5 Reasons Why Universities Should Think of Students as Customers

Jan 25

Jan 25 5 Reasons Why Universities Should Think of Students as Customers

I previously worked at a university where they would host a massive mandatory meeting called a town hall. This was when every employee at the university would gather to hear the latest insights from the senior members of leadership representing each department. In one particular town hall, a senior level leader asked us to reshape how we thought of the student experience. “We should think of our students as customers,” is what he said and this was met with several eyebrows being raised, mine included. Students are students, they aren’t customers, so why would we do this? I didn’t understand this message until many years later and it has completely changed the way I teach my students.

Let’s do a bit of a mental exercise together. What if we took the mantra that the “customer is always right,” and instead replace customer with the word “student.” What would that look like? What would happen? Does it ever matter?

Well, let’s imagine this for a second. Say you have a customer who purchased an order from Instacart. The customer is not fully satisfied with the purchase, so they reach out to an associate and express their dissatisfaction. The associate listens to their concerns, expresses an understanding of their frustration, and offers a solution. Through Instacart’s app, this entire process can be completed within seconds. A follow up email goes out asking for immediate feedback and seeing if there was anything else they could’ve done to have made the experience better. Now, what if a student is not satisfied with their learning progress, the quality of a course, or something similar? Do they get the same kind of immediate white glove treatment? What exactly happens?

I’d say that most institutions do have policies in place for students to submit documentation and express their concerns, but these are usually for rather serious matters. What about for smaller scaled items though? Let’s say some students didn’t receive feedback on their assignment for weeks from their instructor. They reached out multiple times and were met with either silence or an empty promise that the feedback will be turned in soon. Four weeks later, they still don’t have feedback. What then? If you, as a customer, submitted a help ticket to Amazon and didn’t hear back from an associate in over a month, you would be furious and would spread the word that they don’t care about their customers.

This was the message my senior leader was trying to get across years ago. A higher education institution and a business are not the same, but providing the best kind of support and experience should be universal regardless of the model. The institutions that are currently thriving today seem to have this kind of incredible experience mentality. They have figured out how to create a customer experience that blends with the priority around education.

So, let’s break down the 5 main benefits and reasons for thinking of students as customers and how this can impact your institution:

Focus on Quality

The quality of the products and services should be the number one priority for any institution. Products and services in this case applies to every touch point where a student interacts with the university or a face of the university. Think of the quality of the courses, teaching, advising, administrative support, IT, and more. This is absolutely crucial for those institutions in the online space, which this now feels like every institution since Covid. Students have a multitude of ways to learn online and they expect that the online courses they are enrolled in will be designed well with their needs in mind. The day and age of telling students to buy textbooks, write a discussion board, and submit an essay and repeat this 12 times is outdated and ineffective. That’s not a proper learning experience. Every element in the course should be there with purpose and intentionality and this focus will improve the quality of the learning experiences.

Responsiveness to Needs

This is where higher education gets a bad rep. Higher ed, in general, is often seen as slow and unresponsive to the times. Think of my example from above where you contact Amazon and don’t hear back from a month. This is normal in higher education and simply put, it’s not acceptable. Now, of course, I do not expect anyone to be able to respond back lightning fast to every email or inquiry they receive from their students, but there should be guidelines and expectations for a response time that works for all. For my courses, students can expect feedback on assignments within 7 days and if they contact me for help, they hear back from me within 24 hours. Any longer than that, and it’s a slippery slope. By being responsive to students, the institution demonstrates that they care and are attentive to their needs.

Enhanced Accountability

Considering students as customers can heighten a sense of accountability within a university. It emphasizes the importance of delivering value for the tuition and fees paid, thus pushing for better academic outcomes and higher satisfaction levels. This also demonstrates a two-way relationship. This is something I’ve always found ironic with seeing instructors or institutions having strict “no submitted late work” type of policies, but then take weeks to respond back to student questions. If we are asking to keep integrity and academic rigor to a high level, then we need to respond back accordingly.

Market Competitiveness

Let’s take off our academic hats for a second and put on our marketing caps. Where higher education institutions and businesses are identical is with competing for attention in a saturated world. If you are a student and are considering going back to school for an MBA, you can Google “Best MBA program” or “MBA reviews” and a flurry of universities will be fighting for your clicks through Google Ads. Students hold more power than ever to decide where they want to go to school and the reputation of schools can only take things so far. So, how do they decide where to enroll? The answer is that they seek out stories of other students.

When students have an outstanding experience, they share about it. They tell friends, family, and coworkers. They write reviews online and will share testimonies on social media and tag their institution because they are proud to go there. They order school swag and wear it everywhere. This needs to be the goal: have students so thrilled with the experience that they are compelled to talk about it. Universities seem to be struggling with enrollments and marketing today, and the simple solution is create such a meaningful learning environment that makes students want to share. We all want a sense of belonging and community, and when done right, an institution is the perfect place to create this presence.

Feedback Loop for Continuous Improvements

At the end of a conversation between a customer and an associate, there is the request for immediate feedback. How did we do? Did this solve the problem? Are you fully satisfied? Is there anything else we can do to help? Imagine for a moment if higher education took this stance. After a student submits a course evaluation, the instructor and the instructional designers gather together to review the feedback. They categorize the themes of the feedback and prioritize which changes need to be made and when.

Depending upon the circumstances, students would hear back from team members thanking them for their suggestions and being transparent, if possible, about plans for the future. Usually, course evaluations are submitted into an abyss where the feedback is collected, but never taken advantage of or there is push back to apply the recommendations from the feedback. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of this, but if nothing is done with the feedback, then there is no point in collecting the feedback. I’d also advocate for even more chances for collecting feedback and waiting until the end of the course isn’t the best idea.

If I had to sum up all of these points, the most significant factor is to emphasize caring. A business cares about their customers. Without them, they can’t survive. They rely wholeheartedly on their positive reviews from websites to word of mouth. If these don’t exist, the business will cease to exist. The greatest educators I can think of share this trait in that they cared. They were passionate. They were there for the students and to see them succeed. They could all have different styles of teaching, but at the end of the day, they served their students. It’s this mentality that will keep students engaged in the learning environment.

However, this is all to say that it’s crucial to maintain a balance. Education is not a typical consumer good, and the primary goal of a university should be to educate and foster intellectual development, not just to satisfy customer demands. Students are coming to learn because they don’t have all the answers. They want to get better and they are seeking the expertise from the institution. The focus should be on helping them to reach their goals. By thinking about students as customers though, we can remove barriers and challenges that are normally faced from each interaction. All and all, the benefits are there, but changes need to be integrated thoughtfully into the broader educational mission and ethos of the university.

I hope this helps. Stay nerdy out there,

Luke

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