Do you wonder how to enhance students’ satisfaction and as a consequence the profitability of your language school? Answer is quite easy, there are a few steps you can undertake improve their satisfaction with your services.
Step 1: Learn the needs of the course participants
It is worthwhile starting cooperation with each course participant by recognising their needs. This will help you better adjust the provided services to their situation.
Certainly the most important thing to do is to determine the level of language skills of a given persons. Level tests are standard tools used in such situation (it is most convenient to make them available online). The ability of multiple choice tests to check the command of a language is restricted, so it is good to complement them with meetings of potential students with course instructors or methodologists.
It is also worthwhile asking potential students about motives to learn a language and jointly defining the goals of language learning. This will help direct the process of education and – when the course ends – decide if the intended goals have been attained.
We should also not underestimate the importance of properly trained secretariat staff, who will be able already at the stage of preliminary conversation to determine approximately what type of course in needed by a given person contacting the school.
Step 2: Measuring the progress
During the course it is important to check the progress made by particular students regularly. The course instructor has much to say, and his opinion about the progress made by a given person is well verified by regular quizzes and tests. This is not about introducing a regular school atmosphere but about making students aware of how much they already know and motivating them to learn.
Step 3: Surveying the satisfaction
Research shows that a majority of dissatisfied customers do not notify this fact to company employees at their own initiative. Such people simply resign from company services and tell about their disappointment to as many as nine other persons.
Therefore it is so important to learn the students’ opinions about the course, instructors and the entire school on ongoing basis. There are many methods to perform such surveys. In a nutshell one can say that we can measure customer satisfaction both with quantitative methods (such as CSI – Customer Satisfaction Index), and qualitative ones, such as e.g. an analysis of issues notified by customers, or so-called Mystery Shopping.
Most schools apply quantitative methods to research customer satisfaction, which in practice entails questionnaires among course participants. The survey performed through a questionnaire should consist of several stages:
- Determination of what is important in the school’s operation from the viewpoint of a customer – usually those are such issues as teaching methods, competencies of course instructors, customer service in the secretariat, or the venue,
- Designing a questionnaire covering all those aspects
- Performance of surveys: this should be done several weeks after the semester starts to give the course participants time to develop an opinion, and on the other hand to give you enough time to introduce potential changes before the given semester ends,
- Analysis of the data and drawing of conclusions.
Step 4: Improving school operation
You do not perform research to keep its results stuffed at the bottom of the drawer! You should draw conclusions from surveys as soon as possible and put them into practice. But correcting any imperfections in the school’s functioning is just a beginning. The data sourced from the surveys may help develop the entire action strategy. Owing to the data, you can establish typical buyers personas and adjust your offer to them. Focusing your efforts on the areas being your strengths will result in better customer satisfaction, translating into a greater school profitability.
Your school exists owing to customers, so it is worthwhile ensuring good communication with them. Treat any potential critical remarks not as a failure but as an impulse to improve the standards of the services offered in the school.
What does this matter look like in your schools? Do you take remarks of your course participants to heart?