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How can school leaders deliver high-quality customer service?

customer service

New resource emphasizes the critical importance of parent, community satisfaction; offers practical advice on creating a culture of exemplary customer service in K-12 schools

As part of its mission to help schools address persistent communication and community engagement challenges, K12 Insight has released the latest installment in its monthly School Leader’s Definitive Guide series.

The School Leader’s Definitive Guide to Quality Customer Service [1] gives educators a set of practical steps to help them expand the lens of “success” beyond the classroom to student and family satisfaction.

At a time when the nation’s public schools are losing students to charter and other alternative schools, educators don’t have the luxury of being unresponsive or making decisions in a vacuum. Parents and families want schools that listen and respond to their feedback.

“We have to understand that we do have customers. We’re not a monopoly just because we are the public school system,” said Dr. Wendy Robinson, superintendent of the Fort Wayne Community Schools in Indiana. “We have to treat our customers the way customers want to be treated anywhere in the world.”

In the Definitive Guide, school leaders will learn the importance of customer service in education and how to set goals to achieve higher levels of parent and student satisfaction. They will also get a blueprint for how to scale a culture of quality service across their organization.

The inaugural installment in the series, The School Leader’s Definitive Guide to Navigating Social Media, was released as a pilot project in late 2015. It provided objective insights, practical examples, and research to help school leaders tackle persistent engagement and leadership challenges. Nearly 2,000 educators downloaded the first guide, prompting K12 Insight to partner with a veteran education journalist to expand the project’s scope.

“The success of our social media guide was proof positive that educators want and need access to high-quality content that helps them think strategically about the challenges they face,” said Corey Murray, senior director of strategy and engagement for K12 Insight. “School leaders have it tough. If this series and our other daily content gives them the tools and insights to make their jobs a little easier, that means we’re doing something right.”

Future Definitive Guides will cover topics including the Every Student Succeeds Act, bonds and levies, school board relations, and student engagement.