Most chiropractors love interacting with chiropractic students. It's rewarding to get behind their dreams and push them to the next level - and to draft off their energy and enthusiasm for the profession and plans to change the world.
It used to be that students (and patients) needed our wisdom and specialized expertise, and had to live by our rules to get it. But when they morphed from students and patients into customers and clients, did they acquire the inalienable right to always be right?
The Rise of the Customer
Many of us have lived through the introduction of the concept of customer service into the academic and health care arenas. It took place in the 1980s and 1990s as competition for both students and patients increased. Although the world I navigate today is a college campus, many parallels exist right in the private offices of practicing DCs. Today's higher-education and health care consumers expect to be treated as customers and are well-aware that "the customer is always right."
But truth be told, our customers are not always right. And we can't afford - for the sake of their personal growth and development or their health - to always agree they are. That doesn't get us off the hook for providing exceptional customer service. It does mean doing so is complicated by our responsibility to always make decisions that are in their best interests and by the long-term relationships we have, rather than one-time purchase interactions.
How we manage students' experiences of our services will determine whether they decide to attend and persist to graduation; and whether they become an advocate or critic, a financial supporter or a vocal detractor. In effect, how we manage the experiences of the students at every one of our nation's chiropractic colleges will determine if we have enough people entering the profession. Likewise, the way we manage patients' experiences within each and every chiropractic office will determine the reputation of our profession.
Customer Service: Critical to Our Colleges and the Profession
Neal Raisman, PhD, a leading authority on academic customer service and author of Embrace the Oxymoron: Customer Service in Higher Education, says every school needs to recognize that although it's expensive to attract and enroll students, it's even more expensive when we lose them.
According to his research, schools can increase enrollments by as much as 12 percent and increase retention as much as 20 percent by providing better customer service. He's also found that 83 percent of "personal reasons" students cite for leaving a school actually reflect dissatisfaction with the institution's customer service.
Students define customer service by how they perceive the return on investment the institution provides in terms of financial, emotional and associative rewards. When students feel their tuition dollars are being used to create educational experiences that will lead to success in their field of study, they are satisfied with their financial investment. When they feel their engagement and emotional tie to the school is returned via faculty and staff who care about them and treat them with thoughtfulness, they are satisfied with their emotional investment. And when students feel they gain status by being accepted into and becoming part of an institution, they are satisfied with their associative investment.
Interestingly, the 2006 National Student Satisfaction and Priorities Report produced by Noel-Levitz, Inc., higher-education consultant, found that what students value most in their educational experiences share very common themes across a variety of institution types and student profiles. They include: high-quality instruction, knowledgeable faculty, ease of registration, knowledgeable advisors and an opportunity for intellectual growth. Very reasonable demands indeed.
Investing in a Service Culture
Life University was founded on the core concept of lasting purpose: to give, to do, to love, to serve out of a sense of abundance.That philosophy guides campus life and how we strive to approach our students. Still, we started wondering recently how well the university was walking the walk. Were we giving our all to serving students, alumni, the profession and one another? The more deeply we questioned, the more opportunity we saw room for improvement. Like many organizations (and perhaps many practices), we were sometimes getting caught up in our own polices and procedures without always thinking about how to use them to the greatest benefit, service and convenience of our key stakeholders.
We decided to build in real culture change from bottom-up, top-down, and all throughout the organization. We started by investigating several organizations that excel at service within their industries, like Ritz Carlton Hotels. But we knew our processes and approaches to service would have to be crafted by us, for us, building on our existing campus culture.
We consulted Management Solutions Group out of Nashville to help us put our service ethic into action. They helped us launch our culture change process with a series of cross-functional workshops for campus departments to explore together where service to each other, to students and to the profession was falling short. In the end, we developed "four standards of serving lasting purpose" that guide our service culture and may be applicable to other organizations within the chiropractic profession, not to mention chiropractic practices:
- An attitude of helpfulness: committed to helping all the way through to the right answer, a connection with the right person, or even just listening.
- A personal commitment to building relationships: a goal to be intentional collaborators and active listeners willing to reach out to others to learn more about what they do and need.
- Managing to the best solution: committed to approaching every issue with the idea of finding a way to get to "yes" while being compassionate and realistic in searching for attainable solutions.
- User friendly always: understanding it is our responsibility to learn more so we can help more.
Change won't happen overnight, but we do expect strong improvements and we're committed to doing what's needed to make them last. We expect to see stronger retention among those students for whom Life is the right fit. We expect to see faculty and staff reaching out to one another to educate peers about what they do and learn more about what their colleagues do. We expect field doctors to feel more satisfied interacting with us. We understand service begets service and that our growing service culture will generate additional energy, support and creativity for positive change.
I know I'm one of those people who always wants "more," "better," "faster," but just think how much more impact our whole profession could have if we consistently treated our students and patients as customers. If we can increase student enrollment and retention (and I'm quite sure patient enrollment and retention, too) by providing better customer service, it only makes sense to constantly strive in that direction.
Dr. Guy F. Riekeman, current president of Life University in Marietta, Ga., has held leadership positions in chiropractic education essentially since his graduation from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1972. He was appointed vice president of Sherman College in 1975 and has served as president of all three Palmer campuses and as chancellor of the Palmer Chiropractic University System. In 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the Council on Chiropractic Education.