>Martin Owen said: Those who provide me with travel services can not enter
>into discussion of whether I am a good traveller or not. Restranteurs
>(Basil Fawlty aside) should not question my preference for wholemeal bread
>and white flour pasta. Now you might say my University should provide a
>service: reliable accommodation, books in the library and so on. The
>administration do provide a "service"
I can't agree. Choosing trivial examples makes the point difficult to
contest, but for example food producers routinely produce foodstuff which
is not nutrious but has attractive colours, is cheap, lots of salt and
sugar and so forth. This is the direct outcome of "customer service"
mentality in food production.
A lousy architect or systems analyst will deliver their client exactly what
the client asked for. The client, lacking expertise in the profession and
being unaware of their lack of expertise, wrongly specifies their own
needs. A decent architect or systems analyst engages the buyer in the
design process, ... and so on and so on.
Your experience as teachers is just that you guys think a lot more about
your relationship with students than you do about your own relationship
with the library administrator or the architect who built the building you
live or work in. Possibly you even "moan" about the bad design of the
building or poor stock held by the library. The client/service provider
isolates the two parties, who need to collaborate, from each other, and set
them up against each other. I'm part of a University administration and I
insist (as best I can) on the academics participating in designing and
planning the activities I manage.
Andy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:11 PDT
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