We are a vocational school and have a number of external cutomers. Our students, potential employers, professional associations, and our community at large. I am in career services and we support our students throughout the program with free tutoring, counceling and instructor supervised practice/study time. The school also incorporates testing & licensing fees into tuition and all application processes is completed while they are in school and handled by the CS office.
Employers are alo a vital external customer for us! They are included in many ways during the training of our students. They are invited into the classroom to review resumes, conduct mock interviews, talk about their businesses and what they expect as employers once students graduate. We hold job fairs and recruiting events which benefit both employer and graduate, as well as job shadow opportunities and externships.
Our school is also present at many professional membership associations annuual events, locally and nationally, to build relationships and guide our gradautes into their new profession so that they can build community and find resources and support for themselves.
Our external customers would be mainly students and future employers. We always make sure to invite future employers to all of our open houses and also host many career fairs in which students can interact with future employers. This also allows future employers to see any advances or improvements in our school.
External Customers at our TMCT school are local businesses for example Massage Envy and Massage Heights. Having networking / career fairs are ways we serve not only our students but our external customers.
Our student is also our main external customer so we nuture them and teach them professionalism and the importance of customer service. This allows them to be a step above their competion for jobs and clients. We also recognize and value all of the future employers in our area. They are frequently invited in to the campus as clients to sample the services our students are learning as well as to do recruiting visits. They are a crucial part of our business and we treat them as such.
It's sounds like you've got a handle on your externship process and serving those 'customers'. What are some of the things that you do to ensure they have a positive experience with your school?
Dr. Jean Norris
We have multiple external customers. I teach Surgical Technology so it isn't just hospitals that we work with, its surgery centers, doctors offices, etc. The patient in the operating rooms are also our customers so our students have to be focused and on point with their skills and knowledge to be able to provide competent and knowledgeable skills. We recognize the facilities that we utilize but also know that the medical community is so small, that everyone knows everyone else and that doctors go to several different facilities and they talk about the experiences that they have with our students. We serve the entire community because the community is our patient and we must show them that we can teach students to have empathy, integrity, and knowledge when it comes to providing aseptic technique during a procedure.
The external customers at our school that I directly work with are our externship sites as well as employers who hire our graduates. Although, any company in our community could be our external customer as any company could participate in the externship process or hire one of our graduates. One of the ways we serve our externship sites is by providing students for them to "try before you buy". Employers can bring students into their company in the compacity of externship and test out what kind of employee the student might be while nuturing their skills, and in the end the employer has the option to hire the student. Also, for our employers who hire graduates without the externship process, we use information given by the employer to determine which graduate(s) might be the best fit for the position. After this, we submit certain resumes to the employer based on the information give by the employer, therefore limited the employer's search to a select few qualified graduates.
That's a great way to look at it, today's graduates ARE tomorrow's external customers. Thank you for sharing!
Dr. Jean Norris
Yes, that is why it is so important we trained our students right so they can become future employers for future students. Creating a new generation of external customers....
Wow! Your school seems to be doing a great job connecting with and taking care of your external customers. Thank you for sharing your experience Diane.
Dr. Jean Norris
Our school is a grad school. We place students in clinical sites and practicum sites from first term. Our clin ed department has close working relationships with all of the sites. We try very hard to make sure they have good experiences with our students by doing site visits several times throughout the trimester. Many of our students end of working for their clinical site after graduation because of our students' professionalism while there on internship.
Our alumni are our best sites and referrals for prospective students. Many of our alumni send prospective students our way. Its either someone observing in their clinic or may be a patient that is being treated that decides after meeting and being treated by our alumni that our school is where they want to go.
Our students/school does a 5K race/family fair every year and the proceeds go to a organization within the community. It is a huge outreach for our school. We have business sponsors which gives them recognition and benefits our students. Hundreds of runners from the community. We reach out to the high schools for their sport teams to participate also.
I couldn't agree more!! The opportunities are endless and leaving a lasting positive impression with all customers whether internal or external is key. Thank you for your post Janice.
Dr. Jean Norris
Our external customers are potentially anyone that our program interacts with be it a clinic client, students/parents, colleagues, partners in the industry/community, and charity organizations. If the quality of customer service is received as excellent, that will generate a positive experience to our external (potential) customer which will result in positive feedback for our program. Word of mouth is a very powerful instrument on our island. Our external customers will unknowingly be giving our school/program free advertising sharing their experience. This could bring in more students, increased enrollment could expand our program. External customers would hire our graduates and our graduates will become contributing members of our community. Our alumni would return and give back to our program. The opportunities are endless.
This is a win win indeed! Establishing community partnerships, especially with industry partners, help you to understand the industry needs and the expectations of the students. This is a model that would be wonderful for every school to duplicate. Thank you for your post Wayne.
External customers at my school include program advisory committee members. These are folks representing the industry we serve and have a strong influence on providing recommendations to the school regarding industry expectations for our students. They are no employees, rather "partners" with us on preparing our graduates for successful careers.
We serve them by listening to their recommendations and providing graduates with what they expect from entry level technicians. This "partnership" puts the needs of the student first while fulfilling the need of the indurty. A win win!
Happy clinic customers can easily translate into referrals for both the clinic and the school. How do you help your customers to feel valued as a client Thomas?
That's great Erin! How do you encourage your external customers to stay involved with your school?
We are a massage school with a public clinic open to the public on Fri and Sat. So in addition to the employers who our Career Serv dept deal with, we also have clients coming in that the students can retain as clients when they leave. Employers also use the clinic to be able to judge our students on their performance before ever even interviewing them. Feeling valued as a client and being treated with the best customer service not only keeps them coming back to our clinic for services, but also has them speaking about us on the street in a positive manner.
Our external customers vary from programs we offer. A doctor's office or hospital looking for medical assistants, dentist offices looking for dental assistants, a trucking company looking for diesel mechanics, etc. To graduate from most of our programs the students must finish an externship in their field. This helps the students be ready and know what to expect when looking for a job, and the employers get to have free help and a lot of times hire the students after they graduate.
If your graduates are coming back to contribute to the future of your campus they are telling you that they liked their experience so much that they want to continue the relationship. Nurturing relationships with graduates is a win-win and could lead to more happy and successful graduates. Thank you for your post Michael.
