Higher Education institutions appealing to their constituents that closely aligns with Customer Experience principles is through their athletics programs. There is no denying that in many major Universities in the United States, their football programs have become very proficient in marketing themselves to gain the best recruits, develop a rabid fan base, and ultimately profit from this fan base. Universities do not need to go all the way to this extreme; Higher Education administrators can still learn valuable lessons looking at how Athletic programs are appealing to their constituents.

2. Variety of appeals – People are constantly bombarded via social media, television, movies, newspapers, magazines and other channels to donate to this organization, or be a customer of that organization. This makes it very difficult for a single organization to “Cut through the noise”. I particularly like Forbes contributor, John Hall, advice to “Invest in your company leaders’ brands”.  Specifically, the leaders who had “invested time and resources in building their brands were attracting more attention from investors and even other participants.” Replace investors with students or donors, and this statement is fit for Higher Education. Of course, the question is how to build your brand. That is another topic for a different day.

Now, the key differences between Higher Education Constituents and customers:

1. Regulatory implications—Higher Education institutions that offer Title IV funding for their students are subject to rigorous federal and state regulations and policies that determine how the university interacts with the student and tracks the student’s outcomes. In addition, FERPA regulations strictly define how institutions are to maintain and protect student information. The closest parallel to this is in Healthcare, which is going through a similar debate with the Patient vs. Customer paradigm.

2. Student / Donor Lifecycle – Students have a unique lifecycle within Higher Education. At a high level, the lifecycle of a Customer involves attraction to the product, successfully completing the transaction, and maintaining a relationship to generate future transactions. The student lifecycle, at the same high level, has a few more steps in the process:

1. Becomes attracted to a particular college or university;
2. Applies to the university;
3. Is accepted by the university;
4. Completes required degree coursework, and ultimately;
5. Graduates from the university with their desired degree.

This process differs from the Donor lifecycle, which only begins when the Student lifecycle ends. The need for Higher Education to do more and more advancement work (fundraising) has required Schools to be cultivating relationships long past graduation, to aid in the fundraising needed to fill growing state funding gaps. In short, the student/alumni lifecycle is more complex, and needs to be treated as such.

The Donor lifecycle can be equally complex. Appeals for donations to a University can not only span years, but also can span generations. This requires extensive planning, communication and patience on the side of a university that often most businesses are not willing to invest.

So, what is the answer?

The answer to whether Higher Education institutions should view their Students, Alumni or Donors as Customers when discussing Customer Service in Higher Education is yes… and no.

Valuable lessons can be learned from the customer experiences of private businesses. Colleges and Universities do not need to feel like they are compromising their mission or selling their soul by considering the “personas” of their constituent base and defining differentiating experiences and processes that personify the “brand” of the institution.  The key however, is to really know your constituents including each of their objectives and the “moments that matter” to them.

When looking at how to improve Student enrollment and drive Alumni engagement and Donor interest, understanding how to serve them in a way that will lead to a truly differentiated experience is where to spend time and resources. However, if Higher Education institutions try to blindly apply all concepts from private businesses’ customer service practices without understanding how your constituents are different, they will create problems with their students, alumni, and donors. I would be incorrect if I said that these concepts are new to Higher Education and are not being practiced at all today.

What can you do for TSI, and vice versa?

It’s simple – help us help you. We at TSI always like to hear new and innovative ways that institutions are applying Customer Experience concepts to their customer service in Higher Education.  Please let us know:

• What did you think of this summary? And;
• What is your greatest challenge or achievement in providing a differentiated service to your constituents?

If you are interested in learning how your institution can apply Customer Experience concepts to student recruitment, donor engagement, and your advancement activities, contact us to discuss various approaches that can make a difference.

The post Adopting a “Customer Service” Mindset in Higher Education appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

We see it in newspapers and blogs, much of higher education is in crisis. Many believe that colleges and universities are not meeting the needs of today’s market, while others argue that it is outside of the scope of higher education institutions to constantly adjust to market forces.

The basis of the above misalignment lies within the organizational boundaries where colleges and universities live compared to those in which businesses live. In essence, colleges and universities are a unique organizational type with distinct boundaries that allow them to do what they do: educate, contribute to knowledge generation, and serve their communities.

