Something I have been thinking more and more about since working in a cutomer-serving department, and in a training department that teaches--and requires--customer service--is the idea that faculty should consider what customer service actually means. I do come from an academic background--a background to which I am still dearly attached, and I would love to bring it to the foreground if I could. So I know how faculty bristle--how I used to bristle--at the suggestion that faculty are in any way providing customer service, or at the idea that students are in any way customers or consumers.
The first problem is that the "customer service" model is often misunderstood both by those promoting it for political reasons and those who are resisting it. Students and their parents see a "customer service" model as meaning that education exists, and is provided to the student/customer, to serve the purpose designated by the student. This is seriously misguided. The customer, if customer they would be, must assess the service provider first to determine whether the service being offered meets his or her needs, and whether the service provider, in fact, is capable of delivering the product needed, particularly when there are other providers available. The informed consumer does not go to a vegetarian restaurant and order steak, or to McDonald's and order Kobe beef or sushi. If she shops for auto parts at Target or Kroger, she must be prepared to find their offerings severely limited. If she goes to a hospital to get a pedicure, or to a salon to have an appendectomy, she will necessarily be disappointed. The first step, then, is knowing what institutions of higher education claim to offer, and for what reason. What are they, in fact, trying to do for the individual in general? Individual professors support their own reserach missions and pedagogical theories, putting those in the service of the departmental mission, which in turn serves the overall mission of the institution, which might advance a statewide goal that is somehow tied to the legislature's goals for development of citizens in the case of a state university. They are thus charged with delivering the product and service deemed appropriate by their institution, and they are given some freedom in how they interpret the delivery. To drill down and say that a professor should not be burdoning students with nonultilitarian information because the student is a customer, and the professor should be giving the customer only what he needs is ludicrous. Being a smart consumer means understanding what you are buying.
On the other hand, professors (used broadly here, because I think academics of all stripes, and lecturers, and faculty of universities and colleges alike take issue) balk at the idea that there is a "customer service model" of education.** And it is possible that I am not strictly speaking about a model of education, but an attitude. So what does a faculty member hear when someone suggests that education should be seen in terms of customer service? I would suggest, first, that they interpret the phrase in much the same way as the students, or else they recognize the students' and parents' assumptions and react against those. Customer-service oriented education might seem inherently utilitarian, designed to prepare students in a very practical, focused way, for "real life," which usually translates into "getting a job." Whatever the failings of educational curricula, putting education in the service of employment is not something I want to advocate--or even to address here. The other implication is that "service" means slavish devotion to students. Providing multiple opportunities to make the grade. Extra extra credit. Perhaps even certain types of lectures and exams. As far as that goes, there are already huge initiatives to understand how students learn and to make efforts to design curricula, courses, assignments and even to restructure classrooms and redefine the teacher in order to maximize student learning. This is everywhere. Sometimes, it actually benefits the professor by removing the pressure for them to perform. They become mediators and mentors--not at all a bad role, unless they become superfluous, replaced by monitors and mediators who are less expensive and require less maintenance. There is some anxiety about this as tenure track disappears and adjuncts abound. So in terms of methodology, "student centered" might as well mean "customer-service oriented." The basic approach--taking the needs of those who are on the receiving end of the product or service into account--is the same. Do students see this as customer service? Not necessarily. Will they make unreasonable demands in the name of customer service? Absolutely.
I think that in terms of pedagogy, a customer-service orientation might mean focusing on the journey or process rather than the product. In an age of measurable objectives, we focus on testing, testing, testing... But those who train, or teach classes to blue-collar professions realize that not everyone tests well, and that sometimes the artificiality of a test is not the best indicator of skill, knowledge, or mastery. There are ways to evaluate during the process of learning. In a training environment, where there are no tests, and yet where we have to try to deliver courses that help people learn, we need to develop exercises that allow people to try out what they have learned in an environment where they can ask questions and receive feedback and instruction. Some people come and do not want to learn, and since it is their time, I can't really do too much about that lack of motivation. If they sit through my class, it goes on their transcript, and they might receive a higher yearly evaluation because of it. I can't help that situation. I'm not going to report to the boss that they were shopping for shoes for the entire 6 hours. But when they return to their desks, unless they already had the skills I taught, they will not have those skills at their disposal in their daily life. Because there is little real-world consequence, except perhaps if a doctor sleeps during Biology, education requires tests.
When I think about the process, though, I think about what leads up to the grades. Where are the opportunities for professors to monitor the learning process to see what is happening with a student before the test or paper due date? There are precious few in the models with which I am familiar, and all are student-intitiated. The reason they are few and student-initiated is that 1) the professor doesn't necessarily have the time or tools to get to know the student(s), and 2) there is an underlying assumption that forcing someone to ask for help has something to do with growing up. On a level, it does. But being open and available is important as well, and paving the way for someone to ask for help.
