In 2012, President Easter commissioned a comprehensive review of all University Administration (UA) units, including the Office of Business and Financial Services (OBFS). The final report was made available in March 2014. While not all findings were surprising, the review did indicate discrepancies between the way OBFS customers view our departments and services and the way we view ourselves. One theme in particular stood out – customers feel that OBFS too often acts without input, that OBFS is more concerned with compliance than customer service, and that OBFS should use its resources differently.
To address this theme, the OBFS Transparency Commitment initiative was launched in the spring of 2014. Our initial focus, based on feedback gathered from customers on all campuses, was on transaction-level transparency and action plans were developed around the tenets of walking in our customer’s shoes to build better relationships, changing our culture to partner with customers to do the business of the university, and celebrating successes with our customers.
You can read about the first round of iACTion plans to address the OBFS Transparency Commitment iniatitive, as well as a summary of their successes, here.
In January 2015, OBFS wanted to track the progress of the Transparency Commitment initiative and to identify the next area of improvement on which to focus. The University’s Survey Research Laboratory (SRL) assisted OBFS in this effort and acted as an unbiased third party. A random sample of faculty, university staff, and OBFS employees was surveyed by the SRL and asked to provide feedback regarding current levels of transparency in transaction processing, problem resolution, and communications.
You can read more about the OBFS Customer Survey, including the executive summary and full results here.
As a result of the survey, OBFS has identified three areas for improvement in the coming year:
- Accuracy
- Availability
- Partnership
OBFS units have come up with 20 new action plans focused on improvements in these three areas with solutions aimed at increasing customer satisfaction scores and providing better services to our customers. You can view the full plans here.
If you have additional feedback about how OBFS can continue to improve you would like to be served by the OBFS departments, please use the OBFS sounding board.
