GM505 Unit 9 Dean Feedback Report on Live Answers Example

The Finding Nobody Requested: A Unit 9 Client Feedback Report to a Dean of Enrollment

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM505: Action Research and Consulting Skills

Unit 9 Client Feedback Report

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The college, its staff, its students and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

To: Dr. Renata Ellis, Dean of Enrollment From: Jordan Alvarez, Financial Aid Advisor and Internal Consultant Cc: Marcus Webb, Director of Financial Aid Re: Results of the verification pilot and one decision needed Date: November 14

Your Request

On August 28 you asked the office to address student complaints about long phone waits and unhelpful responses during the fall verification period, and suggested a customer service refresher. This report gives the results of the work that followed and asks for one decision.

What the Pilot Showed

Through October, the north campus ran all three changes: the new letter, the processor's notes and the morning huddle. The south campus continued as usual for comparison.

Repeat calls about verification documents on the north campus fell from 38 to 24 per hundred students with open files, a drop of about 37 percent. On the south campus they went from 37 to 36. Complete first uploads climbed on the north campus from 35 to 58 percent; the south campus held flat at 34 then 33. The wait until a file was first opened fell on the north campus from 6.5 to 5.0, and rose on the south campus from 6.8 to 7.1. The processor's average review time per file rose by about 6 percent with the notes, well within the 20 percent limit set before the pilot.

All three results passed the success thresholds written into the data plan before the pilot began. The pilot worked.

A Finding You Did Not Ask For

The diagnosis and the pilot both point to one more cause, and it concerns your live-answer rule.

During the three peak weeks of fall verification, the office runs six advisors on the phones all day to answer every call live. In ordinary weeks, two of those advisors spend afternoons at the file help desk, where students bring incomplete documents and get help finishing them. In peak weeks, that desk closes. Our records show that file help sessions fell from about 45 a week to about 10 during the peak. Students who would have been helped to complete their files instead submit incomplete ones, which lengthens the review queue, which produces more status calls, which keeps the advisors on the phones. The live-answer rule, meant to serve students, feeds the loop the pilot was designed to break.

You can check this sequence against your own staffing records: the weeks with the most phone coverage are the weeks with the fewest file help sessions and the longest queues.

The rule that every call be answered live keeps two advisors on the phones in exactly the weeks when their absence from the file help desk produces most of the calls.

I raised this with you privately on November 6, as we agreed at mid-term, before writing it here.

Three Options

Option A: keep the rule and add temporary staff. Hire one temporary advisor for the six weeks of peak season so the file help desk can stay open. Cost: about $7,800 a year.

Option B: allow scheduled callbacks when holds exceed fifteen minutes. Students could book a callback instead of waiting, freeing two advisors for about three hours a day of file help during peaks. Cost: no new spending, but a change to your rule.

Option C: keep the rule and add a self-service status line. An automated line would let students check upload status without reaching an advisor. Cost: about $12,000 to set up and $2,400 a year.

Each option would reopen the file help desk during peaks. Option B costs least but changes your policy; Option A keeps your policy at a modest cost; Option C addresses status calls but not file help directly.

The Decision Needed

I ask that you choose one option by December 5, so that it can be in place before the spring verification period opens in January. The director and I can meet with you before then to discuss any of them.

The Staff Response

As our agreement requires, the office staff saw these findings first, at a meeting on November 10. The appendix records their response. In summary, advisors strongly supported Option B, the processor favored Option A because it would also reduce her queue, and the director said he would support whichever option you choose. Several advisors asked that the rewritten letter and status notes be adopted on the south campus regardless of the decision, and the director has agreed to do so in January.

A Note on Method

A feedback report opens a discussion rather than closing one. David Nadler argued that data fed back to an organization are useful when they are seen as valid by those receiving them and when they lead to joint problem solving rather than defensiveness (Nadler, 1977). Peter Block encourages consultants to present findings directly, including those that implicate the client, while leaving the decision with the person who owns it (Block, 2011). I have tried to do both, and to remember Edgar Schein's point that the person being helped must remain the one who owns the problem and its solution (Schein, 1999).

Appendix

The appendix contains the pilot measures by week for both campuses, the file help session counts by week for the past two falls and the notes from the November 10 staff meeting.

References

Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.

Nadler, D. A. (1977). Feedback and organization development: Using data-based methods. Addison-Wesley.

Schein, E. H. (1999). Process consultation revisited: Building the helping relationship. Addison-Wesley.