Let me describe two situations. One semseter when I was teaching Freshman composition, I had a student who came to class every day. She was very quiet, but listened attentively. She participated in daily activities. However, she never submitted a paper. I might have mentioned that to her casually in class once or twice, and she nodded. So she knew that she was behind, and hadn't turned in the work. Clearly, the burden was on her shoulders. It was easy to shrug it off--that meant one less paper to grade, however much I pitied her.
Consider another situation--a rigidly enforced departmental policy on word count. The students are warned that if their papers do not meet that word count--even if they are lacking only 2 words--the paper will not be graded. In the case of the final paper, it will not be read, though earlier papers--the finished, failed product--will receive feedback. Having already failed, how many of us will want the feedback? Even when I teach, if I feel that I have failed to deliver a class to my ability or my standards, I do not go looking for student feedback to tell me what I've done wrong. I already have a sense of my own inadequacy, thank you very much. So do students learn from that level of failure? We are told that if they don't fail, success will not be meaningful. But what is a meaningful failure? How does a teacher make failure meaningful? I'm not sure. But I don't think being beaten down and then invited in for more beating is going to do it. But when grading is as onorous as it is, and the students don't seem to care about our rules or our standards, it is easy to let the cynacism win. Let's face it, too--not all students are really interested in learning or playing the game. Motivations for being in school are much more complex than motivations for working. Working has a tangible result--a paycheck--even if it produces nothing else for the individual.
In a customer-serving department, we measure contact hours--how many hours we spend teaching multiplied by how many students we teach. It is important to have people value what we are doing, and they come to value our classes becuase they can see the progress they are making. So we try to facilitate that progress. They tell other people. We maintain our contact hours or increase them. We do operate on supply and demand, but so do academic departments. Courses that no one takes are not offered frequently, if at all. In the offices, advisors are interested in retaining majors--those numbers are good, too. But advisors are staff, and they are customer-serving positions. Faculty are different. Who cares if a faculty member pisses off a student? No one. Who cares if a staff member does? Everyone, including the faculty who happen to be involved with that student. Faculty are definitely a protected class, though I know that this varies, and not all faculty strive to piss off or offend students--though there are some who definitely do. They offend in order to make a point--I heard it from the Dean of Faculties recently, as he defended faculty methods to a group of staff members. But that's methodological. What about individual students?
Being in a staff position, or a customer-serving position, means that every time you are in contact with others, you are trying to facilitate matters to make certain that the customer feels good about the result. This has to do with equity as well as attitude. Most people who come to our department for training understand who we are and what our product is. They don't have to personally pay, so perhaps some of it is gratitiude for the opportunity (or the ability to escape work, though not all WANT to escape work), but they understand that we have guidelines to follow, and by and large, they respect those guidelines. There are certainly exceptions.
So when you want to actually maintain a relationship with your customers, you do things differently. Students are disposable, and they are a renewable resource. Different ones keep coming back, so there is no fear that faculty will become obsolete becaus students will choose not to come to classes. If your purpose is to fill someone with your subject or shape them in your own image, you don't actually have to care about how the process goes--especially if you're not held accountable. Where I am now, if someone is coming up to the time limit of a program, I can't just let them go and shrug. Of course I could. It is completely on their shoulders whether they finish a program or not. But what does it do to our contact hours if I let someone slip through the cracks? It's only one person. And the people that they don't tell about our wonderful programs and customer service. I'm working for word of mouth here. So I email. And I ask if they need any help or have any questions. And while some still don't answer, others will tell me what's going on. Some--working adults, older than me--confess that they were afraid to speak up. These are not children who need to be taught a lesson about growing up. These are people who think they know the constraints of our program, and don't want to impose. And I'm not nearly as intimidating as some professors I've had. And not nearly as scary as some grad students I've known. And Freshmen--let's face it--are 18. And have radically different personalities. They are people. And sometimes, they can't cope. Other times, they're just jerks. But you know? You can give them the benefit of the doubt, too. I have to. And customer service techniques teach you how to manage the jerks, too. Just watch the next time you're a jerk--they try to manipulate you with the same techniques I've learned. It's all rhetoric.
But the curious thing is that when you start considering the process, and how you can intervene and facilitate the success of a person or a situation, it becomes a habit, and requires much less effort. Granted, I'm tied to an office for 40 hours, so I have to send these emails, but really, it doesn't take very long. Thinking of a student as a customer simply in order to reorient you're thinking so that you make every reasonable effort to facilitate their success--THAT is what faculty customer service would look like. It's not the same as spoon feeding them. I'm not saying that you have to break the rules. Just start by asking, after you tell them what they need to do, "How can I help with this process?" Many times, they won't ask for anything. But I think, with students, many times we try to avoid contact hours rather than seeking them out. It's part of the institution.
**I forgot to mention that at the root of faculty resistance to customer service is that "service" sounds menial. Ego and the relative importance of faculty to the university are definitely factors.
