How to Use Customer Experience in Education

Applying this to the world of education, I can say that the customer experience—in this case, the student’s experience—is essential to the success of educational institutions. And just as in other market segments, when we talk about customer experience in education, we’re talking about the student journey. Therefore, mapping all the student’s touchpoints with your institution is essential for you to gain visibility into everything that happens—or could happen—in your relationship with them.

Would you like some examples?

• Website
• Registration Process,
• Enrollment Process
• Classroom
• Course Syllabus
• Teacher Profiles and Teaching Methods
• LMS (Distance Learning) Software

 

Student Experience in Higher Education

The process is carried out almost entirely directly with the student, since it is the student who ultimately decides which college to attend and which program to pursue. In addition, the relationship is much more digital, mainly due to the arrival of Millennials and Generation Z at this stage of their education. These generations prefer text messages (WhatsApp or SMS) or voice messages to phone calls, due to the immediacy and multi-channel nature they’ve grown accustomed to, as well as having been exposed to technologies like smartphones and the internet from an early age.

Understanding the differences—and, above all, tailoring the journey to your institution’s target audience—is essential for improving the experience of your leads, applicants, and students.

 

Student Day in Basic Education

The key feature of the Elementary School Student’s Day is that it involves a high level of participation by parents or guardians. However, what we have observed is that as students grow older and become teenagers, the role of parents and guardians during the school day tends to diminish in importance as the students’ own role increases.

In addition, relationships in elementary school tend to be more hands-on. Despite everything that’s happening due to the pandemic—which has significantly reduced this interaction, especially during the enrollment process—parents still feel the need and desire to get to know the school, the physical space, the people who will be caring for their children, the teaching methods, the toys, the classrooms, and everything that will be part of the students’ daily lives. After all, parents are entrusting their greatest treasure to the school.

 

The Impact of Customer Experience on Retention Management

All the aspects we discussed above—which are part of the Student Journey—need to be analyzed, measured, and improved.

There’s no point in having a wonderful website and an amazing sales team if the course is poor, if the instructors aren’t prepared, if the technology is outdated, or if students can’t find answers to their needs throughout their journey.

So, if you’re not measuring what your student perceives—not what you think or would like them to perceive—you won’t be able to improve. Today, one of the main metrics used to measure the customer experience is the NPS (Net Promoter Score), which is a single question asking, on a scale of zero to ten, how likely the student is to recommend your institution to someone close to them.

 

The Impact of the Pandemic on the Student Experience

Before discussing the impact of the pandemic, we must remember that dropout rates in Brazil—especially in higher education—were extremely high long before social distancing measures were implemented. In some programs, this rate reaches 60% over the course of the entire academic career.

Now, speaking of the pandemic, what we’ve noticed is that the shortcomings and inefficiencies throughout the student’s journey have become much clearer. Various touchpoints that could already have utilized technology were previously managed by people performing tasks manually, but because of remote work, they became much more difficult to carry out. So there was a huge demand for technologies that could meet these needs for improved service and student relations. This was especially true for Educational CRM, since we digitize the applicant’s journey—from the moment they become a lead until they enroll—and we also help digitize the student’s journey with technologies that boost student engagement until they complete their studies.

 

To find out where to start, read our full blog post here.

 

 

Did you like this content? Share it with your followers on social media: