Keele University: Developing a Campus F&B CX Strategy

“Having worked with insight6 for a number of years, we understand the importance of delivering great customer experiences, and how to use feedback to feel informed when making decisions to continually improve our offer.”

Claire Snape, Deputy Director, Campus Services

Keele University has one of the largest campuses in the UK, spanning over 600 acres in rural Staffordshire. It consistently ranks well in national and international university rankings and has a strong reputation for its health sciences, natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and medicine courses.

The campus has developed, ‘Keele Village’, with commercial buildings and research facilities forming a thriving business community in which the university plays a significant role.

Keele University: Project Overview

The Estate and Campus Services Directorate is responsible for all the food and beverage (F&B) facilities across the campus, including Keele Hall – a popular event and conference venue.

Keen to evolve and develop their F&B offering, Ian Kelsall, insight6 CX Director, Staffordshire & South Cheshire, helped the team to understand how satisfied students and staff were with the current offering, including the venues, menus, cost, service, location usage and overall experience.

Keele University, with its focus on sustainability, sought an F&B Customer Experience (CX) strategy that aligned with its green goals. It also needed to address student financial needs. Insight was key to their decision-making, ensuring leadership teams stayed informed and empowered.

Our Approach

Using insight6’s feedback tool – instant insight – the project initially surveyed the student and teaching body to provide a benchmark for the current experience, and to monitor any changes as new offerings were implemented.

Following the multi-faceted feedback from students and University colleagues, a Customer Experience (CX) training programme was developed for the customer-facing teams to increase service satisfaction levels and enhance the overall student F&B experience.

CX Solutions

instant insight helped identify what mattered most to students and colleagues—price, quality, variety, and convenience. It assessed satisfaction with the current offer and explored ways to enhance the campus F&B experience, leading to a new F&B CX strategy.

While most were satisfied with the offer, feedback revealed opportunities to improve value for money and ease of access to the full range of food and drink, including an out-of-hours vending option.

Initially, the focus was on expanding healthy, vegan, and halal options, but the research showed low demand. Instead, the team implemented a strategy based on actual insights.

Focus groups with the Student Union, which operates separate F&B outlets, proved beneficial in finding ways for the two to complement, rather than compete with, each other.

Training and development programmes were rolled out to F&B staff, helping them understand the student experience, ensuring consistency, and developing skills to provide excellent service while meeting internal commercial targets.

Project Outcomes

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) across all outlets was already positive at 57 – 19 points higher than the average food retail business when benchmarked against Institute of Customer Service data.

Measured by asking respondents to select from “Happy”, “Content” or “Unhappy”, 89.9% of respondents selected “Happy” and 7.6% selected “Content/OK”.

The collective feedback and data enabled The Estates and Campus Services Directorate to make informed decisions about the direction of its F&B strategy – in this case, no drastic changes were needed, and the focus could be on achieving excellence in what they already do well.

insight6’s end-to-end customer experience (CX) solutions have earned us a reputation as the partner of choice for many forward-thinking motor dealerships. Our network of local specialists provides on-the-ground support. Don’t let an inadequate customer experience ruin your reputation or impact your success. Get in touch today to schedule a no-obligation chat with your local CX specialist or a free demo of our total feedback solution—instant insight.