The Experience Evangelist Blog

West Virginia University - gathering up the tour group

If you heard me present about the campus visit, you know how my soap box, “Don’t walk backwards (tour guides that is).

I’ve heard all the reason why tour guides walk backwards and I can negate them all.

Why am I so opposed:

1. it slows down the tour,
2. it makes guest uncomfortable (is that tour guide going to trip, fall, loose flip-flop, etc…)walking backwards (and why tour guides shouldn’t),
3. guest look at the tour guide not the campus,
4. you don’t walk across campus backwards with your friends,
5. it’s cliche (even the media mocks it),
6. tour guides don’t have to walk and talk to the group the entire time,
6. is that what we want prospective families to remember about their visit - how well your tour guides walk backwards?

We need to move on. Walking backwards promotes a monologue, not a dialog.

Recently I’ve toured several very large, public universities; The University of Texas and West Virginia University. (So I don’t want to hear excuses about tour size - because only the first 10 people hear when tour guides walk backwards.) I could have kissed the tour guides and those who trained them! In both cases tour guides had large tours (nearly 40 guests) and they didn’t walk backwards.

What did they do:

1. they walked with the guest and talked one-on-one with families or prospective students,
2. they directed the tours as to where to walk next,
3. they gathered the tour group together and talked with them - explaining surrounding, telling stories and telling the group where we were going next,
4. they used stairs, benches, walls and steps to their favor as a means to project to the group,
5. they weren’t “tourbots” (a term I learned at SUNY Oswego - to describe the scripted, robotic tour guide).

It takes training and skills not to walk backwards, but the better tour guides know it works. So if large universities can master it, what about smaller schools - like yours?

Recently I visited Ursuline College in the Cleveland area. This great little Catholic college is primarily attended by women, and it mission it to give them values, voice, and vision.

Ursuline admissions does a great job customizing each tour based upon prospective student’s interest. More importantly their tour guides are “master” level. Navigator or “Gators” tell stories, ask powerful opened questions, are unscripted, engage in dialog, are honest, and funny. They are some of the best I’ve encountered. One of my tours featured a “rookie” who put most “seasoned” tour guides I’ve encountered to shame. It was refreshing to watch tour guides be “human” not millennial robots walking backwards reciting a script.

Tour guides are the make and break of any visit program. And recruiting, training, empowering and keeping them is often the toughest part of the equation. Hats off to Ursuline’s Kimberly Sheppard and Teena Bresson for successfully wrangling the this all-important campus visit component.

Sara - UA Homecoming

Recently I conducted a campus visit audit at The University of Akron. UA has really come on strong in the past few years. Building amazing facilities and transforming itself from a beige/industrial commuter school to a vibrant emerging leading university.

While I tend to concentrate on campus visit and experience economy posts in my blog, I wanted to share UA’s great YouTube video log. It features Sara - a senior nursing major. Each week Sara tells a story about her Akron experience. The videos are authentic, genuine and engaging. They’re not scripted, slick or overproduced.

You can click here to see all the videos or click the link to below to see my favorite - homecoming where Sara proclaims that she doesn’t have a date.

Sara - UA Homecoming

My best friend Celesta Sisco Brown loves coffee.

Some 16 years ago before Starbucks invaded Atlanta, we spent many a morning and evening enjoying “coffee and convo” (as she calls it) at the few independent coffee houses Atlanta had back then.

A former corporate communications executive at a few of Atlanta’s Fortune 500 companies, Celesta is brilliant writer, and master storyteller with keen insight. Now a work from home freelancer with two toddlers, she still needs her daily jolt to energize her long days (and nights).

She called me yesterday to tell me a sad story that I think explains why Starbuck’s same-store sells are down and why they are closing some 400 stores.

Celesta had a Starbuck’s coupon for free Grande size of their new Pike’s Place brewed coffee. She asked the register operator if she could pay the difference and get a Venti size. His reply was, “We don’t have a button for that.” While I’m sure they have a “misc” button somewhere on that terminal hooked up to Seattle, shouldn’t the reply have been, “I know you’re going to love this new brew so much, let me give you the venti!” Starbucks has lost it’s way. An experience and enterprise built upon mass customization, knowing your name and calling it out, and “making it your drink” is now limited by crew members who can’t think or operate beyond their register terminal.

