Latest / The MADness Podcast / [MAD LABZ] Taking enquiries from transaction to conversation ft. Carly Puncher
Transcript
- James: hello and welcome to another Mad Lab episode. Super excited today to have Carly Punchett, a consultant at Edified with us. Now the subject or the title of today's Mad Lab is taking inquiries from transaction to conversation. First of all, Carly, you're really welcome to be with us. Second, can you just break down that title for us and simplify it? Tell us what it means. Carly: Yeah, of course. Thanks, James. So we've spent the past year really trying to understand and benchmark the parent inquiry experience at international schools around the world. And what we've discovered is the inquiry experience tends to sometimes be a transactional experience for parents. So a matter of asking a question, getting a response, and then end of conversation. What we actually want to do is make this the beginning of a conversation. So how do we build connection and trust and all of those things that we know parents need in those initial stages of decision-making processes? How do we bring that to the forefront? And what are the moments that matter for parents when they're inquiring to international schools? James: Okay, so I guess there's an inquiry funnel and they come from a whole host of different sources and different areas. Schools are applying a one-size-fits-all approach to every single inquiry. Is the nuance there? Tell us a little bit about what the research has thrown up. Carly: Yeah, sure. So last year the research looked at fifty-six schools from around the world and we were looking at the part of the funnel, so the awareness phase has happened. Marketing has done their job and the parents have arrived on the school website and they're wanting to submit an inquiry. They're either an email or a phone call or perhaps through Doris's platform. What happens after that is what we really wanted to understand and unpack. One of the key findings from the research, which is quite frightening, is one in four parents actually didn't even get a response at all. So all of this time and energy and investment has gone into getting the parents to the website and knowing who the school is. So they're visible, they're on the radar, they've bothered to ask a question, and one in four hasn't even received a response. So that's that's the first friction point that I think we need to overcome. Beyond that, it's Okay, so once that response is received, how do we make sure that's a meaningful response that is connecting the parent and actually guiding them on the next steps that they need to take? James: When you're deep diving into a school's activity and you reveal to them that they've got X number of inquiries that just haven't been responded to, how do they then respond to that bit of data? Because that's pretty shocking. Carly: It it's been quite eye-opening and I think we don't know what we don't know if we're not measuring it. So quite often, sometimes it's systems and processes. Systems have been set up years ago and we presume, for example, if there's an Instagram page that somebody's monitoring the inbox and the DMs that come in through that, but perhaps nobody is. If we've got an inquiry channel where parents can ask a question, Who's actually monitoring it and what what's the service level that parents should expect from that inquiry channel? If parents call on the phone and they don't get a response but they leave a voicemail, is somebody checking that voicemail at the end of the day? So it's really just trying to bring to the surface where perhaps there's gaps and letting schools know, okay, making sure we're responding to all inquiries. That's step one. Really, that first benchmark should be 100% of inquiries are getting a response. Nik Higgins: I think we've been too polite here. Come on. We've said like Carly: Yeah. Nik Higgins: inquiries or transactions. So what does that mean? Let's like, let's call out. What is the, what is the bad stuff? These are real families that are making a massive Carly: Mm-hmm. Nik Higgins: emotional and financial decision. They bothered Carly: Yeah. Nik Higgins: to reach out to a school and they're getting what we're politely calling a transactional response. Come on. Like what does that actually mean? Let's, let's, let's describe that. Cause I think people listening will really want to know, my God, how bad actually is it? Carly: So for example Only 39% of responses actually asked a question to the family. So, first of all, families, they're asking questions, but they only know what they know. This isn't this isn't respond to the questions, close the inquiry, move on with your day. This is how do we start to build trust and rapport with that parent? The first thing you should be doing is asking a question. A conversation always has to be two way. It can't just be me talking at you the whole time. Yet fewer than half of the responses actually ask a single question back to the family. Nik Higgins: And Carly, I actually saw you, I've cheated here, because I saw you do a presentation about your research recently, which was amazing. Carly: Yeah. Nik Higgins: I think there's, want to get, I keep wanting to go and I keep wanting to pull at this thread beyond transactional. Carly: All of these out, yeah. Nik Higgins: So in one of your slides, I remember you talked about the kind of... lack of warmth or kind of just like the human Carly: Mm-hmm. Nik Higgins: touch in the response. And again, these are families like thinking about where they're gonna send their kids. So transactional it sounds like is kind of hiding something even deeper, which is like, know, schools are maybe not being very human in their replies or very Carly: Mm-hmm. Nik Higgins: friendly or very warm. Carly: Yeah. And I think that's an easy one. The other thing we found in the research is the biggest driver of continued engagement. So to give you a quick overview of the research, real parents submit inquiries to schools. They wait, they receive the response, they score the response against all these different assessment criteria, they hopefully receive a follow-up, and then they tell us at the end how they feel and how likely they are to continue engaging with that school. The biggest driver so of continued engagement. Was warmth in the response. So we ask parents, what was the tone of the email communication? Was it warm and friendly? Was it polite but just neutral? Or