Every organization must have defined boundaries. What are boundaries? They are lines drawn in the sand that indicate where an organization ends and the outside environment begins. Only by clearly defining boundaries, can an organization exist, as well as thrive in a competitive environment.

There is a large body of literature on the importance of organizational boundaries in nearly every field. In their review of the literature, Santos and Eisenhardt (2005) discuss four distinct concepts of organizational boundaries that deal with specific foundational issues:

1. Efficiency, demarcates the transactions undertaken by the organization with the goal of minimizing cost;
2. Power, defines the domains over which the organization exercises influence with the gain autonomy;
3. Competence, determines the resources possessed by the organization in order for the company to reach a state of growth, and;
4. Identity, establishes the dominant mind-set of “who we are” in the organization to create coherence.

Without boundaries, an organization cannot survive. We can all think of organizations who ultimately failed due to a lack of definition of one or many of the above boundaries. Examples of companies that fail to identify their direction, or attempt to scale too quickly are very prominent among tech start-ups. Issues with properly managing scalability often hinder today’s “Fastest Growing Companies”, commonly when they focus too narrowly on one aspect of performance (e.g., sales revenue), and fail to accurately assess other organizational performance metrics that have a larger impact on sustainability (boundary of efficiency). Other examples may become apparent in the form of a merger or acquisition, strictly due to a culture clash that was mismanaged by leadership. It is immensely difficult to be “all things to all people”, while maintaining a consistent sense of identity throughout the organization.

Boundaries in Higher Education

Like other organizations, higher education institutions have defined boundaries that have allowed the American University to survive through turbulent periods and in some cases, flourish longer than nearly any other organization in the United States. Historically, their strong identity and power boundaries have many American colleges and universities situated among the best in the world.

Although boundaries are compulsory for organizations to survive, these boundaries cannot be so large that the organization is isolated from the surrounding world. When boundaries are so vast that an organization acts independent of the environment, the organization loses its relevancy and thus its purpose.

Many have argued that higher education institutions generally have operated independently of the environment or market for decades–especially in relation to their efficiency and competence boundaries. Artifacts of this isolation are found in antiquated technologies, business processes, budget models, teaching practices, and student experiences, among other things that leave higher education institutions operating suboptimally. Although many believe that it is inappropriate to equate a college or university to a business because they have radically different organizational goals (the goal of a business is profit of the business and those who hold shares in the business while the goal of a university is the well being of those that it serves), much can be learned from spanning the boundary between higher education and the business world.

As a Ph.D. student studying Higher Education Administration, I have one leg in academia while my fairly new role as a Higher Education Analyst at TSI situates the other leg in the business world. I have the unique privilege of seeing a problem through two different, often contradictory perspectives. I am serving as a boundary spanner in the loose definition of the term. My presence in the gap between boundaries extends my reach outside of one organization and allows me to both affect and be affected by other organizations.

From the perspective of the business world, solving the problems of higher education can be simple. In fact, many of the problems that higher education institutions currently face have been solved in other industries by other organizations. Why not just repurpose similar solutions for problems in higher ed? Can it be that difficult for a university to cut costs, pivot, adapt, or shift boundaries? Everyone else is doing it.

Let’s take the example of Ford. Over one hundred years ago, Henry Ford changed the automotive industry forever when he discovered a way to mass produce a car that was affordable to nearly all Americans in a time where cars were prohibitively expensive. He cut production costs and produced a car that was sold at nearly half the wage of the average American. Although reducing cost and mass producing automobiles was an effective solution to the problem of high cost in the automotive industry, cost reduction and mass production have not played out as effective solutions in higher education.  In fact, over the years, thousands of attempts at reducing the “production costs” (the costs a university occurs to educate a student) for a college degree have failed. Across the country, the current cost for a degree is at an all-time high and mass production of higher education is showing diminishing student outcomes. It is commonly accepted by college educators that you can’t simply “scale up” a college education. In fact, the latest evidence-based college teaching practices require more from educators than ever before. The cost and investment necessary is not scaleable. Luckily, we are seeing gains in student learning measures when these costly teaching practices are implemented in the college classroom, so instructors are choosing student learning over minimizing cost.

