The 3 moments that Career Colleges and Universities are missing badly

I was recently reading a book titled “The Power of Moments” written by Chip and Dan Heath.  In this book they wrote about how companies miss opportunities to elevate customer experiences with their business and their brand.

Instead, companies just assume that they have delivered what the customer thought they were getting and should be good enough.  When businesses approach their customer experience with this approach, they miss an opportunity to create a unique experience for their customer with their brand and company, which means they miss an opportunity to create loyalty for future transactions potentially.

The story that stood out most in this book was the one where a couple of guys who founded a charter school wanted to create a unique experience of choosing a college for their graduates.  More importantly than creating this opportunity for the students who were graduating and picking a college now, they wanted to set a stage with this experience that other students who were in the school, far from graduating, could watch and say to themselves, this experience was so great, that I can’t wait until the day I get to pick a college.

If you follow college sports at all, you will know that signing day for the more mainstream sports such as College Football and College Basketball are national events.  They call it signing day. Typically the high school athlete does this signing in an auditorium surrounded by family, friends, school administrators, and even the press. It is a big deal.

The founders of the school said “Why can’t our students have a signing day on where they decide to go to college as well?” So they created an experience called College signing day.  And it is very similar to what high school athletes do when they choose their college.  This elevated experience not only made the moment bigger for the students, but it also created an elevated moment for all the students in the school that attended the event who will be picking colleges for themselves one day.

They took this significant event in someone’s life and career, and elevated it by making it an even bigger experience.

That is what the book is all about. I encourage you to get it and read it.

So why do I share this book in this article now.  The reason I do is because what I have found from secret shopping schools now for six plus years with my company MPACT Group Inc. Is that colleges and universities don’t use what could be significant moments in a person’s life, like deciding on where to go to college, and elevate the experience and make it a more memorable one.  And the chances are especially for non-traditional students they may not have people in their life helping them celebrate it either.

How unique would this make your school if you did this for them and with them?  Would this create some loyalty as well?

Here are the three missed opportunities as I see them.

1. Introduction:  Most admissions reps just come out and tell the prospective student (secret shopper) Hello and come on back to my office.  What if they brought them a gift.  Especially a nontraditional student taking their first steps to going back to college.  This would make that precise interaction that much more memorable and elevate their experience when they need it the most.
2. The Tour:  Obviously, nowadays so many students are speaking with someone over the phone about attending an online college or university.  And they may not even care about a tour.However, what if you could create an a unique experience where while on a virtual tour or an actual tour that something of significance happens.  Something that will be memorable for this prospective student to not forget.To use another sports example.  When colleges are recruiting potential athletes and giving them a tour of the campus, they may bring them in an auditorium or on the field and have an announcer call their name as the starting player on that team.  Could your college or university do something similar?  This is just one idea.  But how can you make it more memorable?
3. Closing or the end of the initial appointment.  In this book, and for anyone who has ever researched customer experience knows that in all customer experience interactions we base our experience on two different things.  And we measure our customer satisfaction and experience on these two things.The first is:  What was the highest high we had while we were engaged in this interaction with this business.  Meaning what was it, and how great was it at its peak.The second is:  How did the interaction end. These two points are where we measure our customer experiences.In colleges and universities that my company has now shopped for the last six years, since we started our company.  We have found that the second measurement, at the end, is usually pretty bad.Meaning a lot of times the prospective student doesn’t even know what the next steps are.  And if they do, the steps will require the student to either pay money, set another appointment, complete a FAFSA, etc.  None of the things are very positive things. They all require the student to do something.

As I have mentioned our company has done over 1,000 secret shops of large universities,  mid-size career colleges, to very small vocational training schools.

So how can colleges and universities create more profound moments for their prospective students and create moments that will keep the students excited and engaged, and motivated to complete all of the Admissions paperwork, Financial Aid, etc.?

I told you where you could create these moments.   I would encourage you to reach out to me or to  others at your institution and see what you can come up with to elevate these moments for your prospective students?

Lets have a conversation. email me or call me.

Brian Willett
bwillett@mpactgroupinc.com
502-296-7632