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Putting your Pre-Enrollment Service Improvement Plan into Action

January 9th, 2013

It’s Go Time!
Putting your Pre-Enrollment Service Improvement Plan into Action

If you’ve been following our blog for the last two installments, (thank you!), you realize the substantial impact and potential that pre-enrollment customer service has on your institution’s student recruitment efforts. You’ve taken a baseline assessment of your service delivery across many brand touch points, and you’ve created an actionable plan that identifies key issues for improvement and makes everyone accountable. Nice work! You have already accomplished some very important tasks and laid the groundwork for meaningful change at your college or university. You have a clear idea of where you want your organization to be, and now it’s time to start making your way there.  The process of transforming the way your organization operates for the better can be both exciting and at times overwhelming, so we have compiled some useful tips for executing your Pre-Enrollment Service Improvement Plan. There are essentially three key components to keep in mind for optimal plan implementation:

1) Spread the Word
Share the findings from your baseline customer service delivery measurements, and also your clearly articulated goals, with everyone on campus.  That means administrators, faculty, groundskeepers, the school mascot, everyone. Each and every person at your institution will have a role in making prospective students feel welcomed and wowed, so it’s key that they are all well-informed and apprised of the plan.

In this day and age of social media, it’s not too difficult to spread the word on the things you do to make prospective students and parent feel great. In addition to creating a formal internal communication announcement, feel free to Facebook and tweet away! Going viral can work to your advantage in this case.

2) Involve
Engage every person on campus in the plan with clear and actionable instructions and objectives. Express to each person how key their role is, and offer specific ways they can get involved towards helping the institution improve its customer service. For example, one of our very successful clients presents every visiting prospective student and family member a bright red Welcome Packet at the beginning of their campus tour and asks them to keep it with them throughout the day.  Every employee, professor and even other students know that they should go out of their way to welcome and help those bearing the Red Folder.  Research at that campus shows that even though the prospects didn’t know that they were particularly visible, they felt that they had just experienced one of America’s most friendly and helpful campuses.

Another payoff of including everyone in the master plan is greater cohesiveness and engagement within the school community. Working towards a common goal together will elicit the kind of infectious school spirit and pride that will make your college a desirable place to be.even though the prospects didn’t know that they were particularly visible, they felt that they had just experienced one of America’s most friendly and helpful campuses.

3) Reinforce
Call out positive behavior.  Remember gold stars from grade school? They were effective because everyone likes to be recognized and appreciated for his or her efforts. Have a grownup gold stars system in place to identify and acknowledge exemplary service.  Catch folks doing the right thing and celebrate the act. When a groundskeeper is taking particular care to make the campus look good; when the switchboard operator is helping with a smile on her/his face and in her/his voice; when a professor takes the extra minute to visit with a student; applaud the action.  Newsletters, bulletin boards, a special recognition email all can be used to acknowledge excellence in pre-enrollment service. This is another opportunity to utilize the power of social media to broadcast good works and kudos. Give every member of your school the opportunity to be a campus rock star, and they will embrace the challenge.

If you follow these tips and get everyone engaged in improving the pre-enrollment experience, your campus will soon be buzzing with excitement and radiating excellence and positive energy that are impossible not to notice. You will likely find that your campus becomes a place where others want to be, and also becomes a source of greater pride for those who already call it home.

Longmire and Company conducts pre-enrollment customer service surveys for colleges across the country. We are more than happy to share the nationally aggregated data we’ve collected and initiatives that colleges have successfully implemented to deliver improved customer service. Just give us a call at (913) 492-1265 or send us a request using our Contact Us page.

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Posted in Counselor Training, Customer service, Organizational development

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Don’t Push Start (yet)… Establishing a Baseline and Making a Plan for Better Pre-Enrollment Service

November 7th, 2012

In the 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. Our studies have revealed that multiple factors such as responsiveness, grounds, food, faculty and admissions personnel strongly shape a student’s overall opinion of the institution and ultimately influence their final decision of where to attend.

