Who do you hire when you want to train your employees to give excellent customer service? How about the Ritz-Carlton---the world-renowned hotel chain that prides itself on creating memorable experiences for their guests?
That’s exactly what Birmingham schools just did.
More than 150 clerical and frontline employees in Birmingham’s 44 schools and central office participated in the second of three training sessions conducted by the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Group on Feb. 15.
They were there to learn “The Art of the Apology.” What do apologies and customer service have to do with schools? As it turns out, everything.
Birmingham Board of Education member Sonja Smith said the idea of improving customer service came out of a week-long session last summer at Harvard University where she and other members of the district’s leadership team participated.
District officials have been trying to stem the flow of students out of Birmingham and into surrounding school districts. Student enrollment has decreased from 24,400 five years ago to 22,200 this year.
The district had 40,000 students 20 years ago.
Smith said improving relationships among schools and parents is a priority. “We were looking at how can we engage with parents in a way that makes them feel comfortable,” Smith said. “It really boiled down to how we treat people.”
“We’ve heard that parents take their children out,” district training director Wendolyn Conner-Knight said, because of unpleasant interactions with school staff. Parents do have choices, she added. “We want them to choose Birmingham City Schools.”
Smith said parent-employee interactions, often emotion-filled because children are involved, generate a large number of the district’s complaints overall, and they want to try and solve that problem.
“Things happen beyond our control,” Conner-Knight said, but school staff need to do a better job explaining to parents why a situation arose and help them resolve it.
Valori Borland, a 30-year veteran of the hotel industry, led the session. “Nobody’s perfect,” Borland told attendees. “We make mistakes every day.”
Learning how to apologize and taking ownership of a problem---even if the employee isn’t directly responsible for causing it---is important when trying to connect with people, Borland said.
“[Apologizing] is not something that comes easy to anybody,” Borland said, teaching attendees that empathy and patience go a long way when faced with a parent or colleague who is upset.
Sometimes, Borland told participants, people worry that apologizing is a sign of weakness. “It is anything but,” she said. Rather, she said, when you own a problem, it’s a sign of strength.
Some attendees pushed back, inviting Borland to visit their school and handle some of the situations they deal with.
During the half-day session, Birmingham school staff role-played, showing what they learned about apologizing. It was apparent that many of the attendees had faced an aggravated parent or two.
One group shared what might happen when a parent shows up at school, angry because their child’s cell phone was taken away. The parent, being played by an employee, demanded the phone be returned. The school employee calmly explained that the phone would be returned at the end of the day and reiterated that using the phone during school hours was against the rules. The school employee asked the parent to remind her child not to use the phone when he isn’t supposed to.
A second group’s role-play involved a parent who was angry because she was being asked to sign in at the front desk, when her friend was never asked to do so. The parent complained that staff were being rude to her as well.
The employee asked her to come into her office, in effect giving the parent her full attention in an attempt to resolve the conflict.
A third example was a parent who was upset because a grandparent had checked her child out of school without her permission. It was customary for the grandparent to check the child out, the employee said, but they would work to resolve the problem in the future.
In each case, employees showed a calm disposition, giving the parent their full attention, apologizing for the situation that had arisen, taking ownership of the problem and working to resolve it.
Canzetta Dixon, a 40-year veteran of the district and currently a front-office employee at Huffman High School, said the session was helpful. “You can pull from it and incorporate it into your everyday activities,” she said.
“Most of the problems that we encounter at the front counter are our parents,” Dixon said, but added that she doesn’t have the types of problems her colleagues in other schools have voiced.
Borland said some participants weren’t too sure that the methods she went over would work with parents at their schools, but she encouraged them to try anyway.
“I don’t know that we always think that every one of our actions, how we handle that one phone call, how we handle that one parent,” Borland said, “has a bearing on [our reputation]. It does.”
Conner-Knight said one reason they chose the Ritz-Carlton group is because of their willingness to help the district create their own customer service training to use in the future. She plans to be back in front of the board, who approved the training at their Jan. 22 meeting, with a full training program for Birmingham schools this spring.
The first training for front line personnel, on customer service principles, was held Jan. 3, at a cost of $14,000. The cost of the remaining sessions will be between $36,000 and $75,000, according to the contract the board approved. The variance, Conner-Knight said, arises due to the costs of the venue.
Birmingham board member Terri Michal opposed the training when it was presented and approved. “Our children are in a crisis, and we’re talking about money for this,” Michal said. “I’m just having a really hard time justifying this.”
Board President Cheri Gardner supported the training, saying, “I believe that it’s long overdue.”
“Many of the things I hear, the complaints that are brought to my attention,” Gardner continued, “all of it has everything to do with customer service.”
Training for school and central office administrators, will be held in March and April, Conner-Knight said, and a third and final training for front line staff will be held in March.
Birmingham is the first school district in Alabama Borland’s group has worked with, but they have a lot of experience working with universities---Ivy Leagues included. Creating a memorable customer service experience, she said, is important across organizations and institutions.
Conflict is unavoidable, Borland said. For Birmingham schools to take this on is impressive, she added. “It takes a lot for any brand, any organization, to say ‘we can do better.’”