Customers of education LO1664

Joe Kilbride (jk@mcs.com)
Fri, 16 Jun 95 15:59 CDT

I have enjoyed the recent thread re: customers of education. In teaching
Customer Focus workshops to internal service groups within industry, I
typically ask them "Who are the customers of a university?" Relative to
the customer-supplier chain concept I've taught, students might be
considered:

- customers,
- workers or
- outputs, i.e., the products of education.

The point of the discussion in my workshops is not to determine the "right
answer", but to illustrate that the answer to this question will have
profound implications for how you design a system of education, what the
students' roles in it will be, and how you measure the effectiveness of
the system. A little imagining on their part using this example helps them
grasp the criticality of knowing who THEIR customers are.

Within my clients' organizations, a similar need to clarify roles often
arises between service organizations and their clients.

- Is a staff support organization like extra "workers" for their client?
- Is the line organization the "customers" of the staff organization?
- Or are they "partners" and, if so, what does that mean relative to how
customer focus concepts should be applied?

I generally point out to my participants that one concept emerging from
the debate regarding public education (which I haven't heard referenced in
this forum) is the concept of co-production. This refers to the situation
where the customer for a product or service is intimately involved in
production of it. In other words, the customer and supplier co-produce the
product/service.

This type of relationship is typical of internal service organizations,
where the recipient of services are truly partners in the production of
it, rather than customers in the most traditional sense, i.e., recipients
of product/service outputs. It also seems to me a useful way to think of
students in a system of education.

A related article of interest is:
- Can TQM in Public Education Survive Without Co-Production?
in Quality Progress, July 94, pg. 41-44
Quality Progress is the journal of the American Society for Quality Control
(ASQC = 1-800-248-1946).

--
----------------------------->
Joe Kilbride  --  jk@mcs.com
<----------------------------
I never said it would be easy,
I just said it would work.
 -- W. Edwards Deming