Midst the pines of this dear college, we hear students crying out to admin about the new plan for student ID’s. The office sent our a short email explaining a future change that they intended to better our college experience here and to improve safety measures on campus. The initial benefits are 1) simplifying what students have to carry 2) Improved safety from on-campus hackers. While the office seemed to think that this change would be readily welcomed, there was a dramatic response to the announcement. The school underestimated how many students would be opposed to this change. Many students have sited that this change will not benefit most of the students because the new technologie is somewhat unreliable, forces students who otherwise would leave their phones in their dorms to carry it with them, and it forces students to open wallet and multiple bank accounts on their phones. The college failed to see that a number of their students would be negatively impacted by this future change, and were not ready to defend their reasoning. They did not consider the whole of the college when researching this change, and failed to communicate the benefits of the new tech to the skeptics. In the initial announcement they acknowledged some of the shortcomings, but the ones they acknowledged are, in contrast to our current tech, absolutely devistating.Students who have tested the faults of this new tech have had mixed results including: Having to scan repeatedly to enter their dorm, being locked out of the dorm when the phone dies, waiting in longer ques to get food and to get into chapel. The college has quickly responded to the outrage of the students by preparing a time to meet with them; their hope is to better understand what students need in terms of IDs, and also how their product benefits and negatively impacts the lives of their students. As a student who is negatively impacted by this change, I look forward to the college taking time to get to know our real pain and the pain associated with the new technology.
Note: this is not a hate blog, please be respectful and professional in the comments
lanzilottadn24 
hammondmr23 
murraylg23
Good example of how the school didn’t fully understand student pain points before making the change. It shows how important it is to listen to your audience and not just assume what’s best for them.
This is a great example of how the college didn’t fully understand the students’ need and provided a service not everyone had a desire for. The intention and creativity was there but the communication with the future consumer was not. This example also demonstrates the need for testing within tech to ensure there are no technical difficulties.
I think you could have mentioned communication being one of the main factors to why the students have reacted so negatively. In sales, it’s important to communicate and be direct with the customers. Another thing they seemed to have failed in the sales process is knowing the customer’s pain. Was the student ID a pain for the student? In what way? I cannot say I remember a time they asked about student IDs to the students. They should have dug into the pain for the students, asked and communicated with the students, and then work to solve the issues instead of solving an issue that maybe wasn’t even a pain area.
Very interesting post, I think its definitely interesting to tie in “current issues” to our discussion on sales. I wonder why more concerns weren’t raised in the testing of the digital cards, I know they were rolled out to some students in advance. Maybe they didn’t accurately describe the forced change, or maybe it was a lack of in depth questioning? (A major sales error) I’d imagine the issue is at least not directly targeted at solving a noticeable student pain, Id guess its more to solve a few pain points on the colleges side, namely evolving technology and definite security issues. However, it is in a way a case of multiple decision makers, we were impacted by this change as well and probably deserved more of a voice.