Brand Champion of the Day, Alan Kay, The Glasgow Group

Last January I had the pleasure of meeting Alan Kay. He contacted me after reading a paper that I had published in the Winter of 2009 on brandchannel.com, entitled Internal Branding: A University's Most Valuable Intangible Asset. Since then Alan and I have had many conversations online and off. We have engaged in a dialogue about many aspects of higher education. After each conversation I come away learning more than I did before the conversation, and every time I feel refreshed to take on my next challenge. So, it gives me great pleasure to feature Alan Kay as today's brand champion of the day. The following is what Alan wanted to share with you about brand in the context of the learner experience.

Brand and the Customer Experience: A better learner experience leads to a better education

The branded customer experience is a competence of organizations like Starbucks, Lands End, etc.  To differentiate themselves they weave the brand and experience throughout their business strategies. The education field is now beginning to find that the customer, or learner, experience can make a difference.

As we know, brand is more than a logo. Increasingly, brand is a shared responsibility of the organization, not just the marketing group. Brand is also the experience that learners receive. It is about our behavior towards learners - the unique experience we deliver to them. This is what we call the branded learner experience

Higher education businesses are going through rapid change. Students are changing: they are becoming demanding users of education - their expectations of the teaching staff, curriculum, and administration are growing.  Innovative universities and colleges understand the importance of listening to learners: they have seen how a learner focus helps to improve the quality of the core education product. And notably, as they align with student needs, they see recruitment, retention and achievement scores rise significantly. In this regard, Aberdeen College stands out. 

Learners are often unsure about what they want and they may have unrealistic expectations, so we have to ask the right questions to get behind their perceptions and requests. Here are some of the ways we can begin to align with learners:

·         Set up ‘learner-listening’ sessions with managers and staff present
·         Take learners’ comments seriously, not always literally
·         Explore outcomes they seek from their education and how they view your services
·         Ask about the strengths of organization’s capabilities to serve them – build from there
·         Look for small, visible actions that can be taken right away –  ones students can experience
·         Keep listening until you have enough insights to create a formal plan

By   By focusing resources on customer outcomes, management and staff can disentangle themselves from inward-looking processes. Today it is the learners who are challenging the educational organization to grow.

Alan Kay of the Glasgow Group is a Solutions Focused change management specialist in organizational and people strategy. His clients cover a broad range of sectors including, over the last two years management development solutions to colleges in the UK.

 

Alan, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to share with us your forward-thinking view on brand and the customer experience. I hope we can continue our dialogue and perhaps there will be an occasion for us to collaborate on a project in the near future. You have a champion of your brand in yours truly, and I am sure many more after today.

Rex Whisman

Brand Champions Blog

 

 

 

Comments

[red bottoms]

Thanks, I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

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If you notice, I did not comment on the quality of the movie. The special effects issue is fairly common knowledge, but not known by all. I was just trying to inform others, and maybe Drew, about that problem. I guess that'll teach me to try and contribute.

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Wow! BoB. Well, I did assume the strong possibility that Drew watched an internet copy of the movie. I did not accuse, but I did sort of imply that just to be concise. I have a tendency to say too much and preamble too much. I could have said "If you mean "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"..." and "If you are a human being..." and "If you live in the United States...". Or, I could have asked these questions first and waited and then commented. But I was trying to keep it to a short informative comment, so I made a few assumptions.
If you notice, I did not comment on the quality of the movie. The special effects issue is fairly common knowledge, but not known by all. I was just trying to inform others, and maybe Drew, about that problem. I guess that'll teach me to try and contribute.

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"I sought to show the changing balance of planes - from anti-ship torpedo and dive bombers in the early days when the main objective was destroying other ships - to fighter planes, whose main job was to defend against the kamikazes in the final months."

Max, Midway is pretty much the final act of anti-ship carrier warfare, right? If you follow Keegan and Churchill, it's the critical turning point in the Pacfic war - there's a wonderfully readable description of Midway in Keegan's The Price of Admiralty.