Customer Service Operations of University - Essay Example

Service Operations of Expectations from a service not taken before need to be clear. As s, we need to know what is expected from the service provider. It is not mandatory to experience the service beforehand and document a list of expectations. A university’s customer care viewing from the student perspective segregates it to a B2C service. As a student we expect and we need to know whether the facilities offered by an educational organisation are average or excellent. One can not judge and have some idea about the services through public events and television. Some happenings could be out of the control. Customer care of the University needs to develop the expectations of the student community and carefully manage their perceptions as well. Service cues cannot be same as can be for any other industry sector, for example hotel and restaurant experience (Johnston & Clark 2008). Therefore, expectations need to be defined to know the quality factors a university needs to set up. The components of expectations need to be comprehended to functionalise customer expectations so that quality parameters could be structured and offered in required levels of quality. It would also help in creating such tools that map customer satisfaction (Johnston & Clark 2008). Service quality factors, according to Johnston & Clark (2008) can vary for different organisations but at least 18 quality factors have been zeroed-in on the basis of wider application of the quality parameters. These factors, which are identifications of prior expectations, include: Access. Service offering address should be reachable easily and the road leading to the destination should be free from the roadblocks. Aesthetics. Parts of the service offering should be admissible and soothing to the customer; it includes the look of the building, its surrounding area and services offerings including offered products and staff. Willingness to help. It should be offered by the contact people to the customer and indicate interest of the service provider in attending to customer needs. Availability. Here it not only implies availability of service facilities, staff and products to the customer but the reasonable ratio of staff to the needy customers. Products availability should also be sufficient in quantity and variance to be shown to the customer. Care. The customer expects fair and sympathetic treatment, and extended patience of the staff to make the customer feel at ease emotionally. Cleanliness. The facilities the customer approaches need to be well managed from environment perspective. All physical parts of the service offering including goods and personnel come in the scope of cleanliness. Comfort. It comes with the arrangements made by the facility for the comfortable stay of the customer while visiting the facility. Dedication. The attending personnel’s perceived dedication in attending to the customers and doing their job proudly and with apparent activeness and completely. Communication. The servicing staff need to communicate with the customers in such a way that help the customers comprehend what is conveyed. Communication needs to be correct, clear, concise including both written and spoken language used in providing the required knowledge and at the same time listening thoughtfully to what the customer wants to convey. Competence. It is related to the expertise required in accomplishing the service as per customer needs. It requires following the right processes, exact delivery as per customer inputs, extent of service or product information shown by the contact personnel, offering suggestions and ability of the staff in doing the job nicely. Courtesy. It is related to the behaviour of the concerned staff in attending to the customer issues, which should not be interfering sort of. Flexibility. Readiness on the part of the customer service to mould the service as per customer needs. Friendliness. Attitude of the customer service representative needs to be welcoming and body language of the concerned staff should exhibit positivity. Functionality. It is the process of serviceability for ‘product quality’ of facilities. Integrity. Customers’ issues should be resolved with perceived fairness, unbiased attitude, and by winning the confidence of the customer. Reliability. The service facilities, goods and personnel need to be dependable and in harmony. It also includes timely delivery of service with less waiting and queuing time. Response time. Quick and timed delivery of service. It requires speed in throughput and prompt answering to customer inquiries. Security. While the customer is going through the service processes, customers and their belongings should not be a concern of the customer. Confidentiality is a part of security process. Answering the Telephone Employees need to follow routine telephone service standards, (Kennesaw State University, 2010) particularly while responding to customer calls, such as: Response should be instant as soon as the telephone bell rings to pick up the receiver or at the minimum by the third ring. A personnel needs to identify, for example, the name of the university, the first name of the personnel answering the telephone and any sort of help required by the student. Example script: ABC College Registrar’s Office, Victoria speaking, how may I help you? Email Standards. Norms need to be followed include: • Check email at the minimum twice daily. All email messages received in the morning need to be replied to by the afternoon on the same day. Messages received in the afternoon need to be answered to by the next business morning. • In case an employee is on leave for many days, the email out-of-office-assistant needs to be used. It should provide detail on employee’s leave days and the day of joining duty. A contact number should be provided to customers for quick help. All pending emails should be responded on the date of joining duty. • All emails should be timely answered to avoid a full in-box (Kennesaw State University, 2010). Intangible factors play an important part in service experiences. Customers’ outlook can be converted by changing intangible factors into tangible ones during the service process, for example, by providing toilet paper in the bathrooms to add to the professional etiquette of the organisation. Customer satisfaction can happen at two levels, individual or cumulative. The two major approaches for realising customer satisfaction are: a rational and incident-based approach (Johnston & Clark, 2008). The Rational Approach It is taken by customers intentionally or unintentionally by weighing different satisfaction factors to compensate the score of one for the other to reach a rational evaluation of the standard of a service. Actually, a number of satisfaction surveys like SURVQUAL are based on the concept that right method of measuring satisfaction is by distributing weighs to the different factors (given priority by customers) and multiplying the weigh by the score (on a 1-5 scale) for single factor and then gathering them into a total satisfaction rating (Johnston & Clark, 2008). The Incident Approach It is the optional view that customer decisions are not rational. Any single good or bad experience can affect or impact the total outcome on customer satisfaction although the rest of the factors or indicators perform within the agreed quality parameters (Johnston & Clark, 2008). Actually, path taken by consumers is a mix of the two approaches. It denotes that care must be made while designing algorithms to measure customer total satisfaction level with a given service. Customers’ potential can not be taken for granted in making and taking right decisions on the reasons of their satisfaction or for that matter their dissatisfaction. Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield Hallam University offers to its student customers a number of service based facilities visible at the home page of the university website such as Disabled student support service (DSS) for their Special needs, Education guidance service and Employment service to name a few out of many customer support services of the university. Applications are invited for disabled students to offer them adapted rooms to provide them the best available accommodation. Working on the principles of inclusion and equal opportunities, students are provided latest support advice by the SHU SHU has formed a Disabled Student Support Team that can be visited by the disabled student during the working days. The support service is open to prospective and applicant disabled students by holding informal meetings and discussions supportive of the University’s Open Day. Services provided include information to students with Specific Disabilities, Running an Induction Programme for new entrants of the DSS, considering applications for Disabled Students’ Allowances, performing Needs Assessment with the Sheffield Regional Assessment Centre (SRAC). A customized package is offered to disabled students specific to their needs. Students suffering from dyslexia, dyspraxia and specific learning disabilities are offered examination, psychological appraisals and guidance. They can avail the services through online support worker booking system. Staff is also guided on conducting exams and appraisals of disabled students. Other related information on Mentoring, International student, Car-parking, Individual support needs, and on IT and Assistive Technology is also provided to disabled students. Disability policies pursued by the University offer the opportunity to students themselves to define their disability. The University uses UCAS disability types for organisational motives. It works on the two leading approaches on disability, as based on the social model of disability and the medical model of disability. The University follows the social model of disability on the assumption that the surrounding social environment affects disabled; therefore, it takes the onus on itself of finding institutional hurdles and eradicating them if possible. All facilities and services are arranged for the disabled students by the University. Evaluation of Services Experienced Students can make a formal complaint with the SRAC by filling FORM SRAC 10, following the given procedure. Pages of the FORM SRAC 10 include information About You, Summary of the Complaint, Informal Resolution, Supplementary Information, Meeting to discuss the complaint and Outcome to be signed by the complaining student before submitting the FORM SRAC 10 to the Director of Student and Learning Services, City Campus Sheffield Hallam University, City Campus, Howard St, Sheffield, S1 1WB Evaluating the Disabled Student Support services of SHU, one cannot be doubtful over the University’s concern and dedication in providing all possible quality services to the disabled students. There is a proper procedure at place to provide equal opportunity and help the disabled students. FORM SRAC 10 is a proof of how diligently disabled services processes are followed for providing total customer satisfaction by the SHU. University customers being the student community, these days first interaction can happen either visiting the campus physically or through online medium by using the features enabled through the website presence. For realising the practical online medium enabled by the Internet, Sheffield Hallam University was selected to check the quality factors on prior expectations. A prospectus was ordered by selecting the desired option of the course of study from Fulltime undergraduate courses, Fulltime postgraduate courses and Part-time courses besides selecting the country of origin. For international students, it was informed that the details of the students were to be used as per Sheffield Hallam University in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and other applicable legislation offering choices of sending it by post, telephone or email. Time taken in sending the prospectus for international students was found to be below the desired level of service expectations (28 days) for pursuing a course in 2012. Recommendations Service expectations of customers in a university environment can be quite different from other industry sectors. Because some universities run public colleges through government grant, they need to use the given resources tactfully. Generally, there was found lack of measurement parameters while reviewing the performance track record. Actual evaluation of the services by the concerned staff needs to be unbiased. Certain actions like introducing Lean Six Sigma seemed to be applied on the paper only. There is need to run appraisal of customer care on the line of private sector functioning, apparently with the profit motive and welfare motive both inclusive for total customer satisfaction experiences. References: About the project – Georgia customer service 8 June 2011, University System of Georgia, Georgia University, viewed 28 July 2011, http://customerfocus.usg.edu/about/index.phtml>. Disabled student support, 2011, Sheffield Hallam University, viewed 3 August 2011, http://www.shu.ac.uk/services/sls/support/disability/index.html Johnston, R. and Clark, G. ‘Chapter 4: customer expectations and satisfaction’, Service Operations Management - Improving Service Delivery, (Prentice-Hall, 2008). Kennesaw State University: customer service institutional expectations 2010, Kennesaw State University, viewed 28 July 2011, http://www.kennesaw.edu/cul/pdfs/cs/csexpectations.pdf>. Order a prospectus, 2011, Sheffield Hallam University, viewed 28 July 2011, http://www.shu.ac.uk SFY09 customer service improvement plan, 2008, Georgia Customer Service, viewed 28 July 2011, http://www.georgiahealth.edu/csi/documents/mcg-fy09-cs-plan.pdf Read More