Service: Part Two

After touring two colleges with my daughter, we drive up to our final school of the day. Interesting. It had a guard gate. Security. The guard was friendly and sent us to the building to start our tour.

We were asked to sit and wait for our guide. Soon, an attractive youthful lady sat down with us. She had done her homework. She knew my daughter's name and interests. She asked questions to learn what was most important, they had a few laughs. Then we toured their facility. Instead of staring at buildings, we entered them and took in the atmosphere, we learned about what the school's mission was. The guide focused only on us, we were the only people she was with.

Afterward, we sat down and the guide explained the options, the tuition, the scholarships and asked our shirt sizes. Soon she returned with tee shirts in the school's colors and with its logo.

This was not an efficient tour. The guide spent time with us one on one. She worked through her lunch time. When we left, we felt uplifted and soon (within 30 minutes) we had received a follow-up email thanking us and promising more information to be sent. Later the guide followed up with my daughter's high school to confirm records were being sent. All this took time.

You probably expect to hear that we chose that college (no decision made yet) or that this institution was the most expensive (it was less costly than the other two we saw). Or that it was in a beautiful setting (it was urban, hence the guard gate).

But the service was tremendous, it was personal, it was not perfect, but the customer (my daughter) felt taken care of. Sometimes that is all it takes to succeed, to make a sale of any kind. But it was not efficient or cheap, it cost time and care.

Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com

Service: Part One

So I'm checking out colleges with my teenage daughter and we hear this from one of the school's staff as we're standing around waiting to be received: "I'm glad the tours are dying down, we hardly had any to do today." Not a good tone to set for an hour tour of college. Secondly, it was raining outside, a downpour. I notice there were golf carts outside the door and asked if we could use them to shelter us from the weather. The answer: "No, they don't let us do that."

So, we quickly run around outside in the rain looking at the exterior of numerous buildings and then get back to the cafeteria in time to have us handed brochures and tuition information. We say good bye...forever.

My mind raced to ask how often have I ever treated a prospective client that way? I'm sure I have. It's very efficient to not utilize a golf cart (saves energy) and it's efficient to use young, inexperienced clerical folk to conduct the tours (cheap, won't waste the time of the top people), but it's clearly not effective (who would fall in love with a school after this experience?).

Lousy service can work--if you have a captive, desperate audience with no other options.

Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
www.labov.com