My phone beep woke me up!
It was 6 in the morning on a Sunday. Irritated to be woken up that early in the morning I checked the phone. It was a message from our daughter’s school wishing her on her birthday! It certainly was a very nice gesture for her school to wish her on her birthday.
Knowing how customer focused, process driven and technology enabled her school is; receiving the text was not surprising.
I recall it took me all of 30 minutes to apply for our daughter’s admission – sitting in the comfort of our living room. A simple online form needed to be filled with scanned image of the supportive documents to be uploaded. Finding the documents that needed to be scanned took a while else it would have taken not more than 10! Five minutes after I clicked submit, yes I received a text on my phone confirming that our application had been received. Few days later we received another text and an e-mail informing us of the interview schedule and contact details.
Reminded of a time, not too long ago, (in few schools even now) when one has to spend minimum 2-3 days to apply for school admission. All that efforts, just to get hold of the application form. Then the journey of applying begins, getting information on other steps such as interview schedule are even more challenging.
Thinking of a simpler process and using technology intelligently the experience could be made hassle free and hence allowing parents to savor this key milestone event in their lives.
It is always the thought that counts and finding tools to enable is most often the easiest part! The thought is driven by the principles may be in this case wanting to be customer (parent) focused.
At this point business of primary school is still a seller’s market i.e. demand for school is higher than there are number of schools. I am sure when the supply finally catches up with the demand institutions such as these are well placed to delight their customers hence retain their lead.
All this effort is not just about delighting the customers, getting these right saves money.
In the case of our daughter’s school if they have been measuring parameters such as cost of application processing and cost of admission per student they must be reducing. Automation i.e. making the applicants enter data through a simple internet application has taken out the cost of data entry. A well designed portal on the internet providing necessary information has reduced the load on staff to handle parent’s queries.
This reduces cost of doing business hence impacting schools bottom-line. For parents (customers) smooth efficient process provides excellent customer experience.
Technology is touching and transforming our lives. Bringing people closer and hence empowering us like never before – thanks to blogs we were able to locate a school for our daughter in no time!
The question is how many of the organizations are leveraging it for the benefit of their critical stakeholder: customer?
Would love to hear what has been your experience getting your child into a school of your choice?