was it cold and administrative? When the response was warm and friendly, 90% of parents wanted to continue that conversation. When it was polite or cold, only 50% wanted to continue. So the biggest driver and the easiest thing we can do is simply warm up our communications. James: Is this a, do we think this is the case of people who just aren't correctly trained? it people who don't controversial? Is it people that don't care or aren't bought into it? What's driving the difference between somebody who picks up an inquiry and responds Carly: Uh-huh. James: in a warm and human way versus somebody who sends a transactional response or even worse, an auto response is sent from an inbox. Carly: Yeah. I think it's an education process that needs to happen, but not necessarily just at the front line. It needs to happen across all levels. So this is a sales role. When you're an admissions officer and you're responding to inquiries, you are selling the school. So we need to make sure that people in those frontline roles are actually trained to be able to do that and are supported to be able to do that. But also what we need to do is we need to feed up the chain. That what the research has also uncovered is the response time, the fastest response, isn't actually the best response. So all of this pressure to get responses out within four hours, that doesn't necessarily correlate to parents being more likely to want to continue engaging. The things that led to parents wanting to continue that conversation was being asked a question, so feeling like they were seen, they were actually talking and having a conversation with another human. Being all of their questions answered, so if the school answered all of their questions, parents were three times more likely to want to continue engaging. And then following up, one response doesn't cut it. So if you just send one response, you close your inbox or your queue at the end of the day and you never reach out to that parent again, they're not going to want to continue engaging with you. And this is where again we need to make sure admissions officers, it's not A hard sell by following up. It's not a it's not the wrong thing to do. It's actually appreciated by parents. Parents want you to reach out again. James: For sure. And so we've talked about time scales there and then the follow up or chasing down that lead. Are there optimum time scales in terms of a response? When he's too long and how many times is it acceptable to send that follow up email to send the chaser before actually taking a step back and thinking, I've probably done as much as I can do here reasonably without starting to really antagonize this family. Carly: Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the first response, depending on the channel, there's different expectations from parents. If it's a conversational channel like WhatsApp, they're expecting a more immediate response. Something like email, 24 to 48 hours is acceptable. Parents were saying four days, that feels a little bit too long. But there's not necessarily a need to get it out within four hours. What's much more important is the quality of the response when they receive it. In terms of the follow-up, again it's a balancing act. Best practice is one follow-up within five days at least. And making sure that that follow-up is personalized, it's relevant. It's, hey, can I help? Do you have any more questions? By the way, we actually have an open day coming up if you might be interested in that. Or here's some more information about our sports facilities. We know your son was interested in sport. Making sure that it's personalized, the original inquiry. What we don't want is and one school actually sent seven follow ups within a two week window. And the parent said, That's too much. I feel like you're spamming me now. Let me just make take a take a seat and make a decision. James: at so we're all about transaction to conversation. At what point does the balance flip there, do you think? Or is it that from the outset, the mindset needs to be, this is, it's a transactional thing. We want to get this individual, this family to... sign up to our school but we're going to achieve that transaction through conversation. So is it from the absolute outset that we're saying treat this thing like a conversation with an actual person rather than an over-the-counter sale? Carly: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And people aren't buying a product. And that that in itself is controversial for me to say. But we're not buying a new car. We're buying a relationship. Essentially, we're buying a relationship with a school. We're buying trust. We want to put our trust into a school to say, hey, our child will be supported and looked after there. To form that relationship, we need to have a conversation. We need to understand more about you and the school needs to understand more about the parents too. James: I the fact that some schools just don't respond to enquiries, which is a shocker. Carly: Yeah. James: What else did you unearth in this research that is really jaw-dropping in terms of does that really... Carly: Well, I mean If we look at the top, if we talk about it from a funnel perspective and the friction points in the funnel, I'll give you some top headline stats that really jumped out to me. And this is all in the global report that people can download for free. But first up at the top, one in five parents had difficulty locating the inquiry channel on the website. So they've come to your website, they're actively wanting to inquire, and straight away there's friction for one in five who are having difficulty even submitting that inquiry. Then we know one in four don't actually get a response. From there, the communication quality is really important. So we want to make sure that those communications are warm and friendly, that we're asking questions, that we're actively guiding the next step for parents. We're not leaving it up to parents to figure their own way into the school. What do I need to do next? When's the application deadline? Don't wait for them to ask those questions. Guide them through that journey. And then after that, making sure we're following up with them. They're kind of like the key moments that mattered the most throughout the journey. James: Alright, brilliant Kai, thanks for that insight. So it just seems that there are lots of nuances here, lots of things going wrong that could quite easily be put right. