More details about the timing of the days can be found by clicking Learn More and Register, but session descriptions of the two days are below:  

Defining Service: How Does Customer Service Impact Higher Education?
What defines good vs. bad customer service? We’ll dive into customer service models and research that will enhance your understanding of the role customer service plays within higher education. This interactive session will set the stage for the rest of this workshop and provide strategies to educate, lead, and empower others to shift toward a culture of service excellence at your institution.

Policies and Practices that Impact Service
Higher education is a place where policies—both formal and informal—proliferate. This session will provide examples of formal policies you need to be aware of that have implications for the way you provide service. It will also challenge you to think about informal policies or practices that may be creating service barriers.

Competencies for Service Excellence
This session will provide an in-depth, example-based overview of the various competencies you need to provide high-quality customer service to students in today’s higher education environment. We will discuss different types of competencies, including physical, emotional, knowledge-based, environmental, and cross-cultural. You will leave with a self-assessment you can use to measure your own customer service skills and help identify your areas of strength and opportunities for growth.

Enhancing Communications Through Scripting
This session will focus on the art of scripting as a means of ensuring consistency across service channels. You will be given time at the end of the session to write your own scripts for phone, email, face-to-face, and virtual conversations including greetings, closings, and apologies.

Active Listening & Communication Strategies
You will build upon your knowledge of scripting to look more holistically at the four key phases of the conversation cycle. You’ll learn how to navigate through unclear stakeholder requests and questions, as well as how to avoid using jargon in your interactions.

Practice: Role-Playing
During this role-playing activity, you will break into groups and work together to practice and apply the scripting and conversation cycle techniques you learned in the previous sessions.

Inclusive Practices in Customer Service
Unconscious bias impacts both the customer and the service provider. You will identify ways to adjust service practices and styles based on specific client and service provider differences and needs. The importance of cultural sensitivity, awareness, empathy, listening, and even “passive” approaches to pluralism will also be addressed.

Measuring and Assessing Your Customer Service Culture
We will explore a variety of measurement and assessment tools and techniques that can be used to gauge the quality of customer service your department, unit, or campus currently provides. You’ll be given time to begin formulating and adapting some of these tools to your own context.

Assisting with Difficult Customers
In dealing with students, colleagues, parents, and alumni, you are likely to come across stakeholders who can be challenging to assist. This session will focus on how to manage difficult or even potentially volatile situations. We will discuss best practices for saying no, ensuring safety, escalating the situation and asking for help, and adhering to your service standards. You will be given time at the end to role-play in small groups and practice the techniques you learned.

Service Excellence Visioning and Action Planning
Building a vision and action plan is critical to moving your service excellence work forward. This interactive session will provide space for you to identify barriers you will likely encounter, champions from whom to get buy-in, and next steps to take to enhance service excellence in your role. You will also work through a visioning exercise that will help you begin the conversation about strengthening service with teammates in your unit.