Institutions can communicate a clear message about their offering to employers through improved marketing and also by encouraging informal employer contact with staff. This might include opportunities for employers with shared interests to meet up at institutional and other events. More informal activity between employers and institutions would probably lead to more collaboration but resources, such as staff time, need to be actively committed. 

A model which relies on dedicated staff giving up their evenings to participate in  informal networking on behalf of the institution is not necessarily sustainable in the majority of institutions and may limit the chances of success. Although this can usually be rectified through a measured balance between evening events and other activities that are sustainable i.e. breakfast meetings and lunchtime networking events.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has an important part to play in the context of Customer Service in Business and Community Engagement (BCE). CRM as a culture encourages people to view those they engage with as 'Customers' and to place the needs of the customer at the heart of everything they undertake. This is called a ‘customer-centered’ environment.  

Customer Service Standards

What is a quality standard?

A quality standard is a set of principles adopted to demonstrate and promote commitments to delivering quality products and services, and although they don’t guarantee a quality product or service they do embody a fostering of principles based on delivering quality services first time in a consistent way. 

Quality standards can be internal, but are more often external having being awarded (certificated) after compliance has been demonstrated. They are made up of a set of criteria or indicators based around the entire service or product experience. Achieving compliance against these criteria or indicators demonstrates excellence through the areas of the organisation that are assessed. 

Quality standards relating specifically to business practices are generally based around the following enablers, providing a holistic view of the whole organisation:

• Leadership
• Involvement of people
• Process
• Management
• Continuous improvement

They can be useful tools for HE & FE organisations, providing them with a structured framework to develop or improve their practices and processes throughout their BCE activity. The strive for compliance coupled with the continual external assessment of this serves to drive quality processes and systems throughout the organisation and makes their implementation easier. 

A quality management system needs to be established so that planned and systematic practices can be controlled, providing enough confidence that the service will consistently satisfy the given requirements of the quality standard. This could be aligned with and include some of the quality assurance that is put in place for Teaching and Learning in Higher and Further Education.

The basic principles are:

• fit for purpose; practices should be clear and suitable for the intended purpose and achieve results
• right first time; results should be right first time with mistakes being eliminated; helping to avoid any flawed products or services during the development, delivery and end stages

Quality Assurance 

Implementing a quality management system will ensure that continued processes provide the best possible products or services. This focuses on enhancing and improving the process (quality improvement) that is used to create the end result rather than focussing on the end result itself. Attention to detail should be present to ensure the highest quality of work is being done to achieve the desired result.

Benefits of quality assurance:

• critical components are in place that improve business operations and staff morale who are striving to improve standards of quality and service giving a competitive edge
• things get done first time with ‘sign off’ being achieved more quickly
• generates savings in time; avoiding fixing things = saving money and resource on reworking
• trust and respect is built fostering long term relationships with businesses
• a reputation for excellence is earned
• the quality gap is closed between competitors, driving up competition too
• word of mouth business is won
• a culture of ongoing improvement is nurtured

Process Approach

One of the founding principles of quality management systems is the process approach: a series of planned steps that focus not only on products and services but also on the means of achievement. Quality standards provide good frameworks for devising, driving or testing if processes are fit for purpose. The ‘journey’ that services or products take should be analysed step by step to identify that not only the sequence and interaction of processes are correct but also whether the activities carried out achieve the desired results. The easiest and most common way to do this is to carry out honest self-assessment exercises asking the following questions:

• What is done? identify the activities taking place and if they are the right ones
• How is it done? examine the activity for sufficiency and if it is fit for purpose
• When is it done? decide if the timing is appropriate and the activity in the right sequence
• Why is it done? conclude its purpose, if it is useful, and has an outcome
• Who does it? ensure that the person is right for the task
• Where does it happen? identify if this is appropriate to the situation to gain the best solution

These activities provide opportunity for quality improvement and the purposeful change of a process to improve the reliability of achieving and outcome. 

Types of quality standards

The quality standards listed below are suitable frameworks for both HE and FE organisations to operate within. All are excellent frameworks for developing process driven practices: