Archive for the ‘Campus Visits’ category

Don’t Let These 3 Pitfalls Derail Your Enrollment Success

November 17th, 2015

I have been fielding a number of calls this past week from enrollment managers and admission directors who have questions about our blog series on pre-enrollment service delivery. One highly-respected enrollment manager said that five different staffers forwarded a copy of the post to him. “My first reaction was that everyone was searching for a reason outside of their own sphere that would explain some of our enrollment challenges,” he said. “Then, I got honest with myself. We have a great college here, but can we do better? How do we stack up with our competition? Are gaps in service impacting our ability to make our enrollment goals?“

All good questions and we have answers.

Yes, you CAN, and should, provide better pre-and post-enrollment service. The research is very clear: As an industry, higher education ranks behind banks and cell phone service providers for providing exemplary service. Seriously, when was the last time you heard anyone say anything positive about either of those?
Understanding how you compare to the schools that you compete with isn’t just nice to know, it is NEED to know. Our Service Quality Management (SQM) tool offers the ability to compare your service delivery to your direct competitors as well as to institutions across the United States because we have seen the impact that data can make on a college’s enrollment.
And, yes, your pre-enrollment service delivery DOES impact your enrollment. Over half of students and their parents told us that the pre-enrollment service they receive from a college influences their selection decision and 25% of those told us they had eliminated a formerly highly attractive college from consideration on the basis of receiving poor service traced to one or more brand touch points. They also say that service is one of the best ways to differentiate one college from another. The fact is: Prospective students and parents view the pre-enrollment service they receive as predictive of how the student will be served after enrollment. They will avoid colleges that exhibit bad service during the “college shopping” process.

If you are like many admission departments leading the charge to improve the service you provide the students you are recruiting, here are some common pitfalls you want to avoid.

Pitfall # 1: Making assumptions.

If you are relying on gut feel or anecdotal evidence to evaluate your college’s level of service delivery, you are making assumptions that can, and will, derail your enrollment efforts. You are probably familiar with this modern proverb: “When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.”

Do This Instead: Measure it so you can manage it.

If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. First, benchmark your current state. Knowing your service strengths and weaknesses is a critical component. A baseline study will allow you to prioritize which areas need the most work, what should take precedence and which of your strongest attributes you should focus on in your recruiting efforts.

An added bonus, a credible baseline measurement report is a powerful tool to have when you are seeking buy-in from other departments or even your administration.

Need more information about establashing a Baseline Measurement? (Review here.)

Pitfall #2: Falling into the “That’s the way we’ve always done it” trap.

Perhaps you currently gather feedback from prospective and current students in an effort to monitor your student service delivery. But, are you asking the right questions?

For example, most colleges survey students and parents after a visit. Were we friendly? Did we provide the information you needed? Was the tour guide engaging? Did you like our campus and community? What did you like most and least about your visit? What improvements can we make?

These may seem like good questions but they don’t tell you much.

Do This Instead: Ask questions that tell you if your campus visit “moved the student’s needle” in your favor.

The right questions can give you tremendous insight. For example: Did your campus tour guide make you more or less excited about attending? If so, by how much? Why? Did you find the city/community more or less exciting and inviting than other colleges you visited? If so, what made it more or less exciting? To what degree do you feel we took a personal interest in you? Did that make a difference in your desire to enroll here? Did your view of our college change as a result of your visit? If so, how? For better or worse? How can we better show you what your life will be like as a student here?

This just scratches the surface of the range and depth of questions you can ask. Don’t be afraid to ask penetrating questions of students and parents after a visit. Let students and parents know that your purpose is to better serve them, and future students, by gaining a greater understanding.

Pitfall #3: Going it alone.

In our experience, the admissions department naturally takes the lead in the development of a pre-and post-enrollment service plan. But not involving the entire campus is a big mistake.

Do This Instead: Reach out campus-wide.

Colleges and universities that score the highest in pre-enrollment service are those that view prospective students and their parents as important customers. They typically engage every person on campus in a customer service plan with clear and actionable instructions and objectives. Most importantly, they express to each person how key their role is, and offer specific ways they can help the institution improve provide the best possible customer service.

