<p>In trying to set up a college visit at a school where my son was admitted, I sent an email to the email provided in the letter encouraging us to visit. I waited a week, no response and sent another. I couldn’t call from work so I was relying on email. I had an off day today so called the school. I was told the person who answers this email was on vacation for two weeks. I was then directed to the general admissions department to set up a generic tour and his specific college would call in a couple of days.
The general admissions person I spoke with set up the generic tour and I gave the feedback of my frustration with not having my email answered.
Her responses
Well you could have just gone on the website to find another email address
I am just a student here and I don’t even know where I would take your concern
That is that department’s problem not ours.
Having been already frustrated I told her that when she is in the real world in a real job that customers won’t want to hear any of her excuses. I explained that I was her customer and she should find out who to direct my concern to if she can’t help me.
She then asked why I thought this was her problem again emphasizing that she was just a student.
I told her every job should be looked at as training for your hoped for career. Even my high school student knows that the customer and employer never want to hear that isn’t my job or my problem.
After I hung up I wondered if I went over the edge. I never lost my temper and never raised my voice.</p>
<p>Your comments seem reasonable to me. Good customer service skills can be really valuable skills in the real world. Maybe she will benefit from your remarks. She got a dose of the real world and that’s a good thing!</p>
<p>I think you were appropriate. Being “just” a student worker doesn’t mean the worker is allowed to be incompetent. I also think you should let the Dean of Admissions know what happened. Obviously, admissions needs to train and monitor its student workers better.</p>
<p>You expressed your frustration in not receiving a response to your initial email. The student worker explained that the person that you sent the email to had not been in the office for a couple of weeks because he/she was away on vacation. Had your fuse not all ready been lit before you made the call, this may have been the end of the discussion. </p>
<p>I understand that you are busy with work and the college process tends to stress many families. You did have other options. Most people have cell phones and it would have been relatively easy for you to make a call during your work day. In the unlikely event that you could not find 2 minutes in the day to make this call, you could have given this responsibility to your son. He will be attending college soon and it really is important that he learn to make these type of phone calls by himself. All he had to do is call, explain that he wanted to set up a visit, and set the date.</p>
<p>I’m not defending the responses by the student worker. However, I’m going to refrain from putting her down because we don’t know the various tones and words that were spoken from both sides in this phone conversation.</p>
<p>I don’t think you were too hard on the student worker. However, I think it says a lot about the department that the student did not have any resources to call upon to help with the situation at the time it happened. I work at a university, and we have students on the front line in our department. They know that if they have a situation like this one where a customer has a concern they always have someone on hand who is willing to take the call. I would never expect them to be able to solve the problem, but I would expect them to find someone who could help.</p>
<p>My son experienced the same issues with another university he was considering. I found that the e-mail problem seemed to extend university-wide, and was a factor in my son eliminating them from his list. If someone had taken the time to make sure my son received the responses he needed, his decision might have been different.</p>
<p>Frankly, not having someone be able to answer an e-mail for two weeks is already a problem. On the whole, I agree with you, the student’s correct response should have been, “I can’t answer your question, but I’ll do my best to find out”. They should have taken your name and number and made sure someone got back to you.</p>
<p>I am sure you will continue to find that some colleges have poorly run admissions offices. We found one top school that just kept losing the same piece of paperwork. We tried email, fax and regular mail and just continued to get form letters about the missing paperwork. Many schools do a really bad job with tours and information calls. As you found, the office may be staffed with work-study kids who have not been trained and may not have much interest in the “job.” Don’t even get we started on how badly many schools due with the tours. Now that I think about it, I remember that the school that kept losing paperwork had an excellent tour. Who knows, maybe we just got lucky with the tour guide.</p>
<p>Personally, you should put your son in this student worker’s position. I don’t know if you would want someone talking to him in the manner in which you handled yourself. The fact that you are questioning yourself indicates that you did think you might have gone a little too far. These kids are put in these jobs (usually work-study) and really don’t have the skill level or maturity required to handle some of the details. They are learning too. I am not defending her responses as this is only one side of the story. But I think both sides could have been handled better. I know that when a customer becomes irate, it usually can make the conversation spiral downward and everyone goes away feeling worse and not resolved.</p>
<p>Bravo to you- the school has problems- with student workers and e-mail contacts. Pass along your complaints to the powers that be and see what their response is. Based on that decide if the school is worth your son’s consideration.</p>
<p>Our local HS uses student workers to answer phone call to the main office during the lunch hour and I recall some days I would ask for an adult (could tell when a student answered). Sometimes it was competency, other times I didn’t want to identify anything to a student. It was good practice for the students with future job aspirations, helped usually, but there were times I had to go over their heads.</p>
<p>Any student who takes on a real world job needs to behave as a professional. Being a student is no excuse for a substandard job. Put yourself in the position- you are being paid to answer questions competently, even if it means punting, you represent the school. I would reprimand the student worker, not the caller. It is not your job to make life always pleasant for them, they should be making your experience pleasant. Unless people complain poor service becomes the norm. You, the customer, were already irate- there is no reason for you to be made to feel worse. There is every reason for the student to be made to feel bad, otherwise they would never realize how they impacted a caller and would blithely continue to be rude, et al.</p>
<p>I don’t think you were too harsh at all. We always emphasized to our kids that when they started jobs they were paid ‘employees’ while at the job, not students. “I am just a student” is just a cop out. If she is being paid to do a job she is an employee while she is sitting at that desk and answering that phone.</p>
<p>I agree that the student ought to have responded by saying s/he would try to find out the answer to your questions from someone else.
The bigger problem is the Admissions Office’s reliance on students who go on breaks, as most do at this time of the year. No one would be reading the student’s e-mail during that time, including, probably, the students themselves. It would be worth pointing this flaw out to the Admissions Office along with comments about the lack of training of the student whom you managed to contact.</p>
<p>You could have been more understanding of her situation. Someone else, in another department caused a problem. As best she could, she resolved the main problem, which was getting your son a tour of the school. She explained to you that she had neither the authority nor the support to do anything else. </p>
<p>She could have been politer to you and certainly, it would have been more diplomatic to have simply apologized and said that she would pass you/the information on to someone else. But your frustration would have been more appropriately aimed at the people in the school who had let such a situation happen. You probably would have got better results if you had simply ended the conversation with her at that point and contacted someone else who did have it within their power to do something both about your emails not being answered and the lack of support the student worker was receiving which was giving the school a poor image.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t think you are to harsh. I graduated from LAC where, although we had student workers, ‘real’ people were always available and the student workers were usually at least nice.</p>
<p>Now I’m slowly working on my MA degree at a local state university, and student workers are the bane of my existence. I’ve yet to find one who could either answer my question or get me to someone who could.</p>
<p>I get quite irritated at the student fund raisers who will not take no for an answer. They have been given a script, and they do not seem to hear what you say. ARGH!</p>
<p>I guess to say I was irate to start wasn’t the case. I was frustrated. I believe I reacted the way I did because I work with alot of 20 somethings who will only do “their job” The garbage is full in a patient’s room and they have to call housekeeping who are stretched incredibly thin. A family member comes to the desk and has a question and their response is that isn’t my patient put on your call light. It just seems to be becoming the way of the world
Thanks for the responses.<br>
BTW, I called back and spoke with the young woman and apologized if I came across as irate and encouraged her to talk to her supervisors about what she should do in situations like these in the future.</p>
<p>I’m just going to point out that at THIS time of year-Jan-admissions offices are FLOODED with mail that needs to be opened, sorted and input into computers as quickly as possible. That is THE priority. If this is your first experience with the college application process you probably weren’t aware of this. Admissions offices do have to hire additional student workers to help handle the mountain of paperwork, and it seems you got a newby, based on her lack of knowledge and her responses. Additionally there is likely to be a delay during the first few weeks after winter break in the length of time it takes to get an emailed response from someone in the admissions office. Sometimes you just have to be patient., But I do agree with NSM on this “I also think you should let the Dean of Admissions know what happened. Obviously, admissions needs to train and monitor its student workers better.”</p>
<p>keymom, I had a feeling based on your original post that you felt kind of bad about what happened on the phone. It’s obvious the girl needs a bit more experience at her job. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she was filling in for someone. Maybe she just started the position. It’s no excuse but IMO, it would be harsh to complain to her boss after having only one experience with her. </p>
<p>Your a nice person. I bet the second phone call not only made you feel better, but in a subtle and kind way you taught her some valuable lessons.</p>
<p>My advice for the future is, if you have to call and your time is limited, and you are calling because emails have not been answered etc, when you call, ask if you are speaking to a student, and if so, ask if there is a staff member who can take your call. Some schools really do rely too heavily on students, and often these students cannot answer a question or know who to direct the question to. I think you gave the student some food for thought. I agree you were not irate, but frustrated. Some admissions and welcome centers have no idea how many potential students and their parents are stymied trying to get return emails, calls and the correct information. It is in these departments that some schools really loose potential students. Some just look/call/go elsewhere.</p>
<p>You were not wrong. This student will hopefully not give the same answer again to anyone else because she has now learned that it is not acceptable. It may not have been a pleasant interaction for her but if she has any potential, it will have caused her to find a more helpful response the next time she faces a situation like yours. My D has been frustrated several times by work study students who appear not to know their jobs and not to care very much either. On both occasions asking the student for the email of the person in charge of the department in question resulted in a satisfactory resolution to her problem.</p>
<p>I cannot think of another kind of business where someone can go on vacation and there be no-one appointed to handle their work or not even an automated email being sent stating the person is away.</p>
<p>I have a question regarding students and working. My daughter has a friend who did an internship this summer. He thought things went well but got “weird vibes” at the end of the internship. (Not invited to a party at the end of the summer). But I heard through a friend it went as badly as it could go. He had no exit interview and no idea why they thought badly of him. My daughter said they owed him the truth of the experience. She said, "we’re 19 years old. We still need direction and help from adults. Isn’t that what an internship suppose to be? If it was going badly why didn’t they intervene and try to redirect him” Did you students get good feedback from their internships?</p>