Keeping your clients happy

Professor Tristram Hooley

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Overview
How important is
satisfying people?
What makes people
more satisfied?
What can you do
about it?
Designing your
service to satisfy

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Overview
How important is
satisfying people?
What makes people
more satisfied?
What can you do
about it?
Designing your
service to satisfy

www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
www.derby.ac.uk

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What is satisfaction?

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Definition
1. fulfilment of one's wishes, expectations, or needs, or the
pleasure derived from this.
2. the payment of a debt or fulfilment of an obligation or
claim.

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Levels of impact (See Kirkpatrick)

R
es
ul
ts
Behaviour
Learning
Reaction

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Reaction
How do users of services react to them?
Use of feedback forms and happy sheets.

Voices of Users (Vilhjlmsdttir et al., 2011) is a summary of

the experience of career guidance clients in Nordic
countries. It found that the majority of participants were
satisfied with the service that they had received and felt that
the counsellor with whom they had worked had been
supportive and understanding.

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Learning
Did the individual learn something as a result of the
intervention.
If you tested them before and after would something have
changed?
Learning for now or later (Kuijpers & Meijers, 2012) found
that students career competencies (reflection, exploration,
proactivity and networking) were correlated with the
presence of a practice based and inquiry based curriculum
which allowed them to engage in career conversations.

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Behaviour
How do individuals behaviour change following an
intervention.
Can you measure what they do differently?
A career workshop was developed in Switzerland to
promote the career choice readiness of young adolescents.
In an evaluation of the workshop with 334 Swiss students in
the 7th grade, Hirschi & Lge found that three months after
the workshop, participants had significantly increased their
career decidedness, career planning and career exploration.

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Results
What actually happens as a result of your intervention?
Do people get jobs, better qualifications etc.
A report in Northern Ireland (Regional Forecasts, 2008)
examined the impact of the Educational Guidance Service
for Adults on the Northern Ireland economy. The study used
a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, including
detailed analysis of the services client data, to estimate the
economic value of the service. This was estimated to be
9.02 net additional tax revenue for every 1 of public
money invested.
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Is satisfaction important?

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Why is customer satisfaction

important?
Customer satisfaction is an important outcome of career
guidance.
Providers of services have a duty to attend to their
customers and to ensure that they are happy with the
service provided.
Measuring customers satisfaction offers one way to do
this.

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1
4

Critiques
It may not be related to the quality of service
(Crowley,1992).
It may not be related to learning, behaviour change or
results.
Customer satisfaction does not necessarily make clients
more likely to continue to access career support or
complete the course of interviews that they had begun
(Healy, 2001)
Careers advisers judgements about how satisfying
interviews were are largely independent from clients
judgements (Millar & Brotherton, 2001).

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Overview
How important is
satisfying people?
What makes people
more satisfied?
What can you do
about it?
Designing your
service to satisfy

www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
www.derby.ac.uk

Key determinants of customer

satisfaction

Individual

Who is the individual? What is their disposition, personal circumstances?

What is their expectation about career guidance? Do they have any prior
experience?
What isssue/s are they bringing?

Contextual

What are the logisitcal arrangements that support clients to access career
guidance? For example, how do they book an appointment and get there
and how long do they have to wait?
What is the environment within which the interaction takes place? e.g. is it
light, warm, comfortable and so on.

Delivery
Postintervention

Who is the adviser? How skilled are they, how personalble and sympathetic,
what do they look like?
What is the mode of delivery? Face-to-face, groupwork, telephone, online. Is
a particular approach or method used?
What is the content of the delivery? What is covered or learnt?

How is the interaction followed up?

What life events and progression does the individual experience following
the intervention.

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Individual factors
Older people may typically be less satisfied (Noble,2010;
BIS, 2012).
No clear differences on gender, disability.
Some contradictory studies exist on educational level.
Clients expectations about what they are getting.
Incongruence with the counsellors expectations = lower
client satisfaction (Whitaker et al., 2004).

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1
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Contextual factors
E.g. parking, waiting time
These are best viewed as hygiene factors.
While they can lead to dissatisfaction if not well
performed, they contribute relatively little to positive
customer satisfaction (BIS, 2013).

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Overview
How important is
satisfying people?
What makes people
more satisfied?
What can you do
about it?
Designing your
service to satisfy

www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
www.derby.ac.uk

What do you do that satisfies people?

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2
1

Delivery I
The following correlate with customer satisfaction
The job satisfaction of the counsellor
Informing customer expectations prior to the interaction.
Clear contracting and clarification of objectives (Healy,
2001).
The mode of delivery

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Key concept: Working alliance

Working alliance
counsellor/client agreement about the goals of the
interaction;
their agreement about the tasks leading to these goals;
and
their emotional relationship

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Delivery II
The client should feel that the counsellor/adviser has
listened to them and understood their enquiry and
circumstances (Healy, 2001; Millar & Brotherton, 2001)
The provision of useful information and advice that
supports progression. Particularly where this introduces
ideas that the client had not thought of (Healy, 2001;
Millar & Brotherton, 2001; BIS, 2013).
Advisers who are helpfulness and professional (BIS,
2013).
Feeling that the careers adviser has spent enough time
with you (Millar & Brotherton, 2013).
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2
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Post-intervention factors
When should customer satisfaction be measured? The
length of time will influence the level of satisfaction.
Some participants want more follow up (Healy, 2001).
Gati et al. (2006) have found that customer satisfaction
for users of a career assessment varies depending on the
outcome. People are more likely to report satisfaction
with a career assessment tool if they have gone into one
of the careers that they were recommended to go into.