There are many lessons to apply towards your campus visit experience. Are your prepared to accommodate those special request your prospective families have, or are you responding in kind with, “We don’t have a button for that” like the Starbucks crew member? It’s so important that tour guides, receptionist, staff and faculty understand and listen to what guest are saying and be empowered to respond.

Last year at our TargetX Chicago workshop, instituteNext, the learning excursion included a visit to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue. The two predominant take-aways were:

1. customer service matters (especially in higher education)

2. and wouldn’t be great if more colleges build enrollment centers that worked like the Apple Store.

I’ve been a long time Mac fan/user, but last week my TargetX PowerBook gave up the ghost. (It’s log in about 75,000 frequent flyer miles this past year and proudly powered some 100+ presentations.)  The Apple Store Genius Bar and Personalized Shopping experiences I had at their Atlanta Perimeter Mall and Lenox Mall locations blew me away.

The reservation system was simple and fast. Once I got to the store(s) the welcome was genuine and the service  extraordinary. They listened to my plight and needs and conducted my transactions with great attitude. ( And thanks to Apple’s Time Machine program I easily migrated from my back-up drive with ease.)

Once I logged on and checked my email I received two follow-up emails from Apple:

1. The first asking me to evaluate my Genius Bar experience, the survey was fast and simple

2. The second sent me a FedEx code and simple instructions on how I could recycle my previous laptop (shipping costs included), what great follow-up

If Apple is providing this level of attention, customization and follow-up to their customers (many of whom are also the customers of colleges and universities) what level of expectation do you think families are bringing to campus when they visit? And after they visit.

Go to an Apple Store today, seek inspiration, soak it up. And ask, “What can we learn from Apple?”

We’ve seen the videos on YouTube - Drinkin’ Time at Dartmouth, Streakin’ Time at UVA, Prangsta Group at NYU, Streaker at Oxy and now a add University of Colorado to the list.

Click video above or click this link to watch

Within this video one tour guide and group of visitors are the subjects of a series of pranks throughout their tour; homoerotic sponge bathing in the fountain, a random student sleeping in the model dorm room, another student vomits, one can’t find a bathroom and urinates and more. And the shell-shocked tour guide doesn’t know how to handle it and attempts to stay on script.

Why the rise of videos playing pranks? This just reinforces the lack of authenticity being rendered in campus tours and admission marketing. Most current students took part of the tours as prospective students and now hear what’s being said as they walk by a tour, and they know it’s spin. Also, somewhere along the way we stopped making college fun. (The admissions process is a nightmare for just about all parties involved.) But somewhere in our marketing and conversation about college (or lack of conversations) we stopped presenting college as fun. Nobody drinks, skips class, plays pranks or has fun. Everyone studies in rigorous and demanding programs, lives in the library, does service learning and is involved in myriad of extracurricular activities (”And if there isn’t a club for you, you can start your own!”)

I had fun in college. I pulled many a prank. If I was a parent on one of the tours being pranked I’d be impressed with the creativity of the current students who pulled them off.

Chances are your tour guides are going to fall victim to similar pranks.

How do you prepare for it?

First, you stage authentic and engaging tours. You empower your tour guides to answer questions honestly and directly. Second, you train tour guides to have conversations–with their guests visit campus and with students, staff and faculty the encounter during their tours. If you’re rendering an authentic version of yourself the temptation to prank is reduced.

But should you tour guide and their tour group be pranked, empower them to have fun. Laugh. Acknowledge the prank and have fun. Make the emotional connection. Chances are families are going to remember the laughs and creativity well beyond your student teacher ratio and other boring statistics.

Thanks to Chris Boehm, Director of Admission at Albright College for sending me this video.

A recent San Francisco Chronicle opt/ed piece headlined, The college visit - does it do any good? brilliantly suggests that the campus visit is a waste of time and money. In part, I agree.

This essay captures what’s tragically gone wrong with admissions marketing in specific and higher education in general; somehow social institutions dedicated to “truth” and “light”  don’t practice what they preach.

