Service Excellence

Elevate the Quality of Service Provided to Students and Employees

When you think about a place where you received excellent customer service, what comes to mind? Chances are, a college or university wasn’t what you thought of. Although customers have become more savvy over the years, higher education has not kept up with meeting expectations and creating experiences that lead to increased student and employee retention and brand recognition and loyalty.

We can help change that. As we edge closer to the enrollment cliff, now is the time to make every student, employee, and customer feel valued, cared for, and appreciated.

Create a Service Excellence Mindset

Together, we help establish a service excellence mindset by aligning competencies with values and integrating them into talent management.

Provide Training and Skill Development

Equip staff with essential customer service skills, improve communication, manage difficult situations, and encourage well-being for effective service.

Develop a Plan to Improve Customer Service

No matter where you are with your customer service journey, we can help set you on the right path. From diagnosing areas of opportunity to mapping the student and employee experience to building capacity on campus, we can work with you to develop a plan to improve customer service.

Connect with a Service Excellence Partner

Determine Your Service Excellence Health and receive guidance on how to create a culture of care on your campus.

How We Help

Academic Impressions is the only organization that works exclusively in service excellence in higher education.

Unlike other organizations that take a corporatized approach to customer service, we understand how the nuances of things like shared governance, faculty, staff, and student dynamics, and pressure to drive top-level outcomes like enrollment, engagement, and retention play into the day-to-day experiences of higher education professionals.

For over a decade, we have helped hundreds of campuses train staff and leaders alike on customer service skills, implement a train-the-trainer approach, and intentionally shape organizational culture.

Measure Service Standards

Determine your unit or your institution’s baseline by completing our self-assessment.

Crafting a Vision for Customer Service

Create a unified vision of service that helps guide efforts.

Map the Student and Employee Experience

Map customer experience, address pain points, and boost follow through.

Training and Support for Frontline Employees

Provide support to those who can have the highest and most immediate impact.

Train the Trainer Model

Build capacity on your institution to carry this work forward.

Measure Service Standards

Reach out to us to access this simple assessment that provides a baseline for your unit or institution’s service excellence health. The results of this user-friendly self-assessment will provide actionable insights into where efforts should be focused to meet your desired results.

Crafting a Vision for Customer Service

Create a unified vision of service that helps guide your customer service efforts. We’ll work with you to understand the unique dynamics of your institution to help you develop a vision that feels authentic to your unit or institution. As part of this process, we’ll work with key stakeholders to identify service excellence competencies that align with organizational mission and values. From there, we’ll pave the way to integrate those key competencies with talent management frameworks.

Map the Student and Employee Experience

Improving customer service at any institution starts with the basics. We will work with you to:

Map your overall customer experience

Identify and overcome pain points in your service culture

Craft appropriate office protocols and escalation policies

Improve follow-through and service recovery

Training and Support for Frontline Employees

Frontline employees are often critical in ensuring a strong culture of care and can have an immediate impact on your campus culture. Enhance the team’s success by investing in training frontline employees on essential customer service skills. Our customer service curriculum is delivered through conferences and/or custom workshops on your campus and covers topics such as:

Active listening

Saying no

Managing difficult customers

Drawing boundaries

Train the Trainer Model

Build capacity on campus with our train the trainer model. This intensive in-person training sets up leaders to be able to map the overall customer experience on campus, identify pain points, craft protocols, and set up processes to ensure front line staff are effective, supported, and successful.

We Wrote the Book

Customer service man on a headset talking to a customer

BOOK

Elevating Customer Service in Higher Education: A Practical Guide

In 2019, Academic Impressions published, Elevating Service Excellence in Higher Education: A Practical Guide, co-authored by our Head of Practice, Dr. Heath Boice-Pardee.

Learn More →

Determine Your Service Excellence Health and Receive Guidance on How to Create a Culture of Care on Your Campus.