4 Hacks to re-engage your students for enhanced CX and retention
When colleges and universities think about enhancing the ‘customer experience,’ a prime focus is on ways to create positive experiences across all aspects of the institution. Creating positive experiences will not only help retain existing students but can also make them loyal advocates and potentially future donors for their alma mater down the road.
Making a concerted effort to increase the customer experience is the long-game strategy for revenue growth for many companies, so why not higher education as well? What you do today can have a lasting impact. Conversely, what you don’t do can also affect future enrollment, retention, and alumni engagement.
Whether you are a vocational school, community college, accredited college or university, or Ivy League, improving the experience for your students is the answer for increasing retention, satisfaction, and revenue. Here are four ways to re-engage your students right now to increase their customer experience.
1. Get to Know Your Students
Sometimes, the best thing you can do to build a strong relationship is to simply spend time with people. It is no different when you are trying to build relationships with your students. They aren’t afraid to tell you what they think. In fact, most students are happy to share their opinion. Make sure you are getting to know each new generation that is coming to your campus: what they care about, their concerns, fears, likes and dislikes, ambitions, expectations. It is helpful to have dedicated resources to help keep a pulse on what matters to your students. These insights can have a profound impact on all aspects of the student experience from education, facilities, technology, and auxiliary services.
2. Build Emotional Connection
If you really want to engage your students and leave them with a lasting positive experience, then take opportunities to build emotional connections with them. Going above and beyond to meet your student at a critical juncture can make them feel something for your school or on-campus service that might have otherwise become forgettable. For instance, what might a campus be able to do if students found themselves stranded on campus due to a flat tire, dead car battery, or they were snowed in?
3. Capture Real-Time Feedback
Making it easy for your students to provide in the moment feedback about their experience goes one step further in enhancing their customer experience. When customers can share their likes, dislikes, problems, or suggestions at the very moment they have a need or it’s top of mind, you receive valuable insights that may have otherwise been unshared. Real-time feedback is ideal for engaging with customers in dining, service or retail environments. In industries where services are outsourced, or multiple decentralized business units exist, effective customer feedback solutions are critical to monitoring and improving the quality of product and levels of service being delivered.
4. Take Swift Action to Address Feedback
As a follow-up to real-time feedback, being able to promptly act on the information you receive from in the moment feedback closes the loop on delivering an exceptional customer experience. If a student reports an issue, but it never gets addressed or resolved, that can create a negative experience. However, when schools respond quickly to student feedback, it demonstrates a commitment to customer service. Having the right systems, processes, and technology in place will enable you to create an environment where you can implement and sustain a continuous feedback strategy.
If you are looking for solutions to help you engage students and increase customer experience, consider Touchwork Solutions. From real-time feedback to mystery shopping, problem reporting, and management audits, there is a solution that is sure to meet whatever area of CX you are looking to enhance.