In order for real transformation to occur, every member of every department must be apprised of the plan and committed to creating a more positive experience. Certainly, interactions with faculty, admissions and financial aid are critical, but many schools are surprised to find the impact that campus maintenance, grounds keeping, security and even the switchboard operators can have on establishing an impression. Imagine the institution as a very large rowboat, where each individual rower is moving in harmony with hundreds of other rowers, propelling the craft swiftly and seamlessly through the water. With everyone working toward the same goals, progress will be inevitable, and apparent to your prospects.

The research suggests that for most colleges, improved pre-enrollment service offers an immediate opportunity to differentiate themselves in a highly-competitive marketplace. Best time to start the process? Today!

Longmire and Company offers Service Quality Management (SQM) surveys to help you achieve these goals. And we conduct workshops on campus to help colleges chart their course in providing better service to prospective and current students. Contact me today and I will show you how we can help you measure and manage your pre-enrollment service. Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo.

Rick Montgomery is as an Enrollment Strategist at Longmire and Company. With over 20 years in higher education marketing, he brings an innovative and dynamic approach to helping colleges and universities meet their enrollment goals. Rick can be reached at 913/492.1265 x.708 or via email at rmontgomery@longmire-co.com.

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Posted in Campus Tours, Campus Visits, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training, Customer service, Organizational development, Worthwhile Reading

Tags: admission counselor training admissions admissions counselors admissions customer service admissions success brand management college college admissions college branding college enrollment college presidents customer service customer service training EMChat enrollment enrollment management finding the right college fit higher ed higher ed marketing higher education branding higher education marketing higher education value longmire and company Longmire and Company study recruiting value proposition yield enhancement

Take this First Step Toward Increasing Yield TODAY

October 20th, 2015

[Part 2 of our Blog Series on the impact of pre- and post-enrollment customer service to increase yield at your college or university.]

In our last post, we shed some light on the pre-enrollment service perception problem – the fact that colleges and universities are losing potential students due to poor service during the courtship phase and the opportunities that exist for institutions to differentiate themselves by focusing on this single factor. Our studies have revealed that multiple factors such as responsiveness, grounds, food service, and interactions with faculty and admissions personnel strongly shape a student’s overall opinion of the institution and ultimately influence their final decision of where to attend.

You may know you need a pre-enrollment customer service improvement initiative, but with so many contributing factors it can be a challenge to know where to start.

Take the First Step: Establish a baseline measurement to determine where you stand now vs. where you need be.

This will be the ground-level metrics that will drive high-level change so it is crucial that you gather insightful information from your prospective students.

According to George Brandt, a Forbes.com contributor and the author of The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan, “It’s frightening how many organizations say they care about customer satisfaction and how many of them are measuring the wrong thing the wrong way and then doing the wrong things with the information anyway.”

Baseline measurement guidelines:

Ask Questions

More specifically, ask the right people the right questions, at the right time. This means you’ll want to keep the channel of communication open and working with prospective students and parents from the first moment of contact.

Cover All the Bases

As for the questions, try to elicit feedback about experiences during all touch points of the process. For example, you may want to include a set of questions about their pre-visit experiences with your department, another set of questions about campus cleanliness and security, another set of questions about follow up, and so on. Most importantly, ask them if you’ve moved their needle. Ask if, because of their experiences with you up to this point, they are more or less inclined to enroll. Give respondents the opportunity to share other thoughts, or open-ended feedback, to help you identify the issues that are most important them.

When we work with colleges to implement Service Quality Management (SQM), we elicit categorized responses. This is the key to helping you determine which initiatives to focus on for maximum impact.

Candor Counts

It can be a challenge to get completely honest input unless you use the services of an outside resource but it is absolutely crucial that you have anonymity built into your surveying efforts. Unless students and parents can be completely candid and not feel that they are burning bridges by being brutally honest with you, the feedback will be useless.

Compare and Contrast

Use the data from your surveys to compare and contrast your institution with others on multiple factors. This will help you identify unique strengths and opportunities where you can stand out from your competitors. At the same time, it can focus your efforts where they will be most effective in the overall marketplace.

This approach was eye-opening for one of our SQM clients who were surprised to discover that scores they interpreted as “satisfactory” were far below the national average for other colleges. And, when their results were compared to those of competitive schools in their area, they were stunned to discover they were way off the mark in a number of key areas. “We expected to identify some areas of improvement,” the enrollment manager told us, “but the administration was shocked to find that our service delivery was impeding enrollment.” The end result? “We have made some simple changes that are making a huge difference already,“ she said.

