Keeping school devices running can be one of the most important tasks an IT technician can have. But, as Timothy Jaw states, it isn’t all about just focusing on the hands-on aspect with IT. Catering to the human side of IT can also go a long way in establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships within a school environment.
Jaw, Technology Coordinator at Warren Hills Regional School District in New Jersey, was recently honored with an Innovative Leader Award at a recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit for his IT work.
Your Call Is Very Important To Us
Dealing with customer service can be stressful for many, as it involves trying to resolve an issue or solve a problem that you cannot do on your own. Sometimes it requires you explaining an issue to another live individual, and this can result in varying outcomes based on a number of factors. Most importantly, you never know what kind of individual you will be dealing with and whether you’ll get your issue solved or not.
Jaw maintains that the way to make the customer service approach work in an educational setting is to begin by showing patience and understanding. Exhibiting qualities that mark excellent customer service can be very helpful when others look to you for answers to their technical questions. With the amount of tech we use in schools, just one device not working can derail an entire day. As Jaw puts it, showing empathy and compassion can go a long way.
“It starts with me, right?” Jaw says. “If I don’t conduct myself with that level of patience, customer service, empathy, and compassion that I expect the people that work in my department to exhibit, then it’s not going to work. The first step is starting with me and making sure that I’m doing that. From there, when I onboard people, we would go over our values, we talk about what’s important to us and try to come up with a shared set of values.”
Involving people who come to work in IT from the beginning mitigates potential pushbacks.
“It doesn’t take a lot of arm-twisting,” Jaw says. “If we are not there serving the people who work in the school community, what are we doing?”
Making Customer Service the Standard
Customer service normally invokes images of business, not education. However, as Jaw says when asked how other schools and IT departments can follow his lead to revamp their own offerings, it costs nothing to change a mindset.
“I would say that people are the most important thing,” Jaw says. “It’s just how we conduct ourselves, how we communicate, and how we operate that brings that success. It’s not due to a system. It’s not due to a product. It’s what we do on a day-to-day basis, who we are as people, and what we bring to the school community every day that makes the biggest difference. [If another school wanted to follow suit] that is what I see as having the biggest impact.”
But what happens if there is pushback to a customer service-oriented mindset?
“Everybody has different experiences and different personalities,” Jaw says. “I think that if we expect ourselves to have that level of understanding and patience and empathy toward the stakeholders that we serve in the school community, then we should have that toward each other as well. When there are people who are having a bad day or have something going on, I let my people know that I’ll take that call. I’ll help that person. I’ll make sure that it’s done the way that we want the department to be perceived in the school community. We have each other’s backs.”
Making the extra effort to help those in need, no matter what they may be dealing with, can help make an IT department go from a dreaded environment to the superheroes of the school.