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Overview
How important is
satisfying people?
What makes people
more satisfied?
What can you do
about it?
Designing your
service to satisfy

www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
www.derby.ac.uk

Why evaluate?
Evaluation enables us to:
examine what we do
think about how we can improve it
decide on whether it was worth doing
provide others with a summary to help them to understand
what was done.

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What is evaluation?
When people seek to evaluate what they are doing as part of
an attempt to learn and improve, they are usually undertaking
a formative evaluation, so called because it is undertaken to
inform what is done while the activity is still in progress.
We would like to find out how to do these things better
When people evaluate to make a judgement on the value of a
particular activity and to draw out what has been learnt, it is
usually a summative evaluation; so called because it
attempts to create a summary of what has been achieved and
what the impacts have been.
We would like to find out how well these things work
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Evidence based practice and policy

Understanding what is
known about the
efficacy of career
development
Monitoring
implementation and
checking efficacy

Developing new
policies and services

Implementing new
policies and sevices

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Discussion: Listening to customers

How could you ensure that you listen to your customers in
ways that help you to improve your service.

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Publish or perish
Too little evaluation and impact work on careers work is
published.
Writing up your evaluation for broader circulation is an
important way to support the development of the sector.
Self publication
Journal publication
Partnership with academics
Using external consultants
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Write it down
My main reason for writing is simple: I do not know
what I think until I have written it. In conversation
one can get away with loose, exploratory thinking,
but in writing it down one has to weigh up the
arguments and the evidence, and decide what it all
means and where one stands. It is hard work, but
important; and if published, it adds to the body of
knowledge on which others can draw.
Tony Watts
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References and resources

Crowley, T. (1992). Computer-aided careers guidance: An investigation involving and artificial system. British
Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 20, 344351.
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (2012). Next Step Satisfaction and Progression Surveys (Research
Paper 88). London: DBIS.
Gati I., Gadassi R., Shemesh N. (2006). The predictive validity of a computer-assisted career decision-making
system: A six-year follow-up. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 68(2): 205-219.
Healy, C. (2001). A follow-up of adult career counselling clients of a university extension centre. Career
Development Quarterly, 49: 363-373.
Hirschi, A. & Lge, D. (2008). Increasing the career choice readiness of young adolescents: an evaluation study.
International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 8(2): 95-110.
Kuijpers, M., & Meijers, F. (2012). Learning for now or later? Career competencies among students in higher
vocational education in the Netherlands. Studies in Higher Education, 37(4), 449-467.
Millar, R. & Brotherton, C. (2001). Expectations, recall and evaluation of careers guidance interviews by pupils and
careers advisers: a preliminary study. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 29(1): 95-110.
Noble, M.K. (2010). One-Stop Career Centers: An Assessment of Satisfaction From Customers Using Services of a
Disability Program Navigator. PhD Thesis. Capella Univeristy, USA.
Vilhjlmsdttir, G., Dofradttir, A.G. & Kjartansdttir, G.B. (2011). Voice of Users Promoting Quality of Guidance
for Adults in the Nordic Countries. Oriveden Kirjapaino, Finland: Nordic Network of Adult Learning.
Whitaker, L.A., Phillips, J. C., Tokas D. M., (2004). Influencing client expectations about career counseling using a
videotaped intervention. Career Development Quarterly, 52(4): 309-322.

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Stuff Ive written

Dent, P., Garton, E., Hooley, T., Leonard, C., Marriott, J. and Moore, N. (2013).
Higher Education Outreach to Widen Participation: Toolkits for Practitioners. Evaluation, 2nd. Edition.
Bristol: HEFCE.
Hooley, T. (2014). The Evidence Base on Lifelong Guidance. Jyvskyl, Finland: European Lifelong
Guidance Policy Network
Hooley, T., Hutchinson, J. and Neary S. (2014) Evaluating Brightside's Approach to Online Mentoring.
Derby: International Centre for Guidance Studies. University of Derby.
Hooley, T., Marriott, J. and Wellens, J. (2012).
What is Online Research?: Using the Internet for Social Science Research. London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Hooley, T., Matheson, J. & Watts, A.G. (2014). Advancing Ambitions: The Role of Career Guidance in
Supporting Social Mobility. London: Sutton Trust.
Hooley, T., Mellors-Bourne, R. and Sutton, M. (2013). Early Evaluation of Unistats: User Experiences.
Bristol: HEFCE.
Marriott, J. and Hooley, T. (2014). Evaluating the Legacy Careers Project. Derby: International Centre
for Guidance Studies, University of Derby.
Taylor, A.R. & Hooley, T. (2014).
Evaluating the impact of career management skills module and internship programme within a universit
y business school.
British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 42(5): 487-499.
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Tristram Hooley
Professor of Career Education
International Centre for Guidance Studies
University of Derby
http://www.derby.ac.uk/icegs
t.hooley@derby.ac.uk
@pigironjoe
Blog at
http://adventuresincareerdevelopment.wordpress.com
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Conclusions
Customer satisfaction is important, but it is not the only
thing that is important.
The evidence suggests a number of things that should
enhance customer satisfaction (informing expectations,
improving the working alliance, follow up).
It also suggests that it is important to seek feedback from
customers and to evaluation services.

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