In our next post, we will continue this conversation with more specific guidelines and tips for helping to improve the level of pre-enrollment service. We want to help colleges seize this opportunity to differentiate and attract more students through better service. Call me if you have questions or need help in taking that all-important first step.

Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. For more information about Longmire and Company’s SQM tool and how you can measure and manage your pre-and post-enrollment service delivery, click here. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information

Karen Full is a highly-respected higher education professional who has held positions in admissions and enrollment management at several institutions in the Midwest and Florida. With her vast experience working with large and small, public and private colleges, Karen brings a valuable perspective to her role as an Enrollment Strategist at Longmire and Company. Call Karen at 913/492.1265 x.711 or email her at kfull@longmire-co.com. Follow Karen on Twitter @KarenAFull.

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Posted in Campus Tours, Campus Visits, Closing the Sale, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training, Customer service, Organizational development, Your Value Proposition

Tags: admission counselor training admissions admissions counselors admissions customer service admissions success brand management college college admissions college branding college enrollment college presidents college recruiting college recruitment college yield customer service customer service training EMChat enrollment enrollment management enrollment strategies higher ed higher education strategies higher education value longmire longmire and company Longmire and Company study recruiting staff training value proposition yield yield enhancement

Strengthen This One Relationship for More Productive High School Visits

August 11th, 2015

Here is one Travel Season Tip sure to make your upcoming school visits the most successful ever. And no, it’s not a new set of lightweight, heavy-duty luggage (although that is a good idea, too.)

Start now building your relationship with the high school guidance counselors at the schools you’ll be visiting.

Guidance counselors are key influencers for college-bound students. They are also often the most overworked and underappreciated educators on the team. They are often nearly impossible to reach on the phone and can be difficult to track down on campus because they wear many hats. A counselor I grew to know well during my own school visit days, once described her typical day, “Somewhere between counseling a student with depression, meeting with the parents of a great kid who is flunking four classes, and breaking up a food fight in the cafeteria, I had an hour to offer guidance to four seniors who are starting to navigate the college search process.”

“How,” you ask, “do I build a relationship with a person so completely covered up?”

First, do your homework.

Before you arrive on campus, learn all you can about the school you are visiting. You should be able to identify strengths that match up well to your college or university. The high school has an award winning band/art/science program? Your college just happens to have one the best higher ed programs in the state/region/country.

Don’t just concentrate on the high school’s strong points, though. Make note of what is missing from the school’s offerings and fill that gap. Good counselors often know of students who have special talents or interests in areas that aren’t being served at the high school level.

Stand out from the crowd.

If you want your voice to be heard, be sure you are not saying the SAME thing as every other college rep they hear from. Yes, all those facts about your school are important; class sizes, top majors, new buildings, etc., but your face time with the counselor needs to concentrate on things that can’t be read about in a handout or on your website.

Focus instead on those attributes that make your college unique. Perhaps it is your “Great Books” program for avid readers, your acclaimed science department with the state-of-the-art labs, or your dynamic career services facility. What special niches can you fill? Find out with questions such as:

Are there specific college programs that would interest some of your students that you have had a hard time finding?
Do you have a student with particular passion we might be able to help?
How can I make your job easier?

Every high school counselor I ever met enjoyed hearing (and often sharing) stories of successful placements. When possible, update them on some of their former students who are now enjoying college life at your school. Offer specific examples of students from all walks of life who have flourished in their new college environment.

Stay Top of Mind.

Follow up and follow through. Showing your appreciation with a handwritten thank you note will make you memorable and is an opportunity to highlight the unique values of your college. Keep notes about specific areas of interest you have uncovered in your conversation and follow up via email with any relevant news. Involve department heads and key administrators in sending personal notes about new developments on campus.

Daniel R. Porterfield, Ph.D., the highly-respected president of Franklin and Marshall College, shared a powerful message in The Huffington Post that serves as a reminder to all of us on the impact of guidance counselors. “I like to spend a few minutes writing short notes to the high school counselors who helped our soon-to-be graduates chart their course to F&M,” he writes. “If you think about it, these educators are the unsung heroes of so many college success stories. They listen to students’ aspirations and motivate them to consider carefully what kinds of institutions can help them grow and achieve their goals. They educate families about sources of financial aid and help them complete the necessary forms. They spend hours writing thoughtful recommendations that showcase each student’s unique strengths and assets. And they inform themselves about everything relevant to their students’ college choices and constantly research the qualities and resources of all the schools their students might attend.”

