Grambling State University

“I didn’t know we had a gaming club.”

That comment came from a student while I was studying the higher education experience. It wasn't a complaint about the club. It was a reminder that an opportunity can exist on campus and still be invisible to the very students it was created for.

We spend months preparing for enrollment, celebrate census numbers and welcome new classes with excitement. I understand why. But I've become increasingly interested in a different question: what happens after the celebration?

Before becoming chief experience and digital strategy officer at Grambling State University, I studied why students leave college and why they stay. My years in customer experience taught me that getting someone through the door is only the beginning. The relationship that follows is where the real work happens.

We Count Students, But Do We Understand Connection?

National Student Clearinghouse research shows that about seven in ten entering college students return to their original institution the following fall. Some of those who don't return transfer elsewhere; others face financial, academic or personal barriers. Retention is not a direct measure of engagement, but it raises an important question about the experiences we may be overlooking.

Companies like Netflix and Spotify keep learning about people after they sign up. Their goal isn't just to acquire a customer. It's to understand what keeps that person interested, supported and willing to return.

While working on Comcast's enterprise customer experience and Net Promoter Score initiatives, I saw how listening to customer sentiment could become an operating discipline, not just a quarterly report. That experience changed how I look at higher education: we have plenty of enrollment and academic data, but far fewer conversations about loyalty, belonging and the effort it takes to get help.

We know what classes our students are taking, but do we know whether they’re building meaningful connections with campus organizations, social groups, and support resources? Do we know what hobbies, interests, and passions they had in high school?

How Student Engagement Impacts the Entire University

A student doesn't experience the registrar, financial aid, advising and student affairs as separate organizational charts. They experience one university. One confusing process or unanswered question can shape how supported they feel. And for students balancing jobs, family and school, small obstacles aren't always small.

At Accenture, I worked on enterprise service transformations where the challenge wasn't simply installing a better system. It was connecting teams, processes and information so people could get answers without being passed from one place to another. I bring that same perspective to campus: students should not have to become experts in our internal structure to succeed.

Engagement isn't just a student affairs and office of retention priority. It helps protect students' investment and sustain the institution's mission.

Blending Human Experience, Resources and Technology

Universities face a difficult balancing act. Student expectations are rising, while staffing, budgets and time remain limited. We can't hire our way out of every service gap. But buying another platform won't solve the problem if people don't change how they work.

My experience with enterprise voice-of-customer programs taught me to look beyond a single satisfaction score. Net Promoter Score, or NPS, asks how likely someone is to recommend an organization. Paired with customer effort, satisfaction, belonging and participation, it can help leaders see dimensions of the experience that academic dashboards alone may miss. NPS doesn't predict retention on its own, but it can start better conversations.

“The survey is not the strategy. What we do with the feedback is the strategic tool.”

Through my work designing student-retention concepts and now leading experience and digital strategy in higher education, I've become especially interested in how teams can use responsible analytics and AI to spot emerging concerns and reach students sooner. The promise isn't a robot replacing an advisor. It's an advisor with better information, a service team with fewer repetitive tasks and a student who doesn't have to ask for help three different ways.

The survey is not the strategy. What we do with the feedback is the strategic tool.

Notice Earlier, Connect Better

I believe the future of engagement is less about sending more messages and more about making the right connection at the right time. A student who hasn't found a community may need an introduction. Someone struggling with a process may need a clear answer. Another student may simply need to know that somebody noticed.

In my work across customer experience, technology and organizational change, one lesson has stayed consistent: tools create value only when people adopt them and use them to improve someone's experience. That is the perspective I'm bringing to higher education. We should invest in experience teams and technology together, measure whether interventions help and use student information carefully and transparently.

I still think about that gaming club comment. Maybe discovering the club would have led to a great game of Madden, a new friendship, a mentor or a stronger sense of home. We'll never know. But we can build universities where those moments of connection are easier to find.

In enterprise organizations and institutions, both sales and marketing acquisition activities get customers and students through the door. Engagement gives them reasons to stay.