Let's consider some differences between the business world and education:

• A one-week summer vacation where you check voicemail twice a day compared to three carefree months in the sun
• Board meetings with PowerPoint presentations and high expectations compared to student council meetings with posters and markers
• A weeklong business trip to Chicago or New York compared to a daylong field trip to the art museum or state capitol building

Yet, despite these differences, changes in education are helping the industry adopt business-oriented strategies. Most notably, the education industry is listening to customer feedback.

Who are the customers in education?

• Parents who choose an independent school and spend money on an alternative to public education are indeed customers.
• Students receiving and evaluating the school's services make decisions about whether or not that school is meeting their needs – they too are customers.
• With a vast labor shortage in education, teachers and staff are selecting the institutions they work for with careful consideration.

Like any business, building loyal relationships is critical to success when stakeholders have a choice.

To help you make the connection about loyalty in business and education, here's an example. Deregulation in the utility industry has had a similar effect in that industry as the passing of school vouchers and the increase of independent schools has had on education. It has transformed the industry into a competitive environment with increasingly more choices. Thus, similar to the energy/utilities industry today, customer loyalty is critical in education. Independent schools must listen and respond to the needs and wants of stakeholders to secure business, which provides the necessary funding and, ultimately, success as a private enterprise.

Do your homework: Conduct surveys
Conducting customer research is already prevalent in education. According to Chris Everett of The Kensington Group, an Indianapolis-based consulting firm, the Independent Schools Association of Central States (ISACS) requires its schools to conduct surveys as part of the accreditation process. In fact, Everett developed the standardized survey ISACS uses to measure the perceptions of parents, students, faculty, and staff on a number of educational issues.

Everett adds that beyond accreditation requirements, schools find significant value in the research findings for strategic planning efforts – just like companies who conduct customer loyalty management programs.

"Many schools use an ongoing survey program as a self-study process. With the introduction of vouchers, there is more competition and independent schools need to be well-run to secure the funding that comes from tuition and endowments," Everett said. "It is extremely costly for these schools to attract a new parent and win their business. So, churn is a killer in education."

Similar to drivers of loyalty in our stakeholder world, Everett's survey identifies key factors affecting parents' decisions. He cites "the mission of the school" as the core principle parents consider when choosing an independent school. With this knowledge, school administrators can target energy and resources on the most critical improvement efforts.

Determining if your company's products and services are a good fit for your customers' needs is an important step in the assessment process for new business. The same principle applies to education with regard to independent schools.

"Sometimes the headmaster of the school wastes valuable time placating the wrong kind of customer. So, I tell him to fire them so they don't rip up the system," Everett said. "If the parents' expectations aren't in line with the mission of the school, the relationship won't work."

Case in point
Working largely on a volunteer basis, Chris Harsdorff, president of the Dallas-based Optimance Workforce Strategies, has found significant value in the stakeholder measurement work he has done for Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH), a Catholic elementary school in Dallas. Harsdorff's team has implemented a far-reaching program to collect feedback from a number of different "customers."

"We conducted focus groups with students, used Walker's Employee Relationship Report to survey teachers and staff, and mailed customer surveys to parents' homes," Harsdorff said. "We also conducted one-on-one interviews with parishioners, board members, and donors."

The survey addressed the school's annual budget deficit, declining enrollment, and the retention of quality teachers and staff. It also included a competitive analysis. These study results will be a driving part of the three-day strategic planning session for the school's advisory board in early August.

The results showed the quality and tenure of teachers was a main driver of parents' loyalty; yet it's an area where OLPH rated low. School officials discovered that most parents were only staying at OLPH because of the tuition support they received. In measurement terms, they were trapped.

Another major finding revealed that the Dallas elementary school serving a predominately Hispanic community struggled to effectively communicate across language barriers.

"We made sure the surveys were available in both English and Spanish," Harsdorff said. "However, we found concerns surfaced on this issue, such as having PTA meetings only in English. This made the Spanish-speaking parents feel unwelcome."

On the other hand, a number of leveragable strengths emerged, including a commitment to Catholic identity, the fact that OLPH is a neighborhood school, and that most students are 3rd or 4th generation.

Harsdorff emphasized one of the main benefits of the survey process was that it identified additional stakeholders – "the formal and informal leaders" who were important to supporting the school's success. He likens this multi-stakeholder approach to a community wheel analogy.

"Our belief is that to make a sustained and positive change requires ownership of the entire community wheel," Harsdorff said. "The survey identifies who are the spokes in the wheel. OLPH will only succeed if the spokes of their community wheel are working together."

He also stressed the importance of an ongoing program and implementation of key findings. His team will conduct a second survey in the spring of 2003.

From a corporate perspective, one doesn't typically equate education with business, making it easy to overlook the role of parents, students and teachers as customers. Yet, for independent schools, the desired customer behaviors are the same as those of business organizations – continuing to do business with and recommending their organization to others. And, more importantly, the mantra is the same – you can't manage what you don't measure.