Adopting new childcare CRM software is often viewed as an immediate fix-all. However, it's essential that the data within your CRM is accurate and regularly maintained to ensure you're communicating with the right families at the right time.
It doesn't take much time to ensure your CRM database is running smoothly and working the way you want it to. But it does require regular attention. Take a look at these best practices for managing your CRM to ensure you're using it to the fullest extent.
1) Keep your CRM system squeaky clean
The number one rule with CRM systems can often be the hardest to follow. Yup, that’s right - data hygiene. Upon the purchase of new software, we are determined to set up processes and best practices and stick to them. Over time, we slowly lose focus on the importance of data cleanliness.
Make sure to review the data in your CRM with all users in your company. Highlight the inaccuracies and work with your team to clean them up, as needed. A first step would be to ensure that every family in your enrollment pipeline is listed under the right status and your automated communications fit under the correct workflow. For example, if someone is ready to fill our registration paperwork, they should not be receiving emails asking them to schedule a tour. Another essential part of organizing your CRM is to ensure that family information - such as names, child's age, and contact information are all accurate.
One of the most common offenses we see is users with past-due tasks. Although it may not seem like a big deal when one family doesn't receive a follow-up phone call after a tour or a lead doesn't get a link to schedule a tour, these little mistakes can really begin to add up. Make sure you and your staff are completing tasks daily so that no leads slip through the cracks.
2) Review Your Enrollment Processes
Somehow this one always slides to the bottom of the list. I can hear it now, “our processes for handling leads from marketing to sales stages are fine for now. We can review them next year.” Childcare is a constantly-evolving landscape. Parent expectations are constantly changing and staff turnover is high. Review how your staff interact with your childcare CRM. even if they don't actively use the system, are they getting email and/or text reminders about new tour appointments? Do they feel like those reminders are helpful? Or is there something that could be modified to make tours even easier? It's important to know how everyone at your center fits into the CRM ecosystem, along the parent enrollment journey.
3) Ensure Your External Messaging Is On-Brand
Messaging is stored in many different places within your childcare CRM so be sure to double-check email templates, text templates, web forms, and landing pages to ensure leads are getting the appropriate messaging. Whether you've changed your logo, brand colors, or you just want to update the tone/voice you use to interact with families, it's essential that your messaging remains consistent and clear for inquiring parents.
4) Engage with Your Leads
Now that you have a clean CRM, new & improved processes, and up-to-date & relevant content, go engage with your leads. As always, be thoughtful about your engagement frequency and be strategic with whom you communicate. Create workflow automation and drip campaigns so your system can work for you- even while you sleep!
5) Managing Multiple Locations - The Do's & Do Not's
Managing multiple ECE centers requires both individualized and unified data solutions. Using a separate CRM database for each center ensures family and child data remains organized and specific to each center location, enhancing operational efficiency. For example - Self-scheduled tours: one of our most powerful features is the ability to let parents schedule their own tours. As with the above, this feature would be unusable because a tour at one location would block that time at all locations, making parents unable to effectively use this feature.
Dashboards: dashboards are built to innately display data pertinent to the location the user works at. For example, the To Do list would show actions needed to be undertaken at all locations rather than just at a center director's own location. Another example: we count the number of families or children in each status, but there would be no ability to see this important metric by location, it would only ever be for the entire organization. If the staff at one center was lagging in their ability to keep classrooms filled, it wouldn't be visible in the dashboards.
Families table: The Families table shows families for individual locations. Without separate locations, all the families would be jumbled together, making it harder to find families relevant to a specific location. This is particularly impactful when searching a wait list for families who might have a child to fill an opening at a particular location.
Reporting: being able to compare performance at different locations to identify who is succeeding, who is failing, whose best practices to spread throughout the organization and whose practices to improve are important insights that drive success. Without separate locations, these insights are lost."
However, to fully leverage your data and understand what's working and what's not in your childcare business, you need a childcare CRM system with hierarchical reporting capabilities. This allows you to easily aggregate and analyze data across all centers, providing valuable insights and trend forecasts.
Childcare software that can equip you with independent databases and comprehensive reporting can help streamline center operations and support strategic decision-making across your multi-site childcare network.
Pro Tip: Don't forget about lost opportunities. You would be surprised how many companies do not look back at this pool of leads. Remember, families' care needs can change. Just because they weren't interested a few weeks, months, or years ago - doesn't mean they aren't interested now.
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