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Decrease Student Attrition To Increase Revenue

John Bertoli / John@bertolimarketing.com
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Recruiting students is expensive, competition is intense, and admissions departments are feeling the pressure to hit rising targets, only to see a significant portion of their admitted class not make it to graduation. Institutions plan for losing students, and the costs associated with that, but many have planned for it by increasing admissions goals or have been off on their revenue loss formulas.

Simply put, the cost of admitting a new student is higher than retaining a current student. So why not put the focus on retention? Creating institutional revenue is tied to decreasing attrition. When a student leaves your institution, you lose not just their tuition money and they funds they might spend on campus, but the money that will be spent recruiting another student. According to a recent study by University Business, the difference in cost for recruiting a new student and retaining an existing one can be as much as $5,460 to $35.

Small changes in how you approach retaining students can result in big gains for your bottom line.

Students frequently cite reasons for leaving that are entirely in an institution’s control. The leading reason for leaving, at 30 percent of students, is a feeling of apathy from your institution. The second leading reason? Dissatisfaction with how they are treated by staff, according to University Business. What many institutions have is a customer service issue—they are failing to meet the needs of their primary customer, students, and generating unhappiness on campus. Let’s discuss the solution.

Meeting Students on Mobile

Increasingly, companies focused on delivering the best customer experience are prioritizing mobile in a multi-channel customer service strategy. And it makes sense why. The average person spends upwards of 5 hours a day on their phone, and 63% of people will seek customer support on mobile at least a few times a month.

Delivering a positive mobile experience to your students is crucial to ensuring they have the information they need for success at your institution. From accessing their course schedule to learning about campus initiatives, allow your students access to information on-the-go, and make sure their mobile experience is optimized with a native app, the prefered way of engaging over mobile.

Streamlining Student Services

Dissatisfaction with customer service from your staff is one of the primary reasons students leave your institution. Muddling through processes like student enrollment, paying tuition, sourcing financial aid, and even figuring out the process of graduation requires a lot of legwork on the part of students, and for your staff. Streamlining some of these services in your mobile campus app can create easier experiences for your students and decrease the burden on staff.

More and more institutions, partnered with Modo, are offering financial aid and tuition payment services in their campus app. Del Mar College recently deployed a fully self-service module, allowing students to manage their aid and payment processes entirely from mobile, and integrated virtual queuing so that students don’t waste time waiting in the student services office.

Demonstrating You Care

When students are admitted and arrive on campus, they are greeted with a full calendar of events, making them feel welcomed and valued on campus. Soon, the events will drop off and that initial flush of excitement will give way to apathy.

Capitalize on the excitement of orientation events with a New Student Orientation module in your campus app, helping students make the most of their first few weeks on campus. Then, ensure you don’t lose that momentum by regularly communicating campus events for current and returning students and driving excitement around campus initiatives, groups, athletics and the arts. Your institution has so much to offer students from freshman year to graduation, but don’t assume your students know that. Something as simple as a directory for students to connect with one another can be a game changer. Demonstrate you care about their college experience by meeting them on mobile and highlighting the campus offerings that make your institution unique.

Preventing Staff Burnout

The same mobile strategy for increasing student engagement can be applied to enhance the experience your employees have at your institution. Your staff are working towards increasing number goals every year and feeling the constant pressure of either meeting those targets or facing budget cuts. While a mobile campus app can make your customer service more efficient, a mobile campus app with an employee persona can make your employees more efficient.

With Modo Campus™, create an employee persona within your campus app that allows staff to access important information, like payroll and benefits, take advantage of professional development opportunities, and even see their individual progress towards goals like hitting their enrollment targets.

Equipping staff with the tools they need to be successful increases effectiveness, prevents burnout, and means that you’ll spend less time and money replacing staff and more time celebrating them.

From enhancing your customer service to creating more effective campus systems, a mobile campus app can drive revenue at your institution by helping you decrease attrition—the real cost to your bottom line. Reach out today to learn how mobile can increase retention with a customized demo, based on your institution’s needs.

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