It is said that it’s better to ask the way than to go astray. There are a lot of questions being asked every day in various Facebook groups and industry forums. And that’s great because sharing your experience with people in the same industry gives you a whole new perspective on the challenges we face. However, there are questions that can be answered, but they are often badly addressed. „I do marketing, but there are no customers. What am I doing wrong?”, „I’m getting more and more dropouts this year. I don’t know what’s going on” are just a few of them.

If you can get some good tips, they will have one disadvantage – they will be general. No one outside knows what is happening in your school and which areas of its operation require action. The people who know best what attracts students to your school, and what repels potential customers are… Your students! It is therefore high time to ask their opinion.

Is it useful to conduct a student satisfaction survey?

If you want your business to be a high-level company and to grow, getting feedback from the students is essential. Without a solid foundation, any further action will not be effective in the long term. The more data you collect, the easier it will be for you to analyze the weaknesses of your school and take appropriate steps to improve the quality of the services offered. You can also use the information collected to change the direction of communication and marketing so that potential customers become your school’s students.

The results of the research carried out for at least 7 years are clear: the vast majority of customers are willing to pay more for a service that offers better experiences. A growing number of people realize that „time is money” is not just a cliché, but their everyday life. Therefore, they choose courses that will bring them concrete benefits. The days when our clients signed up for the course, because „everyone goes and the language needs to be known” are now gone.

At the same time, only 43% of customers are satisfied with their experience with services and specific brands. This in turn causes the rotation of students between schools.

At the start of the pandemic, although a higher percentage of schools experienced a drop in the number of students than an increase (5% difference), the average number of students attending language schools increased compared to the previous year. So if you want to avoid this kind of situation, it is high time to build a survey and see what the situation is like in your language school. After all, you will not raise the level of satisfaction of your students without knowing how it is today 😉

What questions should I ask in the Student Satisfaction Survey?

Before we get into how to create a survey and how to give students access to the form, it’s a good idea to first consider what information you want about your products and services. Below I will give you examples of questions that you will be able to easily adjust to your school, taking into account your sales process and the type of courses offered. Just remember not to put everyone in one poll. Everyone will turn pale at the sight of a sheet that contains 25 questions to which they have to answer something more than yes or no. It is worth limiting the number of questions to 10 and making them clear and precise enough to obtain specific information.

Categories of questions specifying:

1. How the service is used

Think about how students use your courses. You’re going to ask different questions to corporations than to consumers. This is mainly about accurately identifying the benefits customers want and identifying aspects that bring satisfaction or disappointment with the service offered.

Examples:

1. Did the course help you achieve your goals?

2. What did you like the most about the course?

3. Did you like the way the classes were taught?

– What did you like the most?

– If you had anything to change, what would it be?

4. How would you rate language learning progress among your employees?

5. Did we meet your expectations?

2. Demographics

And you might want to verify that information, especially if you’re running groups for adults because that’s where the age range can be greatest. It may also be that women are happier than men with specific courses. This is also valuable information for you. Although these are basic data, the correlation of gender and age with the level of satisfaction with the course can not only surprise, but also be an inspiration for the creation of classes that can prove very original and attractive to your target group.

Examples:

1. What is your education?

2. What is your professional status?

3. How old are you?

4. Choose your gender.

5. How do you know about our school?

The above examples of questions are best given with ranges/options to choose from.

3. Degree of satisfaction

These are questions where the level of satisfaction is assessed on a scale (usually it’s a 5 or 10-point scale). With questions of this type, you can easily draw an average and you will know that e.g. the B2 English courses were rated at 7.5/10 in terms of the way they were conducted, but their level was only rated at 4/10. With specific figures, you will know which areas need to be improved quickly. For example, in terms of skills, some students may have been inappropriately matched to their group.

Examples:

1. How would you rate the difficulty of the course?

2. How satisfied are you with the way the classes are taught?

3. Will you recommend us to your friends/family?

4. How would you rate our website for ease of finding information?

5. How much do you agree with the statement: before the beginning of the course I obtained all the necessary information?

It is important for this type of question to determine exactly what the scale points mean, e.g. 1 – very dissatisfied, 10 – very satisfied. To minimize the risk of confusion, you can use for example the star rating system (1-5) and ask the question „How many stars do you award to your teacher”, and leave a space underneath to justify the answer. We know this example to our cost, because we have already experienced someone who rated LangLion at 1, and in the commentary, they wrote that we are great and they cannot imagine life without our Platform 😉

4. Specific opinion

Open Questions. Not all the data we want can be drawn from the answers to the closed questions. So what if 60 percent of the students said they were dissatisfied with the course if you don’t know what the dissatisfaction was? Maybe the problem is in the teacher, and you may find that the room is so hot that it’s hard to breathe, let alone focus on learning.

Examples:

1. If you could make a difference in the way classes are taught, what would that be?

2. What do you like most about our courses?

3. What form of teaching is most attractive to you?

4. How would you rate the level of communication with the teacher/secretariat?

5. What could we do better?

When should I conduct a student satisfaction survey?

There are two correct answers to this question: regularly and immediately after the service is provided. If, for example, you have conducted demonstration lessons, the survey should be delivered to the customer preferably on the same day or the following day in the morning (if the lessons were held in the evening). Feedback given within 24 hours is 40% more accurate than what you will get when it ends.

When it comes to the language course, it’s worth giving the students some time to make up their minds based on more than one class. In this case, you can send a survey after one month of classes and another after the first semester of study.

Should the survey be anonymous?

In my opinion, it certainly should. Anonymity allows you to share your feelings more freely. The fact that the student would have to sign up to their opinion could cause them to bend reality for fear, for example, that the opinion is evaluated by, or provided to the teacher they were supposed to judge in the survey.

Top Survey Policies

1. Coherence – choose one specific goal: evaluation of the new website, level of satisfaction with the course or communication, and information flow. Remember that you have a certain number of questions and you cannot get data about three different areas from one form.

2. Time – the completion of the ideal survey should be closed within the time frame of 5 to 10 minutes, to avoid the fatigue of the respondent.

3. Precision – one question should only concern one issue. It is unacceptable to ask questions such as: How do you judge the teacher and the classes she/he teaches? These are two different issues.

4. Question order – always place the easiest questions at the beginning to make it easier for the customer to navigate to further answers. Questions about demographic data are best placed at the end, so as not to discourage the respondent at the very beginning.

5. Welcome – remember to write a short introduction to the survey, in which you will explain the subject and purpose of the survey. It is also worth giving an approximate time for filling in the form and what the collected data will be used for.

If you want to survey your students and get their feedback about your school, remember that the LangLion Platform has been equipped with a survey module. This tool provides an opportunity to test the satisfaction of users of the Platform. Creating a survey is very simple, and in the options available you can choose the following questions: single choice, multiple choice, open and range questions. You can share your survey with the appropriate people or groups through the Platform. If you want to create several similar or even the same surveys for different users, it is also possible. LangLion allows you to copy the entire survey. The system does the work for you, and you can spend the saved time on pleasures.

For more information, please see our guide HERE.