If you’re anything like me you’ll remember your university days with fondness, but the accommodation may not have been one of the highlights. Needless to say, that was a long time ago and things have changed beyond recognition! What is still true, though, is that the undergraduate experience is a one-off­—there’s no such thing as a customer for life in this sector.

It may be a transitory relationship, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be a transactional one, and creating a good customer experience is still a financial as well as a moral imperative. Customer satisfaction drives reputation, and is a key part of the overall student experience with an influence not only on how they feel, but how they perform. We’ll come back to that idea later.

“We don't want people to renew their accommodation in their second year, because we need them to move on to make room for the next intake, but we want them to move on thinking well of us.”

For many students, university accommodation represents their first real experience with independent living. It’s a rite of passage for most, but the expectations they arrive with can be very different depending on their background (for instance they may be the first in the family to go to university), as well as individual variation in independence and resilience.

“It's still seen as that rite of passage moving away from home. We find that parents who have been to university themselves typically get the idea that halls can be a bit rough and ready, that's part of the experience.”

Success, as Paul notes, is often that “they haven’t noticed us”—they’ve had no problems, and haven’t really had to think about accommodation. On the other hand, when things have gone wrong there’s often a lot of emotion at play.

“It's three or four weeks of intense activity with a lot of disgruntled people, what feels like a lot of high maintenance calls, but percentage-wise it’s very small.”

Creating a culture of service is central to Paul’s philosophy. He acknowledges that not all roles in student accommodation are typically associated with customer service—such as maintenance or cleaning staff. However, front-line staff members often have the most frequent and personal interactions with students, particularly first-years who may feel isolated or anxious.

“Working with TLF has really helped develop quite a culture shift on our part.”

It's vital to instil a sense of purpose in every team member, emphasizing that each staff member, no matter their role, contributes to the student experience. Survey feedback from TLF Research has been essential for this, and as is so often the case the comments are as important as the scores.

“Showing people the results and the verbatim comments from students is powerful. Showing staff they do make a difference is huge in terms of motivation for them to keep doing what they're doing.”

Paul also highlights the need for a positive work culture. Building on high satisfaction scores for politeness, helpfulness, and respect shown by staff, his team encourages each other to treat every interaction with respect and empathy, even when dealing with dissatisfied students or unrealistic expectations.

Every email is answered within 24 hours, and Paul refuses to use an autoresponder or to make excuses about volumes of queries. He’s working with a streamlined team, 60% smaller than when he started, but one that is now much more efficient and committed to the customer.

“By making the journey for the customers easier, it actually makes our work life easier because we become more efficient, more slick, providing the answers before people realise that was the question they had.”

Paul talks about the Japanese term nemawashi or “turning the roots”—slowly building a consensus around an idea until everyone is fully committed. He has spent time in Japan, and embraces these ideas of collective effort and continuous improvement (kaizen).

“I'm not looking for massive immediate change, but every year after we finish the application cycle we put the process under the microscope and we tweak it where it needs to change, and the whole team's bought into it.”

Many students today come with varying needs, including those related to physical or mental health or neurodivergence. Paul’s team faces a delicate balancing act, as they strive to provide reasonable adjustments while being mindful of resource limitations.

The process of gathering necessary information to support vulnerable students can be complex, especially with concerns about data protection and privacy.

“The information we provide around making adjustments and the need to improve that has come about partly through experience and partly through surveying students. What could we do better? What should we have asked you that we didn't ask you?”

When it comes to a growing number of students asking for mental health accommodations, the university has again to manage its resources to ensure that they can help those with diagnosed needs while managing expectations around less formal requests. There is a risk that the accommodation service can be seen as the “bad guy”, but again managing expectations around this is key.

“Some of our processes have to exist in a certain way, but if we explain them in a better way, people will know how to navigate through them and understand the decisions that come from them.”

The customer experience lessons from the University of Manchester have implications beyond the university setting. One major takeaway is the importance of consistency and continuous improvement. Paul values incremental change and advocates for annual reviews of the application process and student experience.

“Every year, we make small adjustments. It’s about getting better gradually, so nothing feels forced but always moving towards a smoother, more transparent process for students.”

Paul also emphasizes empathy and realistic communication as critical components of any CX strategy. “Efficiency that doesn’t work for customers isn’t true efficiency,” he notes. Paul has seen firsthand how over-streamlined processes can frustrate students when there’s no human fallback.

“If a system seems efficient on paper but leads to unresolved queries and frustration, it’s not effective CX.”

The research shows that living in halls prepares people for the next steps in their life. It gives them experience of living independently and the skills for living independently and it helps develop their social skills and living with different types of people.

In terms of using customer feedback to benefit future customers, one of the key questions that is asked on the TLF survey to students leaving the University of Manchester's accommodation is

“Knowing what you know now, what do you wish you had been told before you came?”

This ability to take learnings from 1 cohort and pass them on to the next cohort ties in with Paul's vision of continual improvement, and is the key to any successful CX programme regardless of sector.