Are You Being Served? Gauging Customer Service

Meeting customer demands is a daily task for communications units. Documenting how well demands are met is a measure of accountability, which is a growing concern for educational institutions. At Kansas State University, the Department of Communications was asked to document how internal customers perceived the department\u27s service. Multiple methods are employed in this effort, one of which was a census of on-campus faculty and unclassified staff. Overall, response by these clients indicated that the department was fulfilling its mission, servicing customers well, and responding promptly. The census provided baseline data and helped inform administrators about department operations. Documenting productivity is important to administrators as the need for accountability increases. Productivity for a communications unit often is judged by clients\u27 perceptions of how well the unit meets or services customer needs. Determining how well one is servicing customers provides information for performance documentation as well as improvement and decision making support. Trends or changes in client satisfaction can be identified as well, because baseline data are established

“Maybe” Should Be a Choice in “Yes-No” Questionnaires

By permitting respondents to answer “don't know” or “possibly” to queries otherwise intended to be “yes” or “no” questions, a new dimension of the interview becomes available for analysis. By coding “yes” and “no” as “yes, I have an opinion that I will express to you,” and “don't know” or “possibly” as “no, I do not have an opinion that I will express to you,” understanding the patterning of such responses becomes an interesting research question. We present an example of this approach from 538 interviews, question-frames about the domain “illness,” obtained in the homes of participants in an intervention program designed to reduce coronary heart disease, in central, rural Mississippi. The questionnaire was presented by four interviewers. Each participant was interviewed four times at six-month intervals, providing adequate time between interviews for reflection on the task. We use the individual differences model of multidimensional scaling to obtain weights for each consultant on each dimension of the group aggregate space. Subsequent analysis of these weights was (1) by general linear model analysis of variance and (2) examination of the pattern of adjusted means of dimension weights by risk factors and design factors. Results were surprising. The two-dimensional aggregate space developed from opinions vs. lack of expressed opinion on individual questions was interpretable as one cluster of symptoms that implied heart disease and two other structures that were vector-like in appearance. Extremely high F-values showed a reflexive effect; the interviewer was associated with several factors including risk status of the participants, suggesting negotiation of whether or not a participant would agree to express an opinion. There may have been a reflective effect with changing patterns developing over the course of the repeated interviews. Neither dimension was associated with the health-care seeking behavior of consulting a doctor

What's Wrong With My Tomatoes? Answering Questions Collaboratively

Presented at the 2005 Biennial Conference of the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), Lexington, KY; May 18, 2005Extension educators and librarians share a mission: connecting people with information. Librarians are finding that many customers like to ask questions electronically: via email, web forms, or chat technology. This paper reports on a survey of electronic methods available for customers to direct questions to extension staff from the main Extension website in each state. The presentation includes examples of the extension web pages, summarizes the opportunities to ask questions, characterizes the availability of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and reports on evidence of collaboration with librarians. Also included is a case study of cooperation between the OSU Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences librarians and the College Communications and Technology unit to offer Ohioline users the opportunity to “ask-a-librarian” for assistance. Most questions were answered by sending a factsheet or other resource, referring the questioner to a local extension office, or referring the question to an Extension specialist when a more detailed answer was required. This ‘triage’ protocol allowed the librarians to handle the routine information requests, while referring to Extension staff only those questions requiring more extensive subject expertise