Conversely, from the perspective of the academy, issues can seem too complex to solve. The combination of decreased public funding, increased regulations, low student outcomes, administrative bloat, hostile campus climates, declining enrollments, and increased competition, to name a few of today’s issues in higher ed, have many universities struggling to take the first step towards reducing the cost of their degrees. Further, once change is identified as needed, balancing multiple internal and external stakeholders, institutional policies, complex priorities, deeply rooted tradition, and complex shared governance structures make implementing change to produce a more affordable degree seem much more difficult. The same boundaries that allowed the university to survive over 350 years can be the factors that hold back its growth and ability to adapt to changing environments.

Spanning the Boundaries

From my perspective, sitting in the gap between the boundaries of higher education and business, the problems facing today’s colleges and universities cannot be fixed with one-size-fits all solutions or application of solutions born in other industries. I also believe that it is inefficient for higher education to “recreate the wheel” for every problem that they have. Rather, it is important to understand the boundaries of higher education institutions alongside the business sector trends, and analyze the available and/or necessary tools to create solutions that fit within the boundaries of individual colleges and universities.

In my first sixty days at TSI I have realized that the solutions to higher education’s most challenging problems are not hidden away in the success stories of the business world just waiting to be applied by a vice president on a college campus. At the same time, they aren’t sitting on an hard drive in a university lab written in 1’s and 0’s waiting for the right analysis to be run. Rather, they are born in a more collaborative place between the boundaries.

Spanning the gap between organizational boundaries is a magical place where low risk collaboration and problem solving can occur.  Here, information can be processed independent of industry norms, in a place where ideas can be thought about from different perspectives simultaneously, then combined with other ideas, refined, and packaged to fit within the boundaries of a different organization. Solutions can be found in a space where the complexity of the issues are not lost, rather valued, evaluated, discussed, and used to strategize specific implementations of a combination of both novel and borrowed ideas in an organization defined by an identity foreign to the business world.

The TSI Difference: Higher Education Consulting

The Higher Education Team at TSI prides itself in spanning the boundaries between higher education and the business world. We strive to continually redefine our work in both the higher education and the private sector by challenging norms and learning from every organization that we see. Within that boundary gap, we bring a combination of knowledge from three distinct domains to all of our work.

First, our team is lead by Dan Feely, a battle-tested consultant with over 25 years of experience between Big Four firms and his time since he founded TSI. He has a portfolio of experiences that demonstrate his proficiency in “making change happen, and making it stick”, while also helping organizations identify and solve complex problems.

Second, we have a team of experienced content experts including financial gurus, admissions buffs, advancement experts, procurement prodigies, and others who provide deep technical insight into specific problems and implementation of specific types of change.

Lastly, TSI brought me on to the Higher Ed Team to challenge the norms of our practices. My role is to maintain identity with the university (i.e, the client) and view our projects through their definitions of specific boundaries. I use qualitative and quantitative research methodologies in conjunction with my formal studies of the higher education literature to form a deep understanding of the context of each issue that a college or university faces. With that information, we come together to produce truly tailored custom solutions to a wide array of problems.

Together, our team ensures that we produce solutions that fit the specific needs of each college or university. We value alignment with institutional mission and goals over other metrics. TSI offers a diverse set of services that fall within each of the four boundary types. For more information, check out our Higher Education Consulting Service Offerings.

We look forward to learning about your institution and providing you with the tools you need to reach the specific goals of your college or university. For questions about our Higher Education Consulting Practice check out our Higher Education Page, or email me at tsi@transforming.com.

Key Literature

Hill, L. B. (2016). Advancing undergraduate STEM reform through multi-institutional networks: The role of formal boundary spanners (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University).

Santos, F. M., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (2005). Organizational boundaries and theories of organization. Organization science, 16(5), 491-508.

The post Spanning the Gap: Higher Education and the Private Sector appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Are You REALLY Enhancing Your Customer Experience (CX) To Create an Unfair Advantage For You? Or For Your Competition?

