I feel that service is the most important. If you are able to provide excellent customer service to the student a bond or trust will be formed, and more often than not everything else will fall into place. They will have required documents for you, abide to your deadlines and that will lead to accurate packaging.
Danica,
All three aspects are critical to the student/parent experience with in the financial aid process. It is important that the team taking care of the student has a focus on each aspect and strives to ensure the success of the student. It would difficult focusing on accuracy without ensuring you are providing good Customer Service since accurate processing is ensuring timely delivery of funds. These all go hand in hand to delivering good customer service.
Making the student's experience positive through accurate processing is a great way to take care of your students. Good Job!
Sincerely
Chyrl Ayers
Jack,
All three aspects are critical to the student/parent experience with in the financial aid process. It is important that the team taking care of the student has a focus on each aspect and strives to ensure the success of the student. It is difficult to be dealing good Customer Service and not be meeting the timeliness and accuracy of processing the student's information.
Keep working toward improving the students' experiences and your team will be successful.
Sincerely,
Chyrl Ayers
While timeliness and service are important, I think that accuracy needs to be paid most attention to. If things are not accurate, you have to ask the student for more information. If we have to keep getting more information, the longer it takes to complete the financial aid process. I think that no matter how positive your attitude is while getting the additional information, it will take a toll on customer service.
I believe while timeliness and accuracy are extremely important to Financial Aid, customer service is the most important of the three. The way that you interact with students and handle their issues makes a big difference. If you make a mistake or if it takes longer than expected to bring in funding most students will be ok with it, but if you provide poor service with an "I dont care" attitude you might end up losing many prospects and current students.
Maria,
This forum question has resulted in numerous good and consistent answers. I believe all participants are in agreement on the importance of service. Also, that service goes hand-in-hand with ensuring students and parents have successful experiences when dealing with the FA Department. In my opinion timely and accurate processing with exceptional customer service is critical to all departments within the school.
Sincerely,
Chyrl Ayers
The service to our student is very important. The key is to answer their questions in a respectfully manner and always in a positive attitude.
Wendy,
Several students in this forum have made similar comments, especially related to the service aspect of the Financial Aid office. It is very important that your students and parents are confident and comfortable sharing information with the FA team. The discussions are often very personal in nature and the student must know that they can trust their FA team.
Best wishes in your continued online FA process.
Sincerely,
Chyrl Ayers
I think all three are very important, but if I had to go with one, I would got with Service. If you have good customer service, the timeliness and accuracy just kind of fall into place with what you are doing. It is important to have good customer servie. A lot of times, the students we meet with have never done financial aid before. It is important to be able to have good service to help the students understand how financial aid works.
Sergio, I think your point is well taken. Each encounter with our students should be done in a positive manner while working towards completion of their financial aid requirements. Customer service, accuracy, and timeliness work hand-in-hand to ensure they feel comfortable working with the financial aid office and understand the requirements.
Best of luck,
David McGuffee
Maria, I agree with you that timeliness is such an important aspect of financial aid packaging. Ensuring the student has been completely serviced in an accurate way and in a timely manner is important because it allows the student to concentrate on the main reason they are attending college, to get an education.
Regards,
David McGuffee
I would think service is the key ingredient! All schools deliver the same type of federal and state aid, and probably most are in the same tuition range!! Service is the key. If you have to explain to a student why he/she is not able to get Pell or a loan, the right attitude from the financial aid officer will help the student understand better! The employee should shows he/she cares about the student issues.
There are several important characteristics. For me one of them is the timeliness. It is one of the most important aspects for the student. Timeliness is important because it enables the student to be well informed of their financial aid options available to them. It also encourages the student to begin their studies quickly because they have been informed of the aid available to them.
Craig,
I like the way your framed your response. As you can see from the many post on this topic - most agree all three play an important role in the success of the financial aid office. It is critical to ensure that all students/parents are confident in timely and accurate service provided in a professional manner.
I am looking forward to other post from you. Best wishes in your continued pursuit of online FA knowledge.
Sincerely,
Chyrl Ayers
This is a good question. I find that timeliness and service are important but only if there is a foundation of accuracy.
All three are very important. I really can't choose one over the other. Without Accuracy you may need to make several corrections that could affect the time it takes to process a file. Service is also key to make sure the student understands what they need to do so that their file can be processed in a timely manner. All of these elements work together to ensure a quick and accurate file submission as well as a satisified student.
DENISE,
You make a very valuable point about return visits to FA. It may appear to the student and parent that a lack of understanding exist if they are continually asked to return to the FA Office. Also, it is critical that students and parents understand the FA process, especially as it related to to loan borrowing. The more FA Administrators do to make them comfortable the more successful the experience will be.
Sincerely
Chyrl Ayers
I think Service and Accuracy are the two important items in the FA process. Service, because most students/parent(s) I have met are normally unable to pay for tuition and are not comfortable with applying for loans. With proper training, an FA administrator should be able to clearly present the information to a student/parent(s), so they understand and are hopefully able to overcome their fears. With accuracy, the less time a student/parent(s) returns for an appointment, the more comfortable and confident a prospective student will be in attending your school. Too many return appointments can seem like the FA administrator is not knowledgeable.
Rhonda,
I think all of your points are very valid. Each encounter with our students should be done in a positive manner while working toward completion of their Financial Aid requirements. I think it is critical that your students are comfortable with you and understand the requirements. The more time we invest in the students the greater their chance of success.
Sincerely,
Chyrl Ayers
I think service and accuracy are the most important. It is imperative to give the potential student great customer service for they could easily leave and go to an other school, but we want them at our school. By giving them the service they need and deserve we gain their trust and faith in us. By being accurate with what we say we create an atmosphere of better informed student about T4 and its requirements. There tends to be less anxiety amongst them if we expalin the process and are accuate in what we tell them. Again this musters a since of trust and if a mistake happens maybe they would udnerstand that errors can happen and we are all human.