With so many contributing factors, it can be a challenge knowing where to start on a pre-enrollment customer service improvement initiative. Well, the first step is to take a baseline measurement to determine where you stand now vs. where you need be. One college president at a major Eastern university summed it up like this, “We invest millions of dollars in recruitment and yet we discovered that there were changes that cost very little that greatly impact our efforts.”

Don’t risk wasting time, energy and money on initiatives that won’t pay off. Here we’ve outlined some simple steps to help you establish a true baseline and craft a strategic plan for success.

1) 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.

As for the questions, try to elicit feedback about their 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 you, another set of questions about campus cleanliness and security, another set of questions about follow up, and so on. Build anonymity into your surveys so students and parents can be completely candid and not feel that they are burning bridges by being brutally honest with you.

Eliciting categorized responses will help later when you decide which initiatives to focus on for maximum impact. Also give respondents the opportunity to share other thoughts, or open-ended feedback, to help you identify the issues that are most important them.

2) 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.

3) Make a plan

Establish a procedure to resolve issues that are identified through your data, then stick to it. One of our clients who enjoys consistently high marks maintains a dedicated ‘regulator’ who is responsible for handling any problems or complaints that surface during the process. This ombudsman will relay information to the departments or parties concerned, assign tasks and track progress until the issue is resolved.

They also make contact with the student involved to allay any concerns and reassure them of the institution’s commitment to their satisfaction. University staff is acknowledged and rewarded for making positive changes and for their efforts in creating a welcoming environment for prospective students and their families.

4) Engage Everyone

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.
Longmire and Company conducts pre-enrollment customer service surveys for colleges across the country. We are more than happy to share the nationally aggregated data we’ve collected and initiatives that colleges have successfully implemented to deliver improved customer service. Just give us a call at (913) 492-1265 or send us a request using our Contact Us page.

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Posted in Behavior, Customer service, Organizational development, 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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A Tool To Stay In Control During Busy Times

January 22nd, 2010

As we enter is the busiest part of the recruiting cycle, it’s easy for members of the admissions staff to get swept up by so many activities and tasks that they lose sight of anything beyond what they are supposed to do today. Or right now!

Stress mounts. Productivity can suffer. Activity can be confused with accomplishment. Creativity and thoughtful planning can be jeopardized at a point in the recruiting cycle when it is most needed.

Regardless of how busy you get, time must be set aside on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to assess where we are, where we are going, and how best we can get there.

Mind map example

A few years ago, I found a wonderful way to plan and be creative when times are busiest. It’s called mind mapping.

It’s a process that enables you to diagram your thoughts, ideas and plans very easily and connect all of those elements in a way that helps you visualize how all things are connected toward reaching a common goal. You can mind map something as finite as a campus event or as expansive as your year-long enrollment management plan.

Creating a mind map is easy. Anyone can do it. Everyone should know how. It’s a tool that enhances productivity and creativity. I cannot think of anyone in an admissions office who would not benefit from it. Mind mapping can help an admissions processing clerk contribute new ideas for minimizing incomplete applications. It can aid admissions counselors in honing strategies and tactics for managing their territories. It can help campus event organizers plan successful events down to do very last detail.

We have clients that use mind mapping as a tool to aid all department members in creating plans and sharing them with others. By sharing, everyone can see and understand the goals, strategies and tactics of co-workers, and see how they connect to them directly or indirectly. This promotes collaboration, understanding, sharing of ideas and a host of benefits that enhance teamwork.

You can draw a mind map on a cocktail napkin or use a computer program to draw one. There are a number of free programs available for creating mind maps. I recommend an open source program called FreeMind. The program (available for all operating systems) not only enables you to easily draw a mind map diagram, it also allows you to transform and export the map into a text-based document for editing in Microsoft Word or similar applications.

With as much as you have going on right now, there is no way that I would introduce a new tool or task that didn’t promise as much as the process of mind mapping promises to enhance productivity and effectiveness.

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Posted in Counselor Training, Organizational development

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