Failed admissions: phone system frustrations

Getting students to arrive for their scheduled tours is something that almost all technical schools or career colleges struggle with. It is something that can make an immediate improvement in your show rates.

We make secret purchases at more than 400 different professional colleges and technical schools in a variety of different industries; Cosmetology, technique, related health, etc. We find that mistakes are made much more often than people realize. And we identified 20 mistakes that were being made to a large extent.

Most schools have five or more mistakes. These errors can affect your stats, your show fees, the number of tours you are doing, and ultimately of course your sign-ups. We work with schools to correct their lead generation, while improving the results of their admissions team, and these results lead to increased enrollment. One of the 20 mistakes we’ve found to hurt admissions comes from the frustrations of the phone system.

When a call is not being routed correctly, it is extremely frustrating. Nobody likes phone trees and nobody likes to wait for a response, be it a text message or an email. Speed ​​to lead is extremely important and that is reflected in how quickly someone can talk to a live person or receive a text message from a live person. Think about the speed of leading and how frustrating it is not to get an answer or not being able to communicate with someone very quickly. If you must have a phone tree, keep it as simple as possible. If there is any kind of lag between when a potential customer enters your website and when they can return to it, keep it as short as possible.

Having a clear policy and a clear script of what is said when someone calls is very important. It’s never good if the person at the front desk says, “Let me check. I’m not sure about that. The person handling that is not here right now. He’ll probably be back in 45 minutes. Can you call back in 15 minutes or can you Call back in 45 minutes? “, or” I don’t really handle admissions. The person doing it is on tour right now. May I ask them to call you back. ” You just know not to be prepared, not to be professional, not to be nice, not to be helpful. Some schools make the big mistake of having students answer the phone and that opens up another can of worms from a compliance standpoint and also because a student is generally not trained to answer phones. That is increasingly rare, but we still see it in schools. If there are students answering the phone, that is something that should be corrected immediately.

Your reception team should not answer admission questions. The best way to get in trouble with the Department of Education or your accreditation body is to let inexperienced and untrained people discuss financial aid, admissions, and any other sensitive topic. Therefore, do not expose yourself, or your school, to serious consequences as a result of allowing someone who is not properly trained to speak to a prospective student. The person who is talking to a prospective student should know what he or she is doing.

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