Posts Tagged ‘admissions’

Pre-enrollment customer service:
It will build or kill your brand

March 7th, 2011

Measuring Customer Service Before They Are Customers

What do parents and prospective students think about the customer service they receive from colleges during the “college shopping” process? Longmire and Company’s most recent co-sponsored national study sought to answer this question. Approximately 5,000 students and parents rated their pre-enrollment experiences with colleges across a number of brand touch points including administrators, the admission office, faculty, student affairs, housing, grounds, coaches and more.

The measurement of multiple brand touch points was important. Our previous co-sponsored studies have clearly revealed that a single bad experience – anywhere on campus, with anyone on campus – can derail the interest and commitment of the prospective student or parent toward the college.

The Importance of Your Rating

Just how important is pre-enrollment customer service delivery in attracting students? Very! About one-half of students and parents said that the pre-enrollment customer service they received was influential in their selection or rejection of a college. They viewed pre-enrollment service as predictive of what they would receive after enrolling.

Think for a minute about how your institution would rate on a ten-point scale (ten high) if your prospective students and parents were asked to measure your campus wide pre-enrollment customer service. Nationally, students and parents gave colleges and universities a rating of 6.83 in overall service during the college selection process. One could interpret that number as suggestive of room for improvement. One could also see that number as an opportunity to differentiate their institution.

Differentiation

The study revealed that only about 48% of students and parents viewed the colleges they were considering as having unique reputations or brand identities. Where a brand perception existed, the respondent was asked to describe it. In the vast majority of cases, they described the “brand” using words that could easily fit hundreds of schools with similar attributes.

It could be assumed that brand identity becomes clearer to students and parents as they get deeper into a college’s funnel. In truth, perception of uniqueness or brand identity gets clearer for only 8% more students and parents after being admitted. This suggests that the brand is not being reflected or supported across the many touch points that students and parents experience campus wide.

The Brand in Every Touch Point

Among eleven key brand touch points measured, students and parents rated their experiences with the admission office and faculty most favorably.  Experiences with coaches and the financial aid office registered least favorable. Results from this and our other co-sponsored studies suggest that dissatisfaction with the financial aid office is not solely based on the amount of the aid package. More often than not, it’s due to miscommunication, lack of responsiveness and insufficient guidance and counsel, all of which are customer service issues.

Over 11% of students and parents said they experienced problems with the pre-enrollment service they received from colleges. Only 40% reported the problem to the institution. Of those who did, less than a third said that someone at the college attempted to resolve it. Less than 25% of this subgroup said it was resolved to their satisfaction.

With this data in mind, any senior leader of the institution could legitimately ask, “Do we have a way for prospective students and parents to easily make us aware of a problem, regardless of the department involved? Do we have a system to record the problem, track our follow-up, and determine if it was resolved to the satisfaction of our prospective student or parent?”

Measure It To Manage It

The benchmarking provided by his study has been helpful to the co-sponsoring colleges because it has enabled them to isolate areas on campus needing change in pre-enrollment service delivery. Further, the data specific to their college provides a clear roadmap for necessary improvements.

The aggregated national data supports the need for improvement by the industry. It is desired by consumers, certainly. Yet it also presents colleges with an opportunity to differentiate their institution in an increasingly competitive and demanding marketplace.

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Posted in Conversion and Yield, Organizational development, Parents, Research

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4 Lessons Learned From Prospective Students and Their Parents

November 8th, 2010

Relieve my stress!

Over 80% of parents say that colleges add stress to the college selection process for themselves and their children. Most commonly, they say, colleges add stress with excessive volumes of non-personalized mailings, e-mails and phone calls.

Parents and students alike say that what they appreciate most about their relationships with colleges is rooted in good communication with admissions representatives and financial aid officers. With that good communication comes a deeper understanding of the needs and preferences of the student and family on the part of the college and a more informed, stress-reduced decision-making process for the student and parent.

Show me the value!

After a buyer becomes interested in any product or service, they have a tendency to focus on price first. Because of this, more expensive colleges may be rejected out of hand by parents long before the college is able to communicate its value.

This demands that values (the right values!) be communicated early in the college selection process. In truth, 74% of parents say that they would reconsider a college that they initially believed to be too expensive if it could demonstrate greater value.

What are those values? The four most commonly mentioned by parents involve getting their child out of college in four years, a track record of students gaining high paying jobs upon graduation, superior internships and work study opportunities, and a high level of personal attention and service to the student.

Bond with me!

Our research clearly shows the correlation between likelihood of enrollment and the level of bonding developed between counselor and prospective student. A strong bond is developed through mutual understanding and trust. Students say they have the strongest bonds with counselors who “relate to me” and provide information and guidance based upon a clear understanding of their needs.

Our research shows that their most important “needs” fall into the category of the emotional rather than the intellectual or factual. They want to feel comfortable, wanted, proud, and the like. A counselor who recognizes and reacts to these most fundamental needs stands the greatest chance of presenting the value of the institution in the most personalized fashion possible.

Uncover my hidden perceptions and false assumptions!

There is no bigger barrier to good communication than false assumptions and hidden perceptions. These can exist in either the student or counselor.

The student may have false assumptions or inaccurate perceptions about the college that will never be cleared up if the counselor doesn’t probe for their existence. Conversely, counselors fall prey to false assumptions about students as well. If this happens, the right questions won’t be asked, or the right information won’t be presented, or important feelings and attitudes of the student will be overlooked.

The best way to uncover hidden perceptions and false assumptions is simply to probe for their existence using an unbiased methodology that enables students to be very candid in expressing their perceptions and feelings about the colleges they are seriously considering.

