In most language schools, the secretariat is the first contact of a course participant with the school. This is where the present or potential customer is attended. Although the secretariat is a frequently an underrated work area, the financial success of a school depends largely on its efficient functioning. Why?
The secretariat is the place most frequently visited by potential customers who want to learn more about the offer if they misunderstand something and want to know more details. This is also the place where the existing customers come to settle some matters: change the group, sign out of a course etc. How they are attended will largely determine their decision on further steps: whether they will take advantage of the offer or leave disgusted and tell their friends how they were treated.
Is the secretariat in your school its genuine showcase? Do course participant always find support there? Congratulations if the answer is yes! But if you feel that its operations might benefit from some improvement, we suggest getting acquainted with a several proven hints.
- Hire the right person
Not everyone has sufficient patience, empathy and energy to attend customers. When hiring employees for the secretariat, watch not only how they talk with you but also with other people. Do they smile frequently? Are they friendly? Can they joke? In the secretariat you have to hire people with certain personality features: they simply have to like people. Even the most professional employee who loses patience and snubs interlocutors, whether in the office or on the phone, is bound to alienate them. Therefore rely on persons who are nice but at the same time have the ability to give assertive and constructive answers. Let’s not delude ourselves: sometimes you have to say “no” in the secretariat and there’s nothing wrong with it as long as this answer is provided skilfully.
- Organise the office
You don’t have to hire a designer and buy furniture worth PLN 100 thousand. Pre-owned but e.g. finely painted, furniture may have a charm of its own – well, vintage style is fashionable now. The most important thing is to have the office cleaned up, documents put into binders, and binders locked in cabinets. If customers are to trust us and spend in our school several hundred or even several thousand złoty, they must know that they deal with a professional company immediately after entering the office. Dusty desks covered with piles of old, spotty papers or cabinets with broken doors are anti-advertising for the school. It doesn’t matter how mega professional your school may be – if the secretariat is messy, this will tarnish the reputation of school in the eyes of the course participant in a single moment.
- Take care of the ergonomics of the work environment
A telephone one has to cross the entire room to answer? Lack of adequate room ventilation? Small uncomfortable desks at which employees hunch leaning over computers? In the Internet you will find many pieces of advice on how to arrange a comfortable work place (http://pip.gov.pl/ergonomia/ergonomiczne_st.html). This does not entail great financial outlays, but requires e.g. proper furniture purchase planning. Properly arranged work place translates into fewer sick leaves due to eye or spine pains, but also to better work effectiveness – if one has to walk around the office to answer a phone call, telephone will be answered less and less often. Good office ergonomics will also improve the moods of the employees and improve their satisfaction with work, so it is worthwhile taking care of.
- Define customer service standards
If you want to require stringent work standards of your employees, define exactly what you are going to demand. If your expectations are not defined precisely, nobody will be able to meet them. What’s more, such situation where employees inefficiently try to meet the needs of the boss increases frustration and compromises performance. Therefore you should define the rules, e.g.: each phone call must be answered; how employees should introduce themselves (“X language school, Anna Nowak speaking”); what the e-mail header of each employee should look like; how fast a reply should be given to an e-mail (e.g. in urgent matters within an hour, in less urgent ones – on the same day). The rules do not have to be very detailed, but 2-3 pages with items like that will help explaining to employees what you expect and will facilitate enforcement of the rules.
- Define the procedures governing complaint handling
An upset customer – a threat or an opportunity? This depends on how they are attended. If secretariat employees aim to persuade the customers that their complaints are ungrounded and should leave them alone, or if they don’t know how to handle the matter, the cooperation is bound to end soon and the frustrated customer will become your enemy. If employees cope with the compliant well – help solve the issue and tone down negative emotions, they can turn this relation with the customer into friendship. A positively resolved problem may result in continued cooperation.
- Provide your employees with training
Help your employees develop open and honest, but also assertive communication – send them for training. Costs? Well, this is going to cost. But good training pays its costs back soon. It suffices if owing to an effective and communicative person in the secretariat, a course participant who wanted to resign from the course (without giving any reason) after a professionally performed conversation decides to change the group. Perhaps a different level or a different course instructor will meet the student’s expectations? Communication training will facilitate performance of such difficult talks. Do you have some proven methods of handling dissatisfied customers? Share your experiences with us.