Student Development v. Customer Service

A friend of mine recently sent me a facebook message about someone he knows being frustrated with the customer service climate that many institutions of higher education and divisions of student affairs have adopted. In particular, he said that this person gets frustrated with “having to put customer service over student affairs at times (such as not being able to have as many developmental or diversity programs because they’re against the general ‘climate’ or ‘attitude’ of the school, or not having the ability to suggest roommates stay roommates even though their religion or sexuality is different).”

This brings up a great point, and I think it is something that a lot of people in my grad school cohort, including myself, have struggled with. Right now, a lot of us are encouraged to make the students happy by providing good customer service. In many ways, this is extremely important; from the hall office, other student staff members, etc. But the whole motto of good customer service is “the customer is always right,” and I don’t believe this is always true in our case.

If the customer is always right, then how do we successfully challenge them and help them develop? If we are consistently giving into students’ wants and desires, then how do we provide opportunities of growth for them? After all, a lot of growth comes from working through uncomfortable situations. Even though it might be easier to move someone when a conflict arises, what good is this providing them for their future? It simply re-encourages the notion that they can just go and complain to someone, and the other person will fix all of their problems. It does not encourage confrontation, compromising, nor conflict resolution.

As a society, we are willing to pay for better service. Think about it, some people will pay the extra money to fly with an airline that has better customer service or will choose one product over another similar one because of the difference in service provided by the company. I understand the fear that students may go to another product (or institution) if we don’t give them what they want, but I wonder at what point we are supposed to provide resistance toward our students. What impact does giving in consistently have on our field? Will we be forced to simply suggest things to our students, but ultimately be forced to give into many of their (or their parents’) demands to ensure we are providing a good service? How do we balance this aspect of service, with trying to develop our students?