1. “Are you delivering top notch service?”
Fenella Bramwell –
Gemma Hoyle –
24th June 2014

2. Introduction
This is an interactive session to support you in striving for commercial excellence, set against the evolving nature of service provision currently demanded of Unions.
Session flow:
Identification of key challenges facing students’ unions
What's happening in the current student market
Opportunities on how to improve your commercial excellence
Benefits of monitoring your services
Case studies from other unions on how they monitor their commercial excellence
Conclusion

3. ‘Top Notch Customer Service’ – what is it and how do you know if you’ve got it?’
Group activity
‘Barriers to Commercial Excellence’

4. “Barriers to offering top notch customer service…”
Group discussion:
What are your key challenges to providing commercial excellence?

5. Top Notch Customer Service - knowing your customers
Success in the Student Market 2014
Current situation in the student market

6. Success in the Student Market 2014
Success in the Student Market Survey 2014:
This involved over 1600 students completing an online survey
40 students unions in a semi structured telephone interview.
Almost half of the students were aged 18 to 20 years old,
Over 80% were undergrads

7. Student use of facilities
Decrease in student use of facilities (for those aware)
Café -16%
Coffee shop -6%
Bar/pub -20%
Nightclub -9%
Increase in student use of facilities (for those aware)
Volunteering/employment advice +10%
Sporting events +16%
Advice and welfare +9%
Figure 18 SISM report.

8. Overview of the barriers
What are the barriers to offering top notch service

9. ‘Top Notch Customer Service’ – what is it and how do you know if you’ve got it?’
How do you improve your service

10. “What enables good customer service…”
Group discussion:
What do you do to offer good service?
98% of students’ unions said; “I like to learn about the new things that other students’ unions are implementing.”

11. Understanding students
Home comforts
Feel closest to their friends from home or school and choose not to take part in any extracurricular activities.
Study buddies
Feel closest to their course friends. They might socialise in their SU, but not in the evening.
In & outs
Feel closest to their friends from home/school. They are likely to engage in some clubs and societies.
Resident partiers
Feel closest to the people they live with at University. Their social life is on the top of their mind and they tend to use the SU facilities.
Figure 1 SISM report.

12. Understanding customers’ needs
Top 5 things students want to see improved year on year:
What students would do to make their students’ union more appealing to them;
1st - Employment agency
2nd - NUS Extra
3rd - Extracurricular activities
4th - Advice/support services
5th - Healthcare for students
Cheaper events and services
More events inc daytime and non-alcohol
Better communications
More targeted activities
Figure 27 SISM report.
Page 46 SISM report.

13. Monitoring levels of satisfaction
How do you monitor your
customers’ satisfaction

14. How to evaluate your service
Evaluating your customer service:
Feedback forms
Incentivised online surveys
Talking to customers
Staff opinions/views/feedback
Complaints and compliments letters
Mystery shopping
Word of mouth

15. Benefits of monitoring commercial excellence
Train and develop a staff team
Reward staff for high performance
Inclusion of target scores in KPIs
Strategically to identify the business’ customer service
Strengths and weaknesses
Benchmark against similar organisations
Gain insight into your competitors’ activities
Hear from your ‘true customers’
Give you detailed management statistics

16. ‘Top Notch Customer Service’ – what is it and how do you know if you’ve got it?’
Mystery shopping programme

17. Mystery shopping
“How to get a comprehensive overview of the customer experience showing quality of service, which can be rolled out elsewhere, or implemented as a new initiative to increase traffic and loyalty?”

18. Mystery shopping How the programme works:
NUS has organised over 600 individual visits to students’ unions over the past Six years
We have a panel of over 4k students, largest in UK
Flexible programmes
Run by the dedicated mystery shopping team here today
A great technique for obtaining valuable customer insights

19. Mystery shopping Termly analysis at the end of each term
A breakdown for each venue allowing for trend analysis.
Section summary analysis, allowing you to compare each section based on term 1, term 2, term 3 and the total average score.
A graph indicating how your students’ union has performed in comparison to other unions.

20. ‘Top Notch Customer Service’ – what is it and how do you know if you’ve got it?’
Case studies

21. Meet your panel Alan Williams, Head of Trade Services,
Nottingham Trent Students’ Union
Nottingham Trent monitor their customer excellence
through the mystery shopping programme.
Rob Balding, Development Manager,
Newman University Students’ Union
Trialling Mystery Shopping for the first time in 2014

22. Product Sampling Evaluation
What is product sampling evaluation?
How does it work?
But….What are the benefits to SUs?

23. Thank you.
Any questions

24. Fenella Bramwell
Research Officer
Gemma Hoyle
Research Assistant