by Chris Gibbs
Many in the higher education space are looking to better understand the concept of “Customer Experience” as it applies to students.
Customer and Student experience isn’t only about what you do or don’t do; it’s the sum total of interactions between an organisation and its customer over the course of their relationship.
It’s about how a customer or student feels when they’re dealing with you, whether they’re navigating your web site, calling a helpline or meeting with a member of your academic or administration team.
KPMG’s Customer Experience Excellence Report 2019 identified six key elements that comprise stand-out customer experience: personalisation, empathy, frictionless transaction processing, issue resolution, integrity and expectation management.
A 2019 survey conducted by Acquia, a leading digital experience platform provider, shows lack of personalisation is preventing Australian brands from delivering excellent customer experiences.
For their part, consumers increasingly see technology as the engine which will drive the improvements they want to see in this area. Eighty-seven per cent of those polled by Acquia stated that technology should be harnessed to make their experience with brands better.
Local organisations - education organisations included - which disregard these sentiments do so at their own commercial peril, given 70% of Australians say they often abandon a brand or switch to a competitor when the online experience is poor.
Selling smarts? Customer experience still counts
In addition to being a vital national resource, higher education is now big business in Australia. The sector provides direct employment for more than 120,000 people and supports the provision of education to more than a million students each year.
Competition for foreign and domestic students is intense and local education organisations and institutions routinely spend significant sums on marketing campaigns to attract and maintain enrolments.
A vast majority of these prospective students’ first experience with an educational organisation is with its website and other digital channels. Frequently, not enough strategic investment is made to support the student experience journey, which begins with these first initial information-seeking enquiries.
Key touchpoints range from those associated with application and enrolment through to interactions involving library records and tutorial log-ins, sessions spent accessing virtual courseware, and face-to-face experiences with administration staff.
Each of these touchpoints represents an opportunity to deliver an interaction that’s not only consistent, quick and convenient, but personalised and meaningful, as well.
Striving to ensure that is the sort of experience you are providing can result in significant benefits, Price Waterhouse digital strategy lead Andrew Jamieson noted in 2018.
“A dissatisfied student is just as potentially damaging as an irate customer, and a happy one will have a positive impact on the bottom line,” he writes.
“Optimising the student experience is not simply a nice thing to do, it’s an imperative that must be fulfilled for the sake of education as a business and for individual student outcomes.”
Investing in experience technology
Today’s user pays education model has fostered a client mentality and, with it, a collective expectation of service that’s more timely and personalised than what was on offer a decade or two ago.
As more Australian companies up their focus on customer experience, students are coming to expect a similarly service-oriented approach from their chosen education providers.
Investing in experience technology
Marketing technology can facilitate seamless personalised experiences across multiple channels and assist organisations to connect with students and build trust and loyalty. Given consumers have spoken out about the customer experience gap loudly and clearly, it is likely to prove a rewarding investment, in 2020 and beyond.
Chris Gibbs is the General Manager Asia Pacific and Japan of Acquia, a leading digital experience platform provider