As Ohio State begins to undergo changes that will improve the quality of education here at OSU, as well as increase the tuition, I think first the quality of customer service offered within the walls of Lincoln Tower should be examined.
On April 10, I entered Lincoln Tower and for nearly two hours was passed from one office to another in an attempt to correct an oversight on my transcript.
This oversight was brought to my attention a week earlier by an advisor who is in charge of advising me about graduation. To avoid going into great details about my travails in Lincoln Tower, I would just like to mention two instances in which I was treated not only as if I were an inconvenience, but also as if I was a moron.
The first instance was in the Office of Testing. I entered, with all of my relevant paper work, and mentioned that I needed to get this oversight addressed as soon as possible because I am due to graduate this quarter, but only if this oversight is corrected. The receptionist then asked me, in a quite sarcastic tone, “Is graduation tomorrow morning?”
No, of course graduation is not tomorrow morning. But here I was making an attempt to get all of my ducks in order, well in advance of graduation, so that I would not show up in the office on the day before graduation to correct things and make her job even harder than it already is.
The sarcastic quip conveyed a simple and clear message to me: When it comes to getting things done in a timely fashion at Lincoln Tower, it’s “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Come in early and get sarcasm, come in late and it’s too late to do anything.
Later that morning, I was at the Registrar’s Office still trying to get someone to help me address my concern. About midway through my exchange there, I was told by the OSU employee (whose salary my tuition pays, at least in part) gave me this advice: “Perhaps you should have called ahead and found out how to take care of this problem and you could have avoided being sent from office to office,”
Good advice indeed. So good that I had already followed it four days before being given it. I called ahead, wanting to avoid standing in more than one long line. However, the information I got over the phone was incorrect.
So I guess, in retrospect, the advice to call ahead did little but convey a clear message to me that I was viewed as little more than an idiot who had clearly not planned ahead.
Then, when I inquired as to the possibility that the paper work was lost, the employee said to me, “Let’s assume that we lost the paper work, that’s part of life and it happens … and you are going to have to just go get it taken care of …”
Such an overtly cavalier attitude toward a customer is not only unacceptable in most organizations, but it also indicative of a certain amount of arrogance, annoyance and contempt that does little to improve customer relations.
It certainly is not the attitude of someone who is willing to do what they can to help a customer.
The irony of this story is that I was the only one who had kept, and not lost, the paper work needed to correct the oversight.
The problem was finally resolved by going to the professor involved and recreating the paper trail that had been lost or never generated in the first place.
It is also important to mention that the professor was the only person who was apologetic and courteous to me, taking it upon herself to take full responsibility, apologize for the inconvenience, and take immediate action to correct the problem. However, seeing as I received my paper work (the only that remained) from her, I would assume that she had, in fact, done her part in generating the appropriate paper work and that the oversight occurred elsewhere.
The sad part of this story is that I have truly enjoyed my studies here at OSU. My professors and classes have, for the most part, been nothing but helpful, polite and accommodating, in a word, excellent.
I am proud that I will be receiving a degree from this university, but, I am ashamed of the way this university allows its students to be treated within the walls of Lincoln Tower.
My pride in my degree and for this university will now be accompanied by a bitter aftertaste.
If this university expects students to pay top dollar for a top-notch education, then it needs to make sure it is backed up with top-notch customer service.
I realize that often there are problems that are complex and difficult to fix, assuming they can be fixed at all, but there is no problem that cannot be handled with courteousness and a smile (and without sarcasm and contempt).
David Noble is a graduating senior in agriculture.
