​School Support Service (S3) Customer Consultation and Engagement Strategy

 

Context

 

This document outlines the strategy by which S3 engages, consults and involves customers. The original strategy launched in June 2016.  The S3 Management Team refreshed the strategy in May 2017 to ensure it included the full range of methods used. The strategy’s effectiveness is routinely monitored as part of the S3 annual planning cycle with revisions/ updates made as appropriate.

 

S3 seeks to address the diverse requirements of its different groups of customers. In its approach, the S3 Management Team and Leadership Forum lead the service to operate in a context of continual improvement. Customer insight is used to help prioritise this continual improvement activity. By volume of interaction, the two largest customer groups S3 serve are students and academics. Other customers include other professional services, employers and other third parties.  The S3 customer consultation and engagement strategy deliberately includes different methods of customer consultation and engagement to help ensure it hears from all customer groups regardless of size and thus reduce the potential for service development bias.   

 

The principles of operation and deliverables of S3 is available here​.

 

Customer Engagement

 

S3 engages widely with its stakeholders to ensure that:

1. Our services reflect the needs of our customers
2. We are constantly challenged in our processes by ideas from our customers.
3. We work to appropriate Service Standards
   
   

Sources of S3 engagement with stakeholders include our:

• Participation and membership at University Committee Meetings, School and Professional Service Committee Meetings
• Contributions to University Strategic projects
• Membership of School Senior Leadership teams
• Liaison through external boards, university links and industry liaison.
• Director being member of the University’s Senior Leadership Group
• Staff delivering services to students through offices to which any staff, student or other customer can drop into.
• School Support Intranet pages
• Use of Focus Groups
• The S3 Charter

 

S3 is distinctive as is it is embedded locally with Schools and thus sustains a deep connection with the academic communities it serves. In consequence we develop key relationships with service users to listen, capture feedback and improve our services. Ways we gather feedback include:

• Online surveys
• Comment post cards
• Direct and informal conversations with our customers
• Surveys at events organised by S3 including Welcome Event and Graduations
• iPoint surveys on service delivery

 

E-mail schoolsupport@napier.ac.uk (checked daily by Director of the School Support Service)

 

V Heathwood

School Support Enhancement Lead

May 2017​