Developing a Customer Experience (CX) Culture within an International School Environment: Why it Matters

As a school leader, you understand the importance of attracting and retaining students to maintain a thriving school community. However, what you may not realize is the impact that a strong customer experience (CX) culture can have on new enrollments, retention, overall parent satisfaction, and ultimately, your school's success.

The development of a CX culture goes well beyond the idea that a school should simply offer warm and fuzzy interactions with parents. For some international schools the average customer lifetime value (CLV): yearly tuition x average number of children per family x average length of enrolment - can exceed $500,000 and schools need to be delivering an experience commensurate with that CLV.

But knowing how to deliver the right experience also requires detailed insights around your current/former/prospective families along with a clear understanding around their views on education, their key drivers for choosing a school and what qualities they are seeking to develop in their children. Your admissions function needs to be a sophisticated hive of data insights, research and CX leadership. Whether you are a non-profit or for-profit, schools are a business and the commercial nature of our sector means you need to be investing heavily in this area.

So how can a strong CX culture deliver better returns for your school?

Maximizing Conversion in the Enrollment Funnel

Providing a positive customer experience to prospective families is critical to maximizing conversion in the enrollment funnel. When families are impressed with their interactions with your school, they are more likely to enrol and become long-term members of your community. By developing a CX culture, you ensure that every touchpoint with prospective families is consistent, personalized, and memorable, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Detailed insights into parent types can also help deliver targeted content either through your marketing automation platform or through in-person contact with prospective parents. You probably have lots of fantastic stories to tell in your school, but how are you ensuring that your prospective parents are being delivered content specific to their areas of interest throughout the enrolment funnel.

Decrease your Cost of Acquisition (CoA)

Importantly, the development of a strong CX framework can also help decrease your cost of acquisition (CoA = Yearly Marketing Spend / Yearly Enrolments). As competition heats up in the international school sector and budgets are tightened it is becoming more important than ever that marketing is targeted towards right-fit families. How often are you analysing the performance of your marketing spend? Do you know your current conversion rate from enquiry to application to enrolment? Do some parent segments (eg. nationality groups, year levels) have higher or lower conversion rates? Do some parent groups have higher/lower CLV? These are questions you need to be asking and questions that your admissions team should have the answer to.

Improving Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Retention

A positive customer experience also leads to a higher NPS, which is a measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty. A high NPS is a clear indicator of customer happiness and is often used to predict customer retention. By focusing on CX, you can improve the overall satisfaction of your families and retain students for longer periods, leading to a stronger and more stable school community. Since word of mouth is by far the strongest source of enquiry for international schools, improving parent satisfaction in all areas of school operations should be a priority.

There are a few ways that schools can measure their parents' NPS:

1. Surveys: Schools can conduct surveys, either online or in-person, to gather feedback from parents about their experiences at the school. The survey should include a single question that asks parents to rate their likelihood to recommend the school to others on a scale of 0 to 10.
2. Automated Feedback Collection: Schools can use tools such as automated feedback collection platforms that send out surveys to parents on a regular basis. This can be a convenient and efficient way to gather ongoing feedback from parents.
3. Customer Service Interactions: Schools can also track NPS through interactions with parents during customer service interactions, such as enrollment processes, parent-teacher conferences, and other events.

Once the data has been collected, schools can calculate their NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors (parents who rated the school a 0 to 6) from the percentage of promoters (parents who rated the school a 9 or 10). The resulting score will give schools an overall understanding of their parents' level of satisfaction and the effectiveness of their CX efforts.

Strengthening Advocacy

Finally, a positive customer experience also leads to stronger advocacy. Satisfied families are more likely to refer other families to your school and share their positive experiences with others. This can significantly impact your enrollment funnel and improve inquiry levels.

In conclusion, school leaders who focus on CX will see increased parent loyalty, improved retention, increased enrolments and revenue, differentiation from competitors, cost savings, and improved reputation.