There are communication techniques your staff can learn that will help them feel confident about reaching out to prospective students to ask the right questions. This is one of the core techniques we teach in the Interactive Counselor Training Workshops we hold on college campuses throughout the country. It is also a key component of YES, our Yield Enhancement Tool. Let me show you how we can help you. Please call or email me for more information. Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.

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Posted in Campus Tours, Campus Visits, Closing the Sale, Conversion and Yield, Counselor Training, Organizational development, Your Value Proposition

Tags: admission counselor training admissions admissions counselors admissions customer service admissions success brand management college college admissions college branding college enrollment college presidents college recruiting college recruitment customer service EMChat enrollment management finding the right college fit higher education marketing higher education value longmire longmire and company Longmire and Company study recruiting yield enhancement

Make This Travel Season a Knock-out!

August 4th, 2015

The saying “First Impressions Last” has been around for a long time because it’s absolutely true. All over the country, admissions counselors are preparing to make that critical first impression as they venture out on those all-important high school visits.

Currently, you’re most likely in the planning stage. Contacting high school counselors, setting up meet and greets with college-bound seniors, scheduling college fairs, pulling together promotional materials and packing your bags. Very soon, travel season will begin and it can be stressful and relentless. Believe me, I know. During my years in enrollment management, I, too, spent days, even weeks, on the road visiting 100+ high schools in way too few days, and sometimes wondering whether or not my efforts were having a significant impact.

Whether this is your first travel season or your fifteenth, there are ways you can differentiate your college or university, have meaningful interactions with prospective students and ensure a very rewarding travel season.

Lose The Pitch

That canned presentation that you have at-the-ready where you list of all the super features that your school has to offer? Forget it. Features are only benefits when the person hearing them sees value in them. How do you know which special attributes of your institution will be meaningful to a student? You ask the right questions.

When you are asking questions and getting acquainted with the student you are also doing the one thing that will truly distinguish your college from all others. Can you guess what that is?

The Answer is: Taking a Personal Interest in the Prospective Student

If you are thinking that is too simple, or that most colleges do this already, two-thirds of prospective students will disagree with you. In truth, most college-bound students say that the colleges they most seriously considered never took a personal interest in them at any point in the recruiting process. In The Excitement Factor!, our recently released nationally co-sponsored study, 12,000 college-bound students told us that the college’s personal interest in them, or lack of it, was influential in their college selection decision.

And, as a practical matter, the more personal interest you take in a student the more you will find out about his or her unique combination of interests, preferences, desires, anxieties, and aspirations. With that greater understanding you will naturally communicate a unique value proposition. The student will perceive you as distinctive among their available choices. You will have reached the coveted state of differentiation.

Ask “Why?”

Every admissions counselor has an arsenal of questions that they ask prospective students during the school high school visit. We suggest that you replace those with the type of questions that will begin the process of building relationships. These topics are great discussion-starters for group sessions, too.

Picture your ideal college. Tell me about it.
What excites you about going to college?
Is there anything that concerns you about college?
What are your interests outside of school?
Right now what college interests you the most? Why?
Do you see anything getting in the way of going to college?
Why are you most interested in biology/communications/whatever?
How would you like me to communicate with you? May I text you?

The best admissions representatives paint a picture of what the college experience will be like. And they do that in a way that is personalized to the student. The right questions will lead you to painting a compelling picture.

Be THE Guy

Maybe you are not actually a guy but you can still be the key person that a student can count on to provide anything they need related to your college or university. Lindsay, a superstar admissions counselor shared this with me recently, “At the end of my last travel season I had over 200 new friends’ numbers in my phone. I tell them, ‘I’m your guy at XYZ University. If you need something, if you have a question, if you are worried about something, text me,’” she explained. “You can’t imagine the number of questions and requests I have fielded but I have a relationship with every one of those students and my yield rates are tops.”

There are communication techniques your staff can learn that will help them feel confident about reaching out to their prospective students to ask the right questions. This is one of the core techniques we teach in the Interactive Counselor Training Workshops we hold on college campuses throughout the country. It is also a key component of YES, our Yield Enhancement Tool. Let me show you how we can help you. Please call or email me for more information. Continue the conversation on Twitter @LongmireCo. Be sure to Subscribe to Versions of Conversion today so you don’t miss any of this highly-valuable information.