Customer Service in Higher Education

Upcoming Workshops in 2017; Customer Experience and Higher Education Student Experience

Our next training workshops will take place in September, 2017! 

TSI’s Newest Addition – Jessica Schein

Higher Education Business/Program Analyst

The post TSI’s Customer Experience and Student Experience Articles, Training Workshops, and our Newest Team Member! appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

The topic of whether universities and colleges should view their students, alumni and donors (Constituents) like customers is a debate that has been taking place for many years. Recently, TSI has noticed this debate is occurring with increasing frequency, especially in light of our recent Customer Experience training. Now more than ever seems to be the right time to continue the discussion of how to best utilize customer service/experience philosophies when working with Higher Education constituents.

The Challenge of looking at Higher Education Constituents as Customers

Historically, many leaders in Higher Education abhor the thought of students as customers for many valid reasons. Anecdotally, I have found that the perception of Higher Education towards the concept of a customer is that customers are a number; customers are people that must be solicited or won over, and you need to sell to customers. Additionally, some feel that the merit of education should be separated from a financial transaction usually associated with being a customer.

In treating your constituents like customers, Higher Education institutions may feel pressure to lower their standards and values. While some of this vitriol may be warranted, Higher Education institutions should not dismiss important Customer Experience concepts since these can improve the service to their constituents.

The growing need for Customer Service in Higher Education

A key factor for this discussion is that since 2010, student enrollment in all Title IV institutions has been declining nationally. Since the fall semester of 2010 to the fall of 2014, Title IV institutions in the United States have lost 928,000 students, a 4.3% decline. (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics) This means that the available population is either shrinking, or potential students are choosing not to go to traditional colleges and universities. Thus, most Higher Education institutions are required to compete between other Higher Education Institutions (including For Profit, as well as non-degree granting institutions), but also between other social and career avenues and interests.

Keep in mind this fight for attention does not only apply to gaining current students, but to donor and alumni engagement as well.  If Higher Education Institutions do not become better than their peers for student recruitment, alumni engagement and donor/alumni fundraising, revenue will remain level, or possibly start to decline. With a decline in revenue, the Institution may also need to reduce operational and capital expenses. This results in the institution applying less and less resources to engaging the institution’s future students, alumni and donor bases. Overall, this slippery slope will result in increasingly restrictive budgets, paired with an increased focus on being efficient with resource expenses.

To battle the many competing interests for potential students and alumni/donor engagement, some progressive Higher Education leaders are looking to private businesses that have been doing similar activities successfully for a long time. Businesses are currently going through their own period of discovery and change. They are looking more and more closely at their customers and trying to provide high impact customer service. Their aim is to achieve a differentiating experience, which drives loyalty and repeat business. This mindset is where Business can help define and provide inputs into the discussion of customer service in Higher Education.

So why should students/alumni/donors be viewed any differently than a business would view its customers?

Starting with the similarities:

1. Both are consumers – Students and customers are consumers of the product that is produced by the associated institution. For example, a student, when not in class, is consuming goods and services. Regardless of how the institution wants to classify these individuals, they define themselves as consumers since they pay, what they feel is a very high amount of money, in exchange for a service. As a result, they have high expectations for this service.

Think about how vocal students are when their Wi-Fi is slow; the course registration process has errors and/or takes too long; or the food in the Café does not meet their standards. Each of these seemingly small occurrences can influence how the student will share their experiences with their friends or peers, especially via social media, which enables other potential students to form their opinions as to whether they want to attend that institution.

A great example of Higher Education institutions appealing to their constituents that closely aligns with Customer Experience principles is through their athletics programs. There is no denying that in many major Universities in the United States, their football programs have become very proficient in marketing themselves to gain the best recruits, develop a rabid fan base, and ultimately profit from this fan base. Universities do not need to go all the way to this extreme; Higher Education administrators can still learn valuable lessons looking at how Athletic programs are appealing to their constituents.

