JISC Conference 2009
Debate: do institutions need customers?
At this year’s JISC conference, this session addressed the thorny matter of the ‘customer’ in higher and further education. Simon Whittemore introduced the ideas by assessing the pressures faced by educational institutions and partners in the current economic climate. Students are the institutions’ traditional customers but they are increasingly becoming part of the community demographic as well, meaning that those within HEIs and FECs may need to rethink the idea of their “customer” or “learner”. JISC is currently carrying out work on the topic of customer relationship management in the Business and Community Engagement (BCE) programme, but even this label is controversial – some argue that “partner relationship management” may be a better term. Some add that too strong a focus on the customer relationship can compromise academic excellence, as it could allow businesses to influence the curriculum on offer. The session ran with a ‘goldfish bowl and hot-seats’ concept to stimulate debate among the delegates – two debaters holding the floor sat at a table in the centre of the room, speaking for a couple of minutes until tapped on the shoulder and replaced by others, and so on.. Dr Jos Boys, author of ‘The e-Revolution and Post-Compulsory Education’,
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/erevolutionebook.aspx was the first speaker, and she began by pointing out that she is not saying that universities need to be more like businesses, but that it is worth knowing how relationships are changing. Analysing approaches to customer relationship management raises issues about how HEIs/FECs see what they offer, how they articulate it and how they view the associated relationships. As an alternative to ‘customers’ or ‘partners’, ‘members’ was proposed by Dr Boys as a useful concept, a perspective persuasively elaborated upon by David Donald, who argued that the notion of customer is ‘not native to our endeavour’ (higher education).
In contrast several delegates strongly expressed a view of the importance of the ‘customer service’ as more significant than that of ‘the customer’ in higher and further education, and we were reminded that some institutions have the delivery of a quality customer service in their Strategic Plans. This implies an understanding of what constitutes customer value in institutions and therefore of market segmentation and of internal business process change, argued John Burke and Sue McKnight, amongst others.
Among the views expressed was the suggestion that universities and colleges offer a unique ethos to which staff and customers buy in, rather than a specific service per se, and it could be possible to piggyback on existing loyalties, as in a football club (a comparison was drawn with US universities, where there is often investment in, and expectation from, family and lifetime membership) – but then that could compromise quality and independence, if ruthlessly pursued. Also debated was the view that that asking students to guide HEIs/FECs in outlining what they should be offering may be wrong-headed, as the HEI/FEC contains the expertise, and students are not necessarily au fait with what they need to learn and how they need to learn it – but then students should certainly have a say in the provision of their education, especially as paying ‘customers’……
A lively debate was enjoyed by more than 50 delegates, who headed out of the session with a great deal of food for thought.
The debate can be heard in full at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme/bce.aspx
and can be continued here!
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