External Customers
What does your campus' techniques to reach external customers
Mayra,
Thank you for your post! It sounds like your institution has a great plan in place for establishing relationships with external customers!
Elizabeth Wheeler
My campus staff has a lot of ways that they reach out to the external customer. We attend job fairs and local community events. We have outstanding relationships with local community businesses that allow us to display flyers and catalogs. We also have advertising in local radio stations and TV commercials to attract potential students. We advertise and market in English and in Spanish with our local radio stations and newspapers. We also post online and use social media to recruit students.
Angela, The external customer is pretty large! What is the message to the clinical facilities that you send?
Dr. Jean Norris
Our Admissions Department just did a huge display in the main lobby thanking all of our students who have participated in any of the military services. People in this mall attending a gym or shopping looked in and were positively impressed.
We also contact external customers at the facilities our students go to for clinical experience. Visitors, families, and staff are able to see how professional we are. They ask for phone numbers, and even directions, to come to campus to talk about becoming students
Jamie, Excellent! Thank you for sharing!
Dr. Jean Norris
Reaching out to high school students during career days is a good example. There are other ways to reach external customers such as:
1.utilizing the internet through reviews, encourage current students to go online and review your school.
2.Attending job fairs and encouraging current students to join to give their perspective.
3.I think word of mouth is the most important of them all. Give your students the environment to succeed and they will repay you with referrals.
It sounds there is a lot of external client activity at your school, Ivette. How do you think it benefits those external customers?
Dr. Jean Norris
At my school, we often host activities like an open house, for example, and invite media such as radio, and people from the community come and we do outdoor activities, projected some films, etc.
All seem like great techniques. Who is typically a part of these types of events?
Dr. Jean Norris
THE TECHNIQUES THAT WE USE IN OUR CAMPUS ARE , ART EVENTS, JOB FAIRS, COMMUNITY FAIRS, EXTERNAL VISITS TO SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS AND VENDORS.
Your 'planting seeds' metaphor explains the benefit of networking with external customers, and sowing those seeds and helping them to grow can certainly increase your personally developed inquiries. Keep it up Dan!
Dr. Jean Norris
These are all great ways to reach your external customers. How are you personally involved in these Gregory?
Dr. Jean Norris
We use every opportunity here in York, PA. Anywhere I go I try to make an external potential customer. I call it "planting seeds." These seeds will grow into potential graduate enrollees and personally developed leads if done correctly in a positive manner. Some things I participate in at a campus level are high school events, community events, and local bulletin board advertising to reach external customers.
My campus staff have a lot of different ways that we reach our external customers:
Admissions do high school career fairs and job fairs events.
Career Services invites employers to the campus to interview students for potential externships and employment.
The campus president visits employment offices, clinical sites, chamber of commerce meetings.
The business office meets with different vendors.
The education department take students on field trips to different employers, activities and events.
It looks like you're doing many things to reach out to your external customers. How does your student population factor into this plan?
Dr. Jean Norris
We go job fairs, go to businesses, and have career expo days. Basically anything we can to reach people.
How are these methods working for your school?
Dr. Jean Norris
At my school we use social media, Job fairs, High School recruiting events, Television commercials, and Word of mouth.
I think we do an exceptional job reaching external customers. Our student governing association is always active within the community at almost every event. Health fairs, non profit organizations asking for help, free/low cost lunches on campus open to all.
Twice a year we have open house/activity fairs open to all students, faculty and their families. This summer we've had water drives for a local non profit that hands out water/food to homeless/low income. We've collected dog food for animal agencies.
We have internship and externship programs so there is a lot of outreach that way.
We have a couple of large class rooms that are used by other community organizations in the evenings for their own in-house classes. I have classes a lot of evenings and usually try to touch base with some of the people at those classes when I can.
I like one of the examples about the person going out in her school sweatshirt. I've had numerous times when people asked me about the school when I still had my school ID on after school. I've been able to educate and clear up misconceptions several times.
