Awards International Chairman Don Hales returns for more biting observations on Customer Experience.
In the Don’s sights this week are one of the UK’s top seats of learning, and an organisation that is losing trust with the public. To nominate who YOU want to see as future Heroes & Villains, get in touch at don.hales@awardsinternational.eu.
HEROES
St Andrew’s have once again scored extremely well in The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018.
The renowned Scottish university entered the new Teaching Excellence Framework, coming out with a Gold rating, and were even praised by the judging panel for ‘exemplary’ tuition and a learning and teaching environment of the highest quality.
They were also number one for Student Experience and came second in the race for Student Satisfaction. However, this is not a ‘one year wonder’ scenario, as the university regularly scores high in these tables, and the results bear out the importance of customer (or in this case student) satisfaction, as they came third in First Class degrees and 2:1s, and third in student course completion.
These figures were achieved in what is now a very competitive sector indeed, and these standings are taken from 129 higher learning educational establishments throughout the UK.
VILLAINS
Customer satisfaction returns are seen by many businesses – including those from the not-for-profit sector – as a good way of measuring progress and gauge the results of any changes.
Not for The National Trust however! Their reaction to falling satisfaction levels is to scrap the measurement.
They had reduced the target of 75 percent to 59 percent, and when last year only 56 percent of customers were suitably satisfied, they decided to abandon the measurement altogether.
Apparently visitor numbers were up appreciably and this caused the satisfaction levels to fall! They will surely come to realise that visitor numbers will continue to plummet if they do not work on improving their Customer Exprience and satisfaction.