Www.derby.ac.uk Keeping your clients happy Professor Tristram Hooley.

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Keeping your clients happy

Professor Tristram Hooley


Overview

How important is satisfying people?

What makes people more satisfied?

What can you do about it?

Designing your service to satisfy


Overview







What is satisfaction?


Definition

1. fulfilment of one's wishes, expectations, or needs, or the pleasure derived from this.

2. the payment of a debt or fulfilment of an obligation or claim.


Levels of impact (See Kirkpatrick)

Results

Behaviour

Learning

Reaction


Reaction

• How do users of services react to them?• Use of feedback forms and “happy sheets”.

Voices of Users (Vilhjálmsdóttir et al., 2011) is a summary of the experience of career guidance clients in Nordic countries. It found that the majority of participants were satisfied with the service that they had received and felt that the counsellor with whom they had worked had been supportive and understanding.


Learning

• Did the individual learn something as a result of the intervention.

• If you tested them before and after would something have changed?

Learning for now or later (Kuijpers & Meijers, 2012) found that students career competencies (reflection, exploration, proactivity and networking) were correlated with the presence of a practice based and inquiry based curriculum which allowed them to engage in career conversations.


Behaviour

• How do individuals behaviour change following an intervention.

• Can you measure what they do differently?

A career workshop was developed in Switzerland to promote the career choice readiness of young adolescents. In an evaluation of the workshop with 334 Swiss students in the 7th grade, Hirschi & Läge found that three months after the workshop, participants had significantly increased their career decidedness, career planning and career exploration.


Results

• What actually happens as a result of your intervention?• Do people get jobs, better qualifications etc.

A report in Northern Ireland (Regional Forecasts, 2008) examined the impact of the Educational Guidance Service for Adults on the Northern Ireland economy. The study used a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, including detailed analysis of the service’s client data, to estimate the economic value of the service. This was estimated to be £9.02 net additional tax revenue for every £1 of public money invested.


Is satisfaction important?


Why is customer satisfaction important?

• Customer satisfaction is an important outcome of career guidance.

• Providers of services have a duty to attend to their customers and to ensure that they are happy with the service provided.

• Measuring customers satisfaction offers one way to do this.


Critiques

• It may not be related to the quality of service (Crowley,1992).

• It may not be related to learning, behaviour change or results.

• Customer satisfaction does not necessarily make clients more likely to continue to access career support or complete the course of interviews that they had begun (Healy, 2001)

• Careers advisers judgements about how satisfying interviews were are largely independent from clients judgements (Millar & Brotherton, 2001).

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Overview





Key determinants of customer satisfaction

•Who is the individual? What is their disposition, personal circumstances?•What is their expectation about career guidance? Do they have any prior experience?•What isssue/s are they bringing?

Individual

•What are the logisitcal arrangements that support clients to access career guidance? For example, how do they book an appointment and get there and how long do they have to wait?

•What is the environment within which the interaction takes place? e.g. is it light, warm, comfortable and so on.

Contextual

•Who is the adviser? How skilled are they, how personalble and sympathetic, what do they look like?•What is the mode of delivery? Face-to-face, groupwork, telephone, online. Is a particular approach or method used?•What is the content of the delivery? What is covered or learnt?

Delivery•How is the interaction followed up?•What life events and progression does the individual experience following the intervention.

Post-intervention


Individual factors

• Older people may typically be less satisfied (Noble,2010; BIS, 2012).

• No clear differences on gender, disability.• Some contradictory studies exist on educational level. • Clients expectations about what they are getting.

Incongruence with the counsellor’s expectations = lower client satisfaction (Whitaker et al., 2004).


Contextual factors

• E.g. parking, waiting time• These are best viewed as hygiene factors.• While they can lead to dissatisfaction if not well

performed, they contribute relatively little to positive customer satisfaction (BIS, 2013).

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Overview






What do you do that satisfies people?


Delivery I

The following correlate with customer satisfaction• The job satisfaction of the counsellor • Informing customer expectations prior to the interaction.• Clear contracting and clarification of objectives (Healy,

2001).• The mode of delivery

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Key concept: Working alliance

Working alliance• counsellor/client agreement about the goals of the

interaction; • their agreement about the tasks leading to these goals;

and • their emotional relationship


Delivery II

• The client should feel that the counsellor/adviser has listened to them and understood their enquiry and circumstances (Healy, 2001; Millar & Brotherton, 2001)

• The provision of useful information and advice that supports progression. Particularly where this introduces ideas that the client had not thought of (Healy, 2001; Millar & Brotherton, 2001; BIS, 2013).

• Advisers who are helpfulness and professional (BIS, 2013).

• Feeling that the careers adviser has spent enough time with you (Millar & Brotherton, 2013).


Post-intervention factors

• When should customer satisfaction be measured? The length of time will influence the level of satisfaction.

• Some participants want more follow up (Healy, 2001). • Gati et al. (2006) have found that customer satisfaction

for users of a career assessment varies depending on the outcome. People are more likely to report satisfaction with a career assessment tool if they have gone into one of the careers that they were recommended to go into.

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Overview






Why evaluate?

Evaluation enables us to:

– examine what we do

– think about how we can improve it

– decide on whether it was worth doing

– provide others with a summary to help them to understand what was done.

www.derby.ac.uk/icegs


What is evaluation?

