A ‘Student First’ approach

I can’t believe it’s six years since the Lifelong Learning Centre first jumped into the world of Customer Service Excellence!

We saw the benefit of using this nationally recognised accreditation as a tool to continuously improve the service we offer to our students.

In March we had our sixth visit from the assessor and as always it was a great day of reflection and receiving feedback on how we had developed over the last year.

For those that don’t know about CSE, we were marked against 52 criteria in five different areas:

1. customer insight

2. culture of organisation

3. information and access

4. delivery

5. timeliness and quality of service

To achieve the accreditation you have to pass each criteria. You can also achieve what are called ‘compliance pluses’ in areas where you are seen to be going above and beyond. Feedback from the assessor was extremely positive this year, especially taking into account the circumstances in which we have all been having to work.

Here are some highlights from the feedback they gave us:

Customer insight

It was clear to the assessor during the visit that staff at the LLC take time to get to know each of our students personally, to understand their different needs and ensure that everything possible is done to meet them.

Our work continues to be centred around providing excellent student experiences to many hard-to-reach customer groups, providing them with the opportunity to enter higher education.

Culture of organisation

The culture of the LLC continues to clearly focus on a ‘Student First’ approach. Staff at every level consider how to create opportunities for their customers.

“We owe it to them to give the best possible educational experience.”

The assessor discussed the culture of the LLC with a range of our students, and it was clear that they all felt safe and supported with their learning, and that our staff are exceptionally approachable and helpful. Several examples were given of individual staff members going above and beyond to support students.

Information and access

It was clear to the assessor that the LLC staff team are valued highly for their advice and knowledge, but also for their approach to students.

The team on our Welcome Desk are a valuable resource both for advising students at first point of contact and for advising academic and support staff of the students’ perspective on their experiences.

Delivery

The LLC remained open and accessible to all our students throughout the pandemic, focusing on providing continuity of support.

There is a strong emphasis on ensuring that LLC alumni engage with the support that continues to be offered to them post-graduation.

Our Service Committee has become more established over the past year and continues to focus on how to continuously improve the services we offer. The Committee are working on providing consistent transitions for students from the LLC to other schools in the University, and collating anonymized data on why students leave early to understand if there are any opportunities to reduce ‘attrition’.

Timeliness and quality of service

A new online system has been introduced which allows tutors to respond to feedback given at the end of module surveys. This has ensured that the voice of the student is heard clearly and feedback is responded to in a timely manner.

Significant work has been carried out on the ‘workflow’ for enquiries received by LLC staff to improve communication between the Centre and potential students. Anybody who makes an enquiry now receives a follow-up email and other interactions, in the hope that this will help to remove barriers to their receiving further support from us.

So how did we do?

For the sixth year running we have achieved the CSE accreditation and now hold a whopping 12 compliance pluses. We have held compliance pluses in areas 1–4 for a while but the great win for us this year was that we finally have a compliance plus in area 5. I’ve been chasing this since we applied for our first CSE accreditation and colleagues will tell you how competitive I am!

Now to start to planning for the upcoming year with the aim of improving in areas where we do not currently hold any compliance pluses…

If you’d like more information on what is involved in the CSE accreditation or would like to chat about the LLC or the services we offer, just drop me an email at j.l.whitfield@leeds.ac.uk.