Evaluating the Customer Support Experience

Customer support organizations often focus on evaluating the contact with the customer once the individual has made an effort to formally contact the organization. This effort is necessary but can lead to faulty conclusions on the customer contact. Each Chief Academic Officer must understand what is necessary to be a great university. Does the CAO want to measure all contacts and evaluate the results of the experience or is there something else the CAO should focus on? Is there an experience that faculty and/or students are experiencing that is going unnoticed or missed completely?

Let’s be clear, understanding the customer contact is very important; large companies exist to assist in this effort and they will not go away. The question I am asking about is not recognized by our traditional customer contact methods. Specifically I think about a number of areas emerging in the social networking environment. The two most obvious are Facebook and Twitter, but there are many other points of contact we often miss evaluating because of the difficulty. Areas would include friends, social contacts, peers at work, and business contacts. All the above could influence our position on what we decide to do in our university life. The question is: is it worth knowing the value of the early contacts in our everyday university decision making?

My thoughts are starting to focus on early contacts to determine what an effective customer experience means. In the era of instant contact offered by Facebook and Twitter, we cannot ignore the impression faculty and students are forming about the university experience. These new communications tools highlight the thoughts individuals have prior to making a formal contact with an organization. The importance of the two services are not going unnoticed by the consumer industry; the large corporations are mining the data online to catch any disinterest or frustration with a brand. Do universities need to recognize this new phenomena to improve its faculty and student experience? Today universities are spending significant time and money to retain students and are making equal investments to retain the best faculty.

I am confident that traditional methods of measuring customer service only recognize 30% of the overall faculty and student experience. Often by the time a faculty or student makes formal contact with the university, the customer has already formed a lasting impression. To ensure retention programs work, universities must identify methods of recognizing the first touches and ensure they are positive. What should a university do to ensure this happens? The first steps are to go where the faculty and students are…could be the office, could be the traditional meeting places, and often it will be where they gather with friends to socialize. The goal is to get to the faculty and students early and often to ensure we understand what is important and we implement programs that ensure our retention efforts are successful.

Academic Computing Support

The Chief Academic Officer will look at all areas of the university to restructure costs from the administrative functions of the university. One of the first areas to be evaluated for restructuring will be the information technology support areas. Faculty and students are getting tired of having to go to so many places to resolve an issue. Support organizations will need to rationalize themselves. Two events will ensure the evaluation happens in the near future: the first has been discussed in prior posts, the state of the economic downturn for the foreseeable future. The second event will be the influence of cloud computing on functional areas. Legacy practices have allowed IT to request and be allowed to oversee and set the rules for all areas of technology on a university campus. Too often this has allowed support practices to focus on what is expedient for IT rather than the core mission of teaching, research, and service.

The current deployment of applications from off campus cloud computing vendors, known as Software as a Service (SaaS), will allow faculty and students to experience personalized technology support. Legacy practices of IT departments will be challenged by relevant and flexible applications from off campus. Faculty and students will be quick to point out the off campus applications, and these will often cost the university less than legacy campus applications. The probable result will be the CIO meeting the deans to determine the future direction of computing.

The fragmentation of service will highlight the need to restructure technology support on campus. Major SaaS providers will offer point product support, and the campus will continue to support central campus applications (ERP). The university community will require transparent support across all technology. Support might find itself being offered in one of the following scenarios:

1. A likely area to emerge as the technology support area is the library. Why? The primary reason is the library administration has transformed from a campus-based resource to a largely virtual resource successfully. Additionally, the library has introduced the Information Commons that has been a hit, widely received by the students and faculty. Further, the library has been able to transform to the digital world without losing the trust of the faculty. The academic community would welcome one-stop technology and research support located close to the college. The major issue will be if the library is willing to change its traditional culture to become the “information resource” for the academic community.
   
   
2. Another option would be for support to remain in IT. IT will need to create innovative and transparent relationships with the faculty and students to establish a transparent support organization in the minds of the academic community. IT has the skills to be very successful in offering support; the issue is credibility. Many faculty and staff feel that IT has not made the successful transition to the digital world and often suggest IT is a better gatekeeper than a customer service advocate.
   
   
3. The dark horse for IT support on campus would be an outsourced vendor. A number of large organizations have outsourced the customer support function to one of the large service providers. It is clear that an outsourced customer support contract would provide a university with a large number of scenarios that would meet the different needs of individual colleges. An outsourced vendor with clear service level agreements would ensure a defined level of service is achieved. The greatest difficulty with an outsourced relationship will be to get buy-in from all vested user communities. I fully expect individual colleges to establish outsourced vendor relationships and if successful could become the central model of support.

The Computer Lab of the Future

Last month I had the opportunity to visit the Cox Computing Center at Emory University. I write about learning spaces frequently here and on my own blog, and I have to say, the Cox Center is one of the coolest spaces I've seen yet. Even in the middle of summer, walking into the space I felt a definite buzz of activity. The jazz playing in the background probably helped, but I was still impressed to see so many students working and milling around on what should have been a quiet day. During the regular semester, they average around 1500-1800 visitors a day, and I can certainly see why.

One of the first things my colleagues pointed out was the relative lack of computers in the space. When we think "computer lab," many of us still think of elbow-to-elbow desktops in soldierly rows under the florescents. While I believe computer labs will be needed for quite some time to come, I really appreciate the minimum of seven linear feet between machines in this lab, not to mention the movable furniture and whiteboards. The space is extremely laptop-friendly, with many students opting to bring their own or to check one out from the service desk.

I kept feeling like this was an information commons, just without any library involvement. The place is such a hot spot during the school year, they added bean bags, ottomans, and pillows for extra seating, which further contribute to the vibe that this is truly a student space. The lighting is low, food is allowed, conversation and collaboration are encouraged. The student assistants at the desk were friendly and helpful and quite approachable. The furnishings, largely Herman Miller and Steelcase, give the place the perfect level of fun and funky and are still extremely functional.

This is one of several lab/learning spaces I will profile here in the future. I encourage you to visit the Cox Computing Center as my pictures really don't capture the feel of this energetic space.