2. Variety of appeals – People are constantly bombarded via radio, social media, television, movies, newspapers, magazines and other channels to donate to this organization, or be a customer of that organization. This makes it very difficult for a single organization to “Cut through the noise”.  Forbes contributor John Hall wrote about this specifically for attracting investors. However, Hall has many parallels in his article to what Universities should be doing to attract both potential students as well as donors (Hall, 2016). I particularly like his advice to “Invest in your company leaders’ brands”.  Specifically, the leaders who had “invested time and resources in building their brands were attracting more attention from investors and even other participants.” Replace investors with students or donors, and this statement is fit for Higher Education. Of course, the question is how to build your brand. That is another topic for a different day.

Now, the key differences between Higher Education Constituents and customers:

1. Regulatory implications – Higher Education institutions that offer Title IV funding for their students, are subject to rigorous federal and state regulations and policies that determine how the university interacts with the student, as well as tracks the outcomes for the student. In addition, FERPA regulations strictly define how institutions are to maintain and protect student information. The closest parallel to this is in Healthcare, which is going through a similar debate with the Patient vs. Customer paradigm. [1]

2. Student / Donor Lifecycle – Students have a unique lifecycle within Higher Education. At a high level, the lifecycle of a Customer involves attraction to the product, successfully completing the transaction, and maintaining a relationship to generate future transactions. The student lifecycle, at the same high level, has a few more steps in the process:

1. Becomes attracted to a particular college or university;
2. Applies to the university;
3. Is accepted by the university;
4. Completes required degree coursework, and ultimately;
5. Graduates from the university with their desired degree.

This process differs from the Donor lifecycle, which only begins when the Student lifecycle ends. The need for Higher Education to do more and more advancement work (fundraising) has required Schools to be cultivating relationships long past graduation, to aid in the fundraising needed to fill growing state funding gaps. In short, the student/alumni lifecycle is more complex, and needs to be treated as such.

The Donor lifecycle can be equally as complex. Appeals for donations to a University can not only span years, but also can span generations. This requires extensive planning, communication and patience on the side of a university that often most businesses are not willing to invest. The Chronical of Higher Education had a recent article listing the largest private gifts to Higher Education institutions. I would be willing to bet a sizable sum that the vast majority of these gifts were not solicited then given within a weeks’ time. Let us know of recent examples you have had with large gifts and the time it took to generate those gifts.

[1] For more, start with this excellent article from the Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2012/01/the-trouble-with-treating-pati

So, what is the answer?

The answer to whether Higher Education institutions should view their Students, Alumni or Donors as Customers when discussing Customer Service in Higher Education is yes… and no.

Valuable lessons can be learned from the customer experiences of private businesses. Colleges and Universities do not need to feel like they are compromising their mission or selling their soul by considering the “personas” of their constituent base and defining differentiating experiences and processes that personify the “brand” of the institution.  The key however, is to really know your constituents including each of their objectives and the “moments that matter” to them.

When looking at how to improve Student enrollment, drive Alumni engagement and Donor interest, understanding how to serve them in a way that will lead to a truly differentiated experience is where to spend time and resources. However, if Higher Education institutions try to blindly apply all concepts from private businesses’ customer service practices, without understanding how your constituents are different, they will create problems with their students, alumni and donors. I would be incorrect if I said that these concepts are new to Higher Education, and are not being practiced at all today.

What can you do for TSI, and vice versa?

It’s simple – help us help you. We at TSI always like to hear new and innovative ways that institutions are applying Customer Experience concepts to their customer service in Higher Education.  Please let us know:

• What did you think of this summary? And;
• What is your greatest challenge or achievement in providing a differentiated service to your constituents?

If you are interested in learning how your institution can apply Customer Experience concepts to student recruitment, donor engagement and your advancement activities, contact us to go through our Customer Experience workshop.

Works Cited

Hall, J. (2016, May 15). Forbes.com. Retrieved from Cut Through The Noise: How To Differentiate Yourself To Attract Investments: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhall/2016/05/15/cut-through-the-noise-how-to- differentiate-yourself-to-attract-investments/

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (n.d.). Total fall enrollment in all postsecondary institutions participating in Title IV programs and annual percentage change in
enrollment, by degree-granting status and control of institution: 1995 through 2014. Retrieved from National Center for Education Statistics:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_303.20.asp?current=yes

The post Customer Service in Higher Education appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..