Longmire and Company’s Yield Enhancement System is a tool we have been using for over 15 years to uncover perceptions and attitudes of prospective students about colleges. Detailed information about each student is provided to counselors so that they can better understand the feelings and motivations of the students for whom they are responsible.

Having this information facilitates a more informed approach to the student and helps to increase the likelihood of enrollment due to a deeper understanding the student’s needs.

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Posted in Behavior, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training, Research

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5 Key Traits of Successful Admissions Offices

February 16th, 2010

Over the last several years, Longmire and Company has visited many campuses to conduct interactive training workshops for counselors and other staff members who have direct or indirect recruiting responsibility.

Some of our clients bring us in to address specific areas that need attention. Other clients that can boast high functioning, high-performing admissions and recruiting operations bring us in to help them get even better.

Regardless of where the client falls on scales of proficiency or performance, they share a common interest: To get better. Simply having a goal to get better sounds, well, rather simple. But it’s huge.

In our experience, high-performing admissions offices and the people who work in them exhibit five key traits.

EMBRACE CHANGE:

Organizations, departments, and people who embrace change pave their own way toward improvement. Without the fundamental willingness to change, there is no road ahead.

The old adage holds true. You can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Improvement is, by definition, measured in differences. Greater success depends upon change. Willingness to change is not enough. Enthusiasm for change is the ideal.

A BETTER WAY:

There is always a better way. Always! The most successful people and organizations are constantly searching for a better way. It’s ever present in their thinking. Unless a department or a team member needs radical change, incremental change is fine. It adds up. The impact is sizable over time.

PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT:

If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it. Once objectives are set, high achievers measure their performance toward reaching the desired objective. It’s a simple concept but hard to do. We recommend breaking down objectives into small increments so that they can be tracked on a daily or weekly basis.

VALIDATE DECISIONS:

Once strategies and tactics are implemented, successful organizations validate whether they work as intended. If the desired result is being achieved, exploit it. If not, go back and determine a better way. Validation is easy when strategies and tactics are clearly defined and performance indicators are installed along the timeline of implementation.

INTERNALIZE IT:

Once all of the above is practiced continually it becomes ingrained in your personal and organization’s processes. It becomes natural and habitual. It becomes central to your culture. New players coming into the team learn it through osmosis and adapt to it.

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Posted in Counselor Training, Organizational development

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Get More Production From Your Admissions Office

December 2nd, 2009

When you think about how much revenue a college generates annually and the source of that revenue, the trail typically ends in the office of admissions. For state supported colleges, the percentage of total revenue generated through tuition may be well over 60%. For privates, it’s often 80% or more.iStock_000009277706XSmall

When I suggest that the trail of this revenue ends in the admissions office, I’m referring to the department that employs and manages the people who are responsible for generating interest among prospective students, managing the “sales” process and “closing the sale”. The aim, of course, is to match the student’s needs and preferences with the attributes of the institution: to best serve the student’s educational aspirations and personal growth. Fortunately for students, they may choose among many fine institutions that are fully capable of doing just that.

In truth, academic sales and marketing is similar to that of the B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) marketplaces. That is, generate interest, prove that the institution is a good fit, and manage the communication and human interaction process toward a successful conclusion (enrollment).

Here’s the $64,000 question: how much does an institution invest in the people and processes that are central to generating the vast majority of the revenue collected by the college? I’m not referring to things like direct mail and website development. I’m referring to people and processes -  the hiring of  the admissions team, building a motivating culture, engaging in a comprehensive training program,  implementing effective sales management, providing CRM software designed to enable sales, and enhancing communication between people and departments.

The answer? Not nearly enough. And why not, when the potential return on investment is so large and immediate?

Every institution can find its own reasons why they aren’t investing in these areas. We’ll often explore those reasons as part of our consulting engagements with clients. The most common barrier is perceived cost. But that barrier is easily removed – at little cost – with a change in perspective.

Here’s something that any institution can begin doing tomorrow that promises improved functioning and production out of the admissions department: identify the strengths of each and every member of the department, fully align their tasks with those strengths, and lead them with an understanding of how someone with their strengths is most productive.

While this may sound simple in concept, it requires a radical change in thinking on the part of many organizations. All too often, organizations work more on trying to fix a department member’s weaknesses than maximizing their strengths.

strengthsfinderbook2I highly recommend two books from Gallup Press that define this philosophy and enable you to take immediate action. The books, Strengths Finder 2.0 and the companion title, Strengths-Based Leadership give you immediate access to assessing the strengths of each member of the admissions team and, what’s more, provide direction in managing each member of the team based on their individual strengths.

I suggest purchasing the Strengths Finder 2.0 book for every member StrengthsBasedLeadershipof the team because each book contains a unique code that provides access to an online assessment that isolates and reports their top five strengths.

When we work with enrollment management departments as a part of our consulting engagements, we use a similar model to enhance productivity. You would be amazed at the results achieved when people are allowed to discover and play to their strong suits.

Likewise, in our Interactive Training Workshops for admissions offices, we see team members revitalized by the commitment that their leadership has made by investing in their future with professional training.

We see it work every day: hire the right people, put them in roles that let their strengths shine through, give them the proper tools, and structure their compensation to reflect the value they bring in terms of revenue generation and populating the institution with students who will be successful and committed to the institution long after graduation.

Bob Longmire is the President and CEO of Longmire and Company and has been helping colleges and universities across the country maximize their yield for over 20 years.

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Posted in Counselor Training, Organizational development, Worthwhile Reading

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