Web Development
English School
We were approached by a local English conversation school based in Osaka to provide a solution to their management of staff and students.
At the time of inquiry, this particular school had more than 300 students, 20 teachers, 15 Japanese staff and 5 different branches located all throughout Osaka City.
Even though they had a large number of students and staff to manage, they were still using basic forms of management and came to us for ideas.
High Rate of Human Error
The first issue from many that this English conversation school had was the high rate of management error that resulted in a large number of misunderstanding by students in regards to lesson scheduling.
All classes for each student were managed on a basic calendar and notifications of confirmed class times were sent to students by email, one by one and manually written by a staff member.
Any errors that occured in these manual emails directly impacted the student.
Students would miss classes, come on the wrong day/time.
Our Solution
We implemented a CRM system to automate as much as possible, reducing the need for 'manually' managing the schedule.
Through our custom CRM, we created a student roster and contact system to automatically send notifications, such as a confirmed copy of students' weekly classes, which would be a complete reflection of the school's class management calendar.
We abolished the need for staff to send emails, and they could leave everything to the system.
Alarming Rate of Staff Tardiness
The second challenge that the school faced was with the staff and not the students.
The majority of foreign English teachers were part-time and were set different schedules every week.
Their work times and school branches would differ depending on their requests and the schools class bookings.
The school would notify teachers of their schedules only once a week.
However even with notification, teachers would frequently cause issues such as mixing up their start times, going to the wrong school branch and so on.
Resulting in the delay and sometimes the cancelation of lessons.
Our Solution
In addition to the automated system for students, we also implemented a teacher management system.
This management system included the management of teacher profiles, work hour requests and weekly roster.
Instead of sending a manual email once a week, the school was able to set automatic emails reminding teachers of work time and place on the day prior.
Short Lifetime Value
The last challenge this English conversation school faced was the number of students dropping out, which led to a very short customer lifetime value (LTV).
On average, the students would not stay more than 12 months.
To compensate for student churn, the school was putting efforts into customer acquisition and not trying to increase the length of time a student would stay at the school.
Our Solution
Our first advice was for the school to help improve the learning atmosphere, teacher attitude, and benefits of the students in general.
However, in the case of a CRM, we added a function for the school to send automated emails to targeted students on the roster, depending on what class they are in and how long they have been with the school.
At each stage, the school can leverage the CRM to send a variety of emails. These could include regular event updates, exclusive coupons and discounts, and valuable learning tips and tricks. This diverse communication approach will significantly enhance the school's connection with the students. Not just with the teachers.
Our Solution
Results
Decreased Reservation Mistakes
Through the daily automated reminders of classes to the students, the number of wrong class schedules dropped enormously. Before our CRM, there was 13-15 cases per month. After, only 1 or 2 isolated incidents on average.
Increased Punctuality
Through regular schedule reminders to teachers the number of late and absent teachers declined.Therefore the number of cancelled lessons due to teacher tardiness dropped in half.
Increased LTV
Through increasing the communication and trust between the school and students, the LTV of a general student increased to 1.5 years. The school is still in progress of trying different methods, but they noticed an immediate difference after introducing the CRM.