In the past few months I’ve toured some 25+ campuses and presented at some 10+ admissions related conferences, and there’s been a sense of panic. Deposits are down at many schools and session attendees are looking for a magic bullet. Those schools that I’ve been to who are thriving are those schools who have drawn a line in the sand. They are presenting who they are and what type of student fits in there with near crystal clarity. Others who try to be all things to all people have blurred the line and confused the consumer - prospective students and families.

Brands are mirrors. Ask most of your students why they chose your school and they’ll say, “It felt right!” That’s as subjective as it gets and is a major purchasing choice based upon wants not needs. College is an intimate product choice; students sleep there, eat there, shower there, have body functions there, get sick there and study there. They “live” with their decision.

Is your campus tour rendering authenticity or inauthenticity? Is the mirror your are propping up a relatively true reflection of your school or is it blurry and murky?  Millennials and their parents are savvy - they know spin. They just want the truth.  “The grass is always green and the sun always shine!” Tours show newer buildings, best residence halls and allow access to only well-trained students. That’s why the author of this essay suggest that the campus visit is a waste of time. It’s an insult to the intelligence of millennials and their parents to execute spin.

There’s a perfect storm brewing in admissions: graduating millennials are on the decrease, the economy has everyone in a malaise, the press constantly questions the cost of higher education, and we’re shifting from the optimistic Boomer parent to the more pragmatic X-er parent of millennials.

In today’s economy visiting your campus is a costly proposition for prospective families. Are you rendering an authentic self? Are your tour guides empowered to answer questions honestly and directly?

Authenticity is the new consumer demand. Heed the advice of one bright high school senior who participated in the survey for the SACAC Session Don’t Flirt With Me Unless You Mean It. Here’s her answer to a question about the campus tour and information session, “I believe that imperfections show character. That’s what I was looking for in a college. A school that seemingly has no flaws during a one hour information session not only stands out negatively, but it comes off as bland and ordinary.”

Being real, saying who you are, and being true to self is the new tenet of admissions marketing. Is your campus practicing what it preaches?

A/Esthetics are ground zero for staging a great experience.

Storytelling is currency of great experiences.

For years I’ve been speaking about and encouraging my clients to embrace storytelling. Both in their overall admissions marketing efforts and specifically in their campus visit experiences.  The job of admissions is to remove statistics from tour guides (yes, tour guides need to be informed, but more importantly they should tell stories that reveal the authentic student experience). Statistics still need to be told but they should be revealed at information sessions, on the walls of your visitor center, or in a simple “statistical” brochure handed to families prior to the brochure. It’s a waste of students’ knowledge to make them into talking head drones spouting of statistics.

Stories render authenticity. Stories are how most of us learn. Do families get in the car after touring your campus and remember your student teacher ratio?  No, they remember the story about how a certain professor invited the tour guide over for dinner or how they babysit their kids.

Last week I was at MACAC presenting a campus visit session with Kevin Kropf at Albion College.  Kevin gets the experience. Albion is great liberal arts college and last August they brought me to campus to audit the tour and inspire their tour guides about storytelling.

Late last week I was thrilled to get a message on this message from Scotty Bruce, Tour Guide Coordinator at Albion College:

I’ve been working as a Tour Guide for the AC admission office for about 4 years. So I was definitely one of the seniors, who after sitting through our August training workshop, thought to myself, “My tours are fine just the way they are.” But I kept an open mind and worked with our Visit Day director Marsha Whitehouse to follow the teachings of our evangelist and “convert” myself to the experiential mind frame.

I’m now one of the many tour guides who have embraced the idea of a personalized, story driven tour which builds a mutual rapport between guide and prospective. Since the changes, we’ve received tremendously positive feedback from prospective student evaluations. I remember reading one evaluation where the prospective student mentioned that the most memorable part of his tour was riding the elevator up to the 4th floor of our student union and finding out he and his tour guide had the same favorite Detroit Pistons basketball player. You know you’ve related to your student well when his most memorable part of the tour took place in the elevator.

Not only have the prospective students given us tremendously positive feedback, but our tour guides have even said they’re having a lot more fun with their tours. We’ve now re-vamped our training program to instill the ideas of an experiential tour into the mind of our guides from day one. So thank you for all of your recommendations Jeff!

