Every year, millions of enquiries from prospective students drop into the inboxes of Australian tertiary institutions – but what happens to them?
Next month at HE FEST 26, Edified Senior Partner Elissa Newall will share insights from almost 500 mystery shopping excursions conducted across 30 Australian universities over the past year, revealing what prospective students actually experience when they reach out for information and support.
The results are fascinating. On the positive side, there were only a small number of genuinely bad experiences, but when they occurred, students were seriously frustrated – and the brand stench associated with a bad experienced tended to linger.
A few of the key areas for improvement included:
- Talking in code – Confusing students by lapsing into in-house jargon was an issue for almost 5% of mystery shoppers.
- Fobbed off to the website – Rather than provide an answer, institutions sometimes sent students back to their own website to hunt for the answer themselves. Not popular.
- Left hanging – It doesn’t matter how good your hold music is, nobody loves a phone queue. Interrupting the music frequently to promise that you’re next in line just makes it worse.
- The silent treatment – more common – and more damaging – than being obscure, condescending or rude is simply not responding. This was the most common issue for mystery shopping students affecting just over 9% of mystery shoppers.
Elissa will share further insights and data at the conference, which is aimed at HE leaders and any staff wanting to develop better outcomes in marketing, strategy, student recruitment and / or fundraising.
At a time when every enrolment makes a difference for most institutions, this session promises valuable insights.