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. So what would your top three actionable tips be to anybody working in a marketing or admissions department, admissions I guess, who's dealing with this sort of thing on a day-to-day basis? Carly: Yep. And I think you're right. Sometimes it's the small things that can actually make a really big difference. It's not necessarily you need to overhaul your whole systems. What are the small things that actually make a difference? One, ask thoughtful questions. And that can be built automated and built into the inquiry responses, but ask a question of the family. Make sure that this is from the outset a two-way conversation that we're having with parents and families. Number two Take the time to answer all questions. We know that families were three times more likely to continue engaging when all of their questions were answered. So let's for a second just forget the time pressure of getting a response out really quickly. If it takes a few minutes longer to actually take the time to answer all of the questions, it does actually make a meaningful difference to families. And then finally, I think providing a clear and proactive next step. So remember it is our job to guide families on this journey. They only know what they know, so make it easy for them to take the next step. Please do not end your emails with if you have any more questions, just let me know. Actually put the link. You can book a time to meet with me. Here's how you do it. Walk them, hold their hand and walk them along in that journey. James: How many emails do you actually see or did you see that end with that? If you have any more questions, let me know. Carly: Well to be honest, probably three quarters at least. Yeah. Which is well James: Interesting. Very good. Carly: intentioned. It's absolutely well intentioned. But it's putting the onus back on the family. We're the we're the ones that know what needs to happen next. It is our responsibility to guide them on that journey. James: Kelly, you obviously know a lot about this area. Carly: Yeah. James: for how long, for how many years has this survey been going on for? Carly: Yeah, so well for me personally I've been involved in the inquiry phase of the parent and student journey for 15 years. So I'm a bit of a nerd and I do geek out on it. But this research it's been running for universities for the past five years. For schools, last year was our pilot year. So we had 56 schools take part globally last year, and we had a really A really solid benchmark and what we were able to take from that and understand is the global average across the board was fifty-three, but the inquiry experience varied from twelve was the lowest scoring school to eighty-four. So it's a really wide-ranging inquiry experience the parents are receiving. What we want to see is we want to see that global average going up year on year. We've seen that for universities and ultimately we want to see that for schools too, because we want we want to improve the parent experience. We're improving the impairing experience, then we're seeing better outcomes for families, for schools and ultimately for children. Nik Higgins: I just noticed in the midst of this madness, we've talked about this research, but we haven't actually said what it's called. So Carly, I know that it's called the Inquiry Experience Tracker for schools and that it runs annually and next year will it be its second or third year, is that correct? Carly: This year. This year will be its second year. So it hasn't kicked off for this year yet. There's still time to get involved. So it's currently open for registrations, but field work kicks off in September. So once most schools are back, from September to November we run the fieldwork where parents are actively engaging and inquiring with schools. And then we do our analysis and the final reporting and global benchmark is presented in January. James: So I'm going to give you an opportunity in just a moment to let schools know how they can get involved. But I really need to know before then, how did the school respond that got a mark of 12? Carly: Not well. However, they they own they hats off to them for putting their hand up to want to measure their inquiry experience, knowing that they probably weren't well resourced and set up to do the best they could do yet. But it that it gave them a solid base, they could only go up from there. James: Okay, so. school head teachers, directors of marketing and admissions, senior figures who want to get involved. How do they get involved in this year's project? Carly: Yeah, of course. So regis like I said, registrations are open at the moment. So we can pop a link, wherever we pop a link, to jump on the website and register your interest. You can book a time just to have a chat with me and I can talk you through the project. What everybody can do now though is hop online and download the global report. It's free. We want everybody to see the findings and to understand what matters to parents. The whole point of this is to improve the parent experience globally. So that information is free and available to everybody. We also have online a mini self-assessment tool. So you can take five minutes just to do a self-assessment of your school's inquiry experience, which will give you some really practical, actionable key quick wins and takeaways that you can action straight away. James: Okay, super, and we can absolutely drop some links into our socials, but for people just listening now who want to tap away on the phone, can you tell them where to head? Carly: Yeah, of course. So it's www.edified.com dot au and just look for the little inquiry experience tracker. James: and you'll find lots of super useful stuff there. Wonderful. Carly, thank you so much for being a guest on Mad Labs. The insights that you've shared today, I think will be a real eye-opener for a lot of schools and... I think there's so much value in them getting involved in the inquiry experience tracker for schools in its second year. And as you say, there's still time. So listen, any school head teachers, directors of marketing and admissions, senior figures who are thinking, just want to know a little bit more about this, head to edified.com.au for more details. And I'm sure you'll find some amazing stuff there. Carly, thank you again. You've been a great guest. Carly: Thank you. Thanks, James. Thanks, Nick.