I go back to Kindergarten.

Friday was “Kindergarten Round-Up” for my 4-year old, where he and his parents began the indoctrination process into the elementary school system. It was our shared first experience in what will be decades worth of education services.

Education is a different kind of service experience, but one of the most important that we ever have.

It is also one of the most complex, requiring vast input of time, effort and money on the part of the student / customer. It demands inputs of outside parties and influencers. Much of the experience is unsupervised. The extremes of time, input and intangibility make it very difficult to evaluate success, a fact at least partially borne out through our national 'dialogue' on education.

As first experiences go, the result was mixed.

Most importantly, my son loved it – he learned something, had fun, got familiar with surroundings, met stewards of his education experience / the authority figures he’ll be involved with in a very short time, and came away unbeliveably excited about returning in a short 5 months.

As for me? I filled out forms. Forms I could have filled out online, during time that didn’t have such a premium on it.

First experiences are the best time to establish expectations. In this case: What we should each expect of the education experience. What the student’s role is. What the parent’s role is in making the student and teacher effective. How the co-production process works.

If an institution took the encounter as what it was, a critical first service experience where at least a year and as much as decades of expectations could be established, how differently would they approach it?

I’ve often heard teachers express frustration feeling that parents aren’t involved enough in the education process, don’t commit enough of themselves and act as though it is the educational system’s job to do parenting. The opportunity to properly set role expectations came and was missed while I was transcribing various personal identification numbers.

The most important service experience – that of making a child student comfortable and confident in their future education surroundings, was carried off exceptionally well.

That said, major opportunities were missed in setting expectations and enlisting the active early support of a key co-producer, the parent.

"How was school today?" is a Tough Question to Answer.

I caught a presentation by Dan Schawbel on Personal Branding.

Great topic, great speaker, great overall experience.

Judging success of service experiences is tough in general, but judging success in a learning environment may be the toughest of all.

Students, parents and banks pay vast sums of money to schools at all levels, despite the assurance of quality of the end result being based on more faith than measurable results.

Still, schools can point to established track records, standards and the academic credentials of the teachers as references. They reinforce experience quality through the admission-to-graduation progression, with grades, degrees & diplomas, and rite-of-passage ceremonies involving ridiculous costumes.

Evaluation of professional educational services is much harder, with a high degree of variability between the exceptional professional teacher and the too many marginally-credentialed presenters that poorly represent material that they’re not truly experts on.

Professional developmental education doesn’t have as much established history to lean on, but teachers like Dan Schawbel can still provide experiential cues that reinforce the value of the material.

Schawbel was set up for success with me before he ever entered the room, due to some postive interactions with another customer, BrainZooming’s Mike Brown, who in discussions before, during and after the Schawbel presentation enriched the material with his own extensive insight. Dan couldn't have known this, but it is enough to know that the experience of the audience will have an impact on each person in it.

Dan himself was an engaging speaker, but more, his presentation included concrete steps that, if taken would result in tangible near-term results. (He also walked his walk. After advising that you have to be willing to engage anyone, because one never knows who will hold the keys to your next phase of development, I tested his talk. A few hours later, Dan was my newest LinkedIn contact.)

It will still take time to evaluate success of the experience, but delivering applied practices that yield early physical evidence of results is a great step to validating the material and the teacher.