How a school kept parents happy using SMS

Parents are funny creatures. When it comes to their offspring, their expectations of care and service generally escalate beyond that which they would be happy with for just themselves.

So a Queensland school recently scored 110% for customer service from parents of children returning from a school camp simply from the sending on a simple text message.

The school camp was on an island and as the weather had deteriorated and the seas become rough on the night before they were due to return home, the school took the initiative of organizing a bigger boat to ensure enhanced comfort and safety of the students and staff.

Of course parents may not have known this and remained worried.

The school took another step and sent a text message advising parents that a bigger boat had been organized, the firm arrival time of the boat and requested to know if the parents wanted to collect their children from the dock, or have them taken to school and be picked up at end of the normal school day.

By personalising the message not only with the parent’s name and the child’s name and asking for a response by SMS, there was a quick, simple and effective communication channel set up that only cost a few dollars and saved staff time and parent concern.

The Ant and Modern work culture

THE ANT

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.

She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision.

He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor, So he recruited a cockroach

who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.

The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system.

He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and …

... he recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyze trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board‘s meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and

... recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked.

The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimization Plan…

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset...

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss, he lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment .

Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department , the lion found out that the production was much less than before.

So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report , in several volumes,

that concluded :

“The department is overstaffed ...”

Guess who the lion fires first?

The ant , of course, because she

“showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".

NB: The characters in this fable are fictitious; any resemblance to real people or facts within the Corporation is pure coincidence…