Scotty Bruce
Tour Guide Coordinator
Albion College ‘08

Admissions job is to set-up tour guides to succeed and tell great stories. Students should tell stories not be factoid robots.

And they shouldn’t walk backwards, but that’s for another post.

I’ve been on a road trip: Denton/University of North Texas, Little Rock/Hendrix College/SACAC and now I’m in Tucson for RMACAC.

While in Little Rock for the SACAC Conference two things struck me:

1. Peabody Ducks - SACAC was held in the Peabody and while not the famous or original Peabody in Memphis they do have ducks in their fountain. The story goes that back in the 1930’s the General Manager went duck hunting in LA (Lower Arkansas) back when they used real ducks as decoys. With a bit too much Jack Daniels involved he and friends thought it would be funny to put the ducks in the fountain in the lounge. The next morning 100+ people where fascinated and thus the tradition of the march of the ducks coming from the their palace on the roof via the elevator onto the red carpet and into the fountain was born. The Memphis hotel is old-south charming. The Little Rock on New South gauche. I was skeptical that this was a lesson in authenticity. But I was impressed. Loved the ducks riding the glass elevator in the atrium. What impressed me more was the Duckmaster. Twice a day he made the March of the Ducks a celebration. While redundant for him, it was a first for many guests and he played his part well. Got me thinking, with all the college admissions people around did they take inspiration? Visitors to campus deserve to be treated special too. No matter how many information sessions you conduct, chances are it’s a first for your guests.

2. Clinton Library - “A Gateway to the 21st Century” built by an old train tressel and depot it was home to the SACAC social. Wow! Love him or hate him (that’s what the program said) it was impressive. Most impressive was the staff. One volunteer who introduced the movie was amazing. His energy and interaction with the guest was inspiration for tour guides and admissions professionals alike. He told stories. He had passion. He was a volunteer. He believed in Bill Clinton and the work of the library. He made me want to come back and see it all again.

I love food. I love barbecue. Having lived in the South since 1974 and traveled it extensively for business and pleasure, I’ve discovered some of the best. From mustard based in SC, vinegar based in NC, chopped pork in GA, hot slaw on your sandwhich in TN, dry rub in Memphis, brisket in TX and a little bit of everything in Kansas City. After a successful GPACAC & MOACAC conference in Kansas City this week, I stopped by Fiorella’s Jack Stack for a quick lunch. Wow! My “Burnt End” lunch plate included my favorite Cheesy Corn Bake side dish.

When ordering I informed the server I was from out of town had been once before and loved the Cheesy Corn Bake. Later I found a printed “Home Version” recipe accompanying my bill. My server simply listened and delighted or “made my day” by providing this recipe. She didn’t make a fanfare or even mention it to me. This recipe became a simple and delightful memorabilia of my conference experience.

What’s Cheesy Corn Bake have to do with your campus visit? Everything!

Often most colleges and universities and their tour guides/ambassadors don’t listen to guests when they visit campus. They just talk at, go through their script, and miss cues throughout the visit. My sales mentor taught me, “If you listen to what your clients are saying, they’ll tell you what they need or want.” Are you listening to guests to your campus? Are you delighting them and “making their day” with simple little actions (like my server)? Or are you just assaulting them with “cheesy” marketing and scripted tour?

Listen, train others to listen and “Make their day!”

Just how good is Cheesy Corn Bake? Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients
3 each 10oz PKG Frozen Whole Kernel Corn
1 each 3oz PKG Cream Cheese
6oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese Sauce
3oz Smoked Ham (Diced 1/4″)
3/4 Cup Milk (2%)
2TBSP Butter
4TSP All-purpose Flour
1/8TSP Garlic Powder

Procedure
1. In a 4-quart sauce pan, melt Butter over medium heat
2. Stir in Flour
3. Add Milk, Cream Cheese and Cheese Sauce
4. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened & bubbly
5. Stir in Corn and Ham
6. Transfer mixture to 2-Quart Casserole Dish
7. Bake at 350 Degrees for 45 minutes

Enjoy and listen better.