Extract from

Evaluation of the Higher Education Transforming Workforce Development Programme – Report to HEFCE by CFE and KSA, Dec 2011

Recommendations to HEIs

Recommendation 5

Customer relationships and account management

Prior to the Programme, many HEIs admitted to taking a very tactical and somewhat uncoordinated approach to managing their customers. More often than not, several individuals from one HEI would contact the same employer, using different approaches but essentially on the same mission; to persuade the employer to work with them. Given that employer engagement was mainly faculty driven with little or no central oversight, it is not surprising therefore that academics were all working in apparent ‘silos’. However, these efforts were not appreciated by employers, who became increasingly frustrated with their uncoordinated and unprofessional methods:

“There was a turning point for me where we found a lot of anger, a lot of businesses that were angry that they had six or seven people calling them from the university saying, ‘I am from the university’ and they had no concept of who, they don’t understand the business school....they just see the university. That was a major frustration that people were not coming back.”                              

WFDP 11

The Programme therefore intended to induce a change of direction in customer relationship management to help achieve its objective of “promoting access to and progress through HE for a wider range of learners particularly those in the workforce without previous experience of HE”. It was clear that HEIs would not achieve this objective if they continued with such an uncoordinated approach. In most cases, HEIs have recognised the need to improve and raise their game with this activity. This has required fundamental changes to processes, structures and institutional culture. Starting with the latter, many HEIs faced the challenge of persuading academics to collaborate, rather than pursue opportunities individually in order to benefit the HEI overall. Given that academics are often resource and time constrained, many relationships with existing customers were previously being neglected in terms of development opportunities. Rather than working closely with existing employers to identify further opportunities moving forwards, these relationships were seen as ‘one-offs’ or ‘they are my client’. A number of HEIs have now recognised the benefits of handling existing customers with care to enable cross selling:

“Some of it is changing the sales culture. As part of the sales strategy, you do your best business with your existing customers, but if you’re not managing those customers, if you’re not managing those accounts, I think we came to the realisation that we weren’t cross-selling any products to any of our existing customers.”                            

WFDP 17 

Some HEIs are now focusing on managing their customers more effectively through the introduction of ‘account managers’ who serve as a single point of contact for each customer. This individual is responsible for all external contact with the customer and above all, developing a full understanding of the customer’s business and their skills requirements. The size of the team and number of accounts handled by each account manager varies across HEIs; in many cases it depends on available resources and team structure. In at least one case, key accounts (generally identified by the strategic nature of the relationship and the level of income generated) are managed by dedicated business development staff and other (lower value, less strategic) accounts are managed by academic staff. One HEI has however noticed that if you overload an account manager with existing clients, they will be less effective in driving future business. Therefore the dual objectives of retaining and growing business need to be acknowledged:

“...you may have core business with particular employers, but that changes over time. You have to develop new initiatives with that.  Some employers will drop out.  So even just to maintain your numbers, you’re actually having to generate new business because some will just disappear. 

WFDP 5

In an attempt to strategically manage or coordinate workforce development activity, the majority of HEIs have used their development funding to install or improve a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, with which to record and monitor their interactions with employers. Finding an appropriate system however, has been a particular challenge in itself; many HEIs had difficulties finding a CRM system that didn’t cost more than they would gain from it.

The main reasons for using a CRM system vary across HEIs. Some have rather a rudimentary purpose, to ensure simply that employer activity is recorded and enquiries are pursued in a timely fashion by one person, rather than multiple contacts. These HEIs are using CRM very tactically at this stage; to house their contact information in one central database, but with little formality around the processes.

In contrast, other HEIs are further ahead, already using CRM as a strategic tool to extract important management information, from which conclusions around trends and issues can be drawn. In these HEIs, the CRM system is at the crux of their activity; it influences their direction and enables them to adopt a proactive and professional approach to managing customers. In some instances, CRM is utilised to manage sales and business development activity through sales pipeline reports; in others, it draws together employer engagement across the wider institution, linking activity across external facing departments including the careers service, business development office and employer engagement unit.

However, some HEIs acknowledge that a CRM system is only as good as the individuals who use it, and that sophisticated IT is no substitute for human input. The longer term challenge for many HEIs will surround their ability to encourage and possibly oblige their staff to leverage this tool to its full potential in order for a true customer relationship culture to be achieved. As WFDP 12 commented:

“..it’s not ultimately about the technology....it is about changing the culture and academics are very precious about their data and sharing their data.  You can’t make them do it, actually, you can only lead them to want to do it....It’s not perfect, and it won’t be perfect to any university either.  Ultimately you might want to end up with a key account management situation.  I know that’s the Holy Grail that many universities are seeking; I don’t know that many have achieved it.”

WFDP 12

The majority of employers interviewed were very complimentary about their relationship with the HEI they had been using. They reported them as ‘flexible’, ‘responsive’, ‘accessible’, ‘client focussed’ and ‘competent’. In many cases though, this applied directly to their key account manager, rather than the HEI more generally. The opportunity to optimise existing relationships and explore possibilities for cross selling has clearly been acknowledged by some HEIs. They have made sure to follow up after delivery to discuss levels of satisfaction, areas for improvement and ultimately discuss other needs and services on offer. For those who had not previously experienced Higher Education, some HEIs succeeded in making it “easy...accessible and ...available to people that, in my camp, would never have even thought about it” (Large Retail employer).

Notwithstanding all the positive feedback on HEIs’ approaches to customer relationship management, there remains some room for improvement according to both employers and learners. In some instances, lack of communication between departments, the HEI and the employer and/ or the HEI and the learner resulted in disappointment. Examples include the HEI failing to alert the employer to an absent student, learners failing to receive information, feedback or web access on time and mixed messages on agreed next steps. Bureaucracy in working with the HEI was also named by more than one employer as being a barrier to establishing a successful working relationship. Fortunately, none of these experiences have resulted in employers terminating their relationship. In many cases, the employer accepts that these challenges are part and parcel of working within an academic environment, which faces its own challenges. One employer summed it up: “I think they’re pretty good. I think there is obviously a resource issue for all higher education establishments at the moment, so you can tell they are very, very busy...”  (Medium sized housing & communities employer).