Dean Kazoleas, Ph.D., APR, is an associate professor of Public Relations at Illinois State University and Senior Partner, Dynacom Research, Normal, Illinois. He can be reach at dckasol@ilstu.edu. The is his first article forFacilities Manager.

Across the United States, organizations and their internal units have been moving to customer service models where the keys to value-based management are found in delivering value to the customer and/or stakeholder. This trend is also increasing among facilities units today as they are being held accountable to their campus customers and increasingly face the issue of outside competition. Has your facilities organization adopted a customer service model or a "customer first" set of values? Even if your unit has moved in this direction a second question needs to be asked.

Is your unit providing value to its campus customers? This is a question that almost every facilities manager and administrator would like to answer with a resounding yes! However, are you sure that your campus customers would say that you do provide value? More important, are you sure that you and your customers both define value in the same way?

Research indicates that often customers may define value in a different way than the service provider, which results in a gap between what the customer expects and what is delivered. The end result is dissatisfaction. Having dissatisfied customers on a campus can lead to complaints, frustration, low morale among facilities employees, and in the end may lead to calls for increased competition with outside vendors. The key to satisfied customers is to understand a simple but yet complex formula:

While this makes satisfying customers look easy, the truth is that determining how campus customers define quality and responsive service can be difficult to do. It is equally difficult to determine their expectations regarding the services of their facilities personnel. Add to this decreasing budgets and staffing shortages in a post-September 11 economy, and a recipe for dissatisfaction emerges.

APPA's session on customer service at the Educational Facilities Leadership Forum will help you build a customer-service oriented unit that is designed to provide a high level of responsiveness and quality service by remaining in tune to the needs, desires, and expectations of campus customers. Specifically this program will present:

• A definition and examples of customer service models
• A discussion of the general needs and expectations of campus customers
• Methods of monitoring the needs, desires, and expectations of your customers
• Methods of determining customer satisfaction and quality service
• Communication strategies that keep customer expectations in line with budgetary and resource based realities.

These are the facilities models of the future that you will not want to miss.