New research from a national survey of school communication professionals by NSPRA and Qualtrics finds that trust in schools is shaped not only by major decisions, messages or moments of crisis, but also by families’ and community members’ everyday experiences, from calling the main office and completing a registration form to navigating a website, asking a transportation question or trying to resolve a concern.

Strengthening Trust Through a Better K-12 Customer Experience examines how school districts approach those interactions and where opportunities exist to strengthen consistency, clarity and trust.

Key takeaways include:

• Customer experience is a trust issue. Seventy-five percent of respondents believe that positive everyday experiences for families and community members somewhat or significantly strengthen their trust in the district.

  • Among respondents who rated their districts very/extremely effective at providing consistent, positive interactions, that figure rose to 94%. By contrast, among respondents who rated their districts slightly or not at all effective, 72% said those interactions weaken trust. 

• There is a gap between priority and practice. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (63%) said their district places a high or very high priority on intentionally shaping positive external audience experiences, yet only 38% said their district is very or extremely effective at providing those experiences consistently.

• The barriers are primarily operational. Respondents most often pointed to limited staff capacity or time (43%), unclear ownership for reinforcing expectations (42%), school-level autonomy that limits districtwide consistency in interactions (33%) and lack of clearly documented expectations (28%) as barriers to creating consistent, high-quality interactions across their districts.

What does this mean for school communicators?

The findings reinforce an important strategic role for communications. School communicators are often among the first to see recurring questions, points of confusion and inconsistent experiences across schools and departments. The research also found greater communications involvement in leadership decision-making and strategic partnerships among districts reporting more effective customer experience.

But customer experience cannot sit with one person, school or department. Strong experiences also depend on clear ownership, shared expectations, consistent processes and leadership attention across the organization.

Bonus content for NSPRA members

NSPRA members have access to an expanded version of the report featuring five practical strategies for putting the findings into action, with approaches for clarifying ownership, setting expectations, identifying friction points and strengthening consistency across schools and departments. The strategies are paired with a step-by-step worksheet that members can use to tackle a recurring customer experience issue while building trust.

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