• When people seek to evaluate what they are doing as part of an attempt to learn and improve, they are usually undertaking a formative evaluation, so called because it is undertaken to inform what is done while the activity is still in progress. ‘We would like to find out how to do these things better’

• When people evaluate to make a judgement on the value of a particular activity and to draw out what has been learnt, it is usually a summative evaluation; so called because it attempts to create a summary of what has been achieved and what the impacts have been. ‘We would like to find out how well these things work’



Evidence based practice and policyUnderstanding what is

known about the efficacy of career

development

Developing new policies and

services

Implementing new policies and

sevices

Monitoring implementation and checking efficacy


Discussion: Listening to customers

How could you ensure that you listen to your customers in ways that help you to improve your service.



Publish or perish

• Too little evaluation and impact work on careers work is published.

• Writing up your evaluation for broader circulation is an important way to support the development of the sector. • Self publication• Journal publication• Partnership with academics• Using external consultants



Write it down

“My main reason for writing is simple: I do not know what I think until I have written it. In conversation one can get away with loose, exploratory thinking, but in writing it down one has to weigh up the arguments and the evidence, and decide what it all means and where one stands. It is hard work, but important; and if published, it adds to the body of knowledge on which others can draw.”

Tony Watts


References and resources

• Crowley, T. (1992). Computer-aided careers guidance: An investigation involving and artificial system. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 20, 344–351.

• Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (2012). Next Step Satisfaction and Progression Surveys (Research Paper 88). London: DBIS.

• Gati I., Gadassi R., Shemesh N. (2006). The predictive validity of a computer-assisted career decision-making system: A six-year follow-up. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 68(2): 205-219.

• Healy, C. (2001). A follow-up of adult career counselling clients of a university extension centre. Career Development Quarterly, 49: 363-373.

• Hirschi, A. & Läge, D. (2008). Increasing the career choice readiness of young adolescents: an evaluation study. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 8(2): 95-110.

• Kuijpers, M., & Meijers, F. (2012). Learning for now or later? Career competencies among students in higher vocational education in the Netherlands. Studies in Higher Education, 37(4), 449-467.

• Millar, R. & Brotherton, C. (2001). Expectations, recall and evaluation of careers guidance interviews by pupils and careers advisers: a preliminary study. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 29(1): 95-110.

• Noble, M.K. (2010). One-Stop Career Centers: An Assessment of Satisfaction From Customers Using Services of a Disability Program Navigator. PhD Thesis. Capella Univeristy, USA.

• Vilhjálmsdóttir, G., Dofradóttir, A.G. & Kjartansdóttir, G.B. (2011). Voice of Users – Promoting Quality of Guidance for Adults in the Nordic Countries. Oriveden Kirjapaino, Finland: Nordic Network of Adult Learning.

• Whitaker, L.A., Phillips, J. C., Tokas D. M., (2004). Influencing client expectations about career counseling using a videotaped intervention. Career Development Quarterly, 52(4): 309-322.


Stuff I’ve written

Dent, P., Garton, E., Hooley, T., Leonard, C., Marriott, J. and Moore, N. (2013). Higher Education Outreach to Widen Participation: Toolkits for Practitioners. Evaluation, 2nd. Edition. Bristol: HEFCE.

Hooley, T. (2014). The Evidence Base on Lifelong Guidance. Jyväskylä, Finland: European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network

Hooley, T., Hutchinson, J. and Neary S. (2014) Evaluating Brightside's Approach to Online Mentoring. Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies. University of Derby.

Hooley, T., Marriott, J. and Wellens, J. (2012). What is Online Research?: Using the Internet for Social Science Research. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Hooley, T., Matheson, J. & Watts, A.G. (2014). Advancing Ambitions: The Role of Career Guidance in Supporting Social Mobility. London: Sutton Trust.

Hooley, T., Mellors-Bourne, R. and Sutton, M. (2013). Early Evaluation of Unistats: User Experiences. Bristol: HEFCE.

Marriott, J. and Hooley, T. (2014). Evaluating the Legacy Careers Project. Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby.

Taylor, A.R. & Hooley, T. (2014). Evaluating the impact of career management skills module and internship programme within a university business school. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 42(5): 487-499.

http://derby.openrepository.com/derby/handle/10545/310828

http://derby.openrepository.com/derby/bitstream/10545/333589/1/elgpn-evidence.pdf

http://www.derby.ac.uk/media/derbyacuk/contentassets/documents/ehs/icegs/Brightside-report-Aug-14.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/What-Online-Research-Internet-Science/dp/1849665249

http://derby.openrepository.com/derby/bitstream/10545/333866/1/Advancing%20Ambitions%20-%206.11.14.pdf











http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03069885.2014.918934#.VD6SGqFwbcs

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03069885.2014.918934#.VD6SGqFwbcs


Tristram Hooley

Professor of Career Education

International Centre for Guidance Studies

University of Derby

http://www.derby.ac.uk/icegs

[email protected]

@pigironjoe

Blog at

http://adventuresincareerdevelopment.wordpress.com

http://www.derby.ac.uk/icegs

mailto:[email protected]

http://adventuresincareerdevelopment.posterous.com/


Conclusions

• Customer satisfaction is important, but it is not the only thing that is important.

• The evidence suggests a number of things that should enhance customer satisfaction (informing expectations, improving the working alliance, follow up).

• It also suggests that it is important to seek feedback from customers and to evaluation services.

Www.derby.ac.uk Keeping your clients happy Professor Tristram Hooley.

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