This day and age, time-saving options are a necessity. You and your staff are juggling multiple tasks in addition to the ultimate priority: providing quality childcare.
Self-service allows parents to manage common enrollment tasks when it is convenient for them – all without burdening your staff. 40% of Millennials prefer self-service methods over human contact with businesses. Start implementing methods for self-service in your organization to increase enrollment and parent satisfaction rates.
Self-Service Brings Several Advantages
The benefits of supplying a self-service enrollment experience to parents include:
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Increased enrollment efficiency
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Decreased time spent on manual and repetitive administrative tasks
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Improved parent experience
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Minimized lost lead opportunities
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Streamlined communication
These self-serve options effortlessly guide parents through the enrollment process while simultaneously providing a more personalized experience. Automating communications, scheduling tours online, and digital enrollment ensure that your staff have more time for other important tasks.
1) Make it easy for parents to schedule tours from your website
Tours are one of the most important parts of the parent enrollment journey. The tour is the family’s first impression of your center and your staff. Ensure it’s a positive experience by making the entire process easy and accessible.
First, simplify the tour experience by including an online tour scheduler on your website. Parents can schedule their own tour and receive automated confirmation and reminders which increase the likelihood of parents showing up for the tour. The faster parents can schedule and complete tours, the higher the conversion rate. In our 2022 Building Blocks for Success report, we found that 75% ofChildcareCRM users’ tours take place within 24 hours and the top performers convert 76% of their completed tours to registered or waitlisted.
Additionally, staff time is consolidated through the automated communication provided by an online tour scheduler, limiting the back-and-forth between parents and staff. Tour completion success rates are notably raised through streamlined solutions present in a CRM system.
Look for childcare CRM software that includes tour scheduling functionality and customizable workflow automations. This ensures that you can set personalized scheduling periods, according to you and your team’s availability, so you are never caught off guard by a self-scheduled parent tour.
2) Offer a digital daycare enrollment form and an option to pay fees online
Parents enjoy the self-service aspect of online childcare enrollment. It allows parents to easily input family information, emergency contact information, consent and agreements, medical information, and fill out necessary state forms without needing to make multiple trips. Minimize center traffic or filling out cumbersome stacks of paper with a digital daycare enrollment form.
Because 42% of millennials don’t own a printer, printing out paperwork is a major inconvenience. Search for childcare CRM software that enables parents to upload important documents – allergy information, immunization records - and lets you upload required files like your parent handbook.
Simplify the parent journey. Allow parents to e-sign documents and accept pre-enrollment payments online with a credit card, debit card, or direct debit (ACH). This saves time for parents and for staff, reducing trips to the center for parents and minimizing trips to the bank for directors. Plus, never worry about payment privacy again. Look for a solution that ensures financial data is encrypted, transmitted, and stored securely. Check out the video below for more information about online enrollment forms to increase the number of convenient options your center provides.
3) Pre-fill form information whenever possible
Redundancy in childcare enrollment paperwork takes away valuable time. Choose online enrollment software that integrates with your lead management software, so you can pre-fill digital enrollment packets with information you have already collected in your childcare CRM.
When filling out paper enrollment forms, parents are often required to fill out the same information an average of 9 times. This can lead to lower rates of satisfaction and delayed registration. With online registration, families’ information can be pre-populated using contact details from your CRM. So, when parents open their online enrollment packet for the first time, details like their name, child’s name, phone number, home address, and expected start date are already filled out. This ensures that parents won’t be filling out the same information numerous times.
Capture More Enrollments with Software That Provides Convenient Self-Service Options
Overall, you can capture more enrollments by providing user-friendly, self-service options for parents to complete at their convenience. See how more families enroll at the end of your pipeline because of simple and secure online payment and registration. Easily enhance the parent enrollment journey with a digital experience.
Learn how enabling parents to self-serve increases conversion success by downloading our full 2022 Building Blocks for Success report.
