Language Schools CRM

Working with Agents and Direct Applications

In an increasingly competitive market place, language schools are turning to CRM systems to improve their acquisition, development and retention of both agents and direct applications. Many are looking to improve and streamline procedures and systems – perhaps in the wake of absorption by a larger firm.

As you begin your CRM project it’s worth taking the time to outline the main goals you are trying to achieve with CRM and who exactly are the customers you are trying to manage. Are they agents? Direct applicants? The parents of your students?

Let’s start with a look at the core concepts of CRM. For a good, and brief, introduction to Customer Relationship Management you can download The CRM eBook – the first in a series of free eBooks explaining key terms and concepts in the world of CRM – or watch a short, introductory video answering the question “What’s in it for me?“.

Armed with a strong understanding of the basics we can look at some specific benefits offered by language schools CRM.

Working with Agents

Maintaining and growing the relationships you have with your agents is vital to your business. It’s also the classic use case for a Customer Relationship Management system – the acquisition, development and retention of customers. From keeping an eye on contract expiration dates to monitoring overall performance, a well implemented CRM system will bring the whole of your agent relationship management under control.

Keep track of agents you don’t currently have under contract as well. Monitor their contract expiration dates and keep records of reasons why they may wish to switch to working with another language school, so that when the time comes for them to renew their contracts you are in a good position to bring them into your team.

Equally important is the maintenance of these relationships, making sure you don’t tread on your agents’ toes (unless you have to). With the aid of a good CRM implementation you can keep an eye on potential channel conflicts and ensure you have a complete understanding of the situation before deciding whether to poach a client from your agent, or keep your agent as the go between.

Finding a partner who both understands our needs and works to win our business is important. Our Collier Pickard account manager works with us and for us – and that ultimately saves us money

Working with Clients

Making it easy for potential students to find your company, investigate the courses you offer, make enquiries and book places is key to the success of your business. As such, there are two considerations here. The first is that website integration with your language schools CRM system is key. You need information to be seamlessly imported into your CRM so that it can be monitored and dealt with in an appropriate way, and that records are maintained for future reference. The second consideration strays away from the usual concept of what CRM is: before your potential