There is no denying the importance of the parents’ role in the independent school application process. Schools that find effective ways to communicate with parents will have an advantage when it comes to admissions.
It’s no secret data plays a critical role in improving parents’ enrollment experience. To provide solutions that resonate with parents, schools must have a deep understanding of their hopes and dreams for their children. This type of data offers school marketers strong insights into parents and how marketing can build connections with them.
Many schools rely on survey and feedback data to gather this information. While these data sources are incredibly helpful in understanding parent perception, they don’t tell the whole story. To have a full picture of the prospective parent experience, schools must combine survey data with objective data. A good source for gaining an objective view comes from secret shoppers. Schools that properly leverage secret shoppers can create a consistent and high-quality parent experience.
The Role of a Secret Shopper
School marketers create parent customer enrollment strategies but putting them into practice is another story. The prospective parent experience is becoming increasingly important to understand. In many cases, it determines if a parent will fill out a school application or not. The prospective parent experience is a large factor in the perception of your school in the community. Making sure the enrollment experience is effective helps schools gain a better understanding of the success of their marketing campaigns and pinpoint potential areas for improvement.
What Is a Secret Shopper?
A secret shopper is a hired person who poses as a potential parent to evaluate the enrollment/admissions process.
The most common uses of secret shoppers include:
- Competitor analysis
- Review of internal processes and procedures
- Evaluate staff performance
- Evaluate website, marketing materials
How to Get Started
The first step in secret shopping is to identify your goals in conducting the secret shopping process. What are you hoping to achieve? What do you want your secret shopper to focus on? Use this information to create a secret shopping questionnaire. In general, you want to focus on:
- Online user experience
- Emails
- Initial tour
- Application process
- Parent interview
- Communications between school and parent
- Customer experience
Once you’ve hired your secret shopper, give them a deadline to complete and return the assessment. If you are including competitor analysis in your secret shopper design, identify the competitors you want the secret shopper to assess.
Secret Shopping Contractors
If heading up your own secret shopper program seems overwhelming or time-consuming, consider hiring a secret shopping contractor. These contractors will directly hire and train the shoppers. Look for contractors who are certified by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA). The MSPA has more than 450 member organizations worldwide and more than 1.5 million mystery shoppers in the United States.
Using the Results
The results of a secret shopper give marketers and school administrators an inside look into a prospective parent’s customer journey. Since the focus is on the parent, an honest and objective assessment from the parent’s point of view can be invaluable.
Using secret shopping as a development tool rather than spying reaps many rewards. Secret shopping isn’t about “catching someone doing something wrong”. Instead, it’s about catching people doing things right and acting on that information through various performance improvement tactics.
Here are five ways to use secret shopper results:
- Use the data to coach individual employees. This includes helping them identify goals, action steps, skills and behaviors that need improvement as well as barriers they may be experiencing.
- Use the information collected as a training tool. Identify what’s working well and what can be improved and help your team create an action plan.
- Identify best practices and share those practices across the organization.
- Start a recognition system that rewards staff as well as teams when there are great secret shopper results.
- Update standard operating procedures (SOPs) to include any changes to policies or procedures that are beneficial as a result of the results gleaned.
Secret shopper results offer a treasure trove of actionable data that can be used to dramatically improve your school’s enrollment process, ultimately improving parents’ experience. The knowledge and insight provided through secret shoppers provide marketers and managers the information they need to make necessary changes, create effective marketing strategies and tactics, and ensure their parent admission process becomes – and remains – the best it can be.
