Odessa College is taking its customer service and merchandising to the next level with Wrangler Service and Wrangler Outfitters.
Lindsey Bryant, executive assistant to President Gregory Williams, said Wrangler Service is the college’s branded name for customer service.
The college has a little more than 400 full-time employees.
“When you look at OC as a whole, we have 1,000 different customers,” Bryant said. “Depending on what your role is at OC, your customer can look different. Like for our faculty members, their customers are students; in HR (human resources), their customers may be employees. All of our customers are the community, so instead of just saying customer and keeping that so broad, we just brought it down to Wrangler Service because we want to make sure that we are exhibiting that with each person that we come in contact with.”
It’s no different than what OC has done previously.
“We’re just taking it to the next level. We’re making it a priority. We think we already do really well with customer service, but we want to make sure that we’re doing all the small things to that make a big difference,” Bryant said.
There is a Wrangler Service Committee. Recently, they had Wrangler Service Week.
“We did a kickoff with Nate Saxton, the owner of this Chick-fil-A. He came to speak to our employees about customer service at Chick-fil-A. Then throughout the week, we did different types of trainings for our employees — how to do effective grading; how to assist parents that are trying to help their children through school. Different ways you can answer a telephone,” Bryant said.
They talked about how OC staffers need to learn people’s names and not associate them with an employee ID or student ID number.
They ended the week with women’s basketball Coach Franqua “Coach Q” Bedell.
“He spoke to us about what his philosophy is with leadership and how team building is important within your department in order for you to give good customer service,” Bryant said.
OC has always been big on customer service and had a customer service committee, but they haven’t always made it a priority.
They want to make sure every person that walks through the campus is getting the attention they deserve, walks out with what they need and feels that the college cares.
“One of the new things that we’re doing now is we give out two Wrangler Service awards each month. We’ll do one with an employee and then we’ll do one with the department. They’ll receive a plaque and then our Wrangler Service award employee will get a gift card and our Wrangler Service department will receive lunch as a team at the Grab-n-Go,” Bryant said.
Wrangler Outfitters is a pop-up store at OC with the idea of giving employees apparel they can wear at work.
Proceeds will go toward student scholarships.
“It’s all Wrangler branded. We’re trying to do more high-end type things like Stanley Cups, Yeti cups. We have cardigans, men’s polo shirts. The pop-up stores, we will pop them up at different activities that we have on campus, like basketball games, James Segrest grand opening. Then in a few weeks, we should have our regular outfitters merchandise trailer. That’s where our pop-up store will be and we’ll just take our trailer to different events as well,” Bryant said.
They may take it to different OC sites.
“I was just trying to think of different innovative ways that we could help take Odessa College as a whole to the next level. There are times when you go to different graduations and you’ll see the stores at different campuses. That’s where it started was with graduation. We wanted our parents, families and friends when they came into graduation if they forgot to get a gift or wanted to get a last-minute gift, they have the option right there in front of them to be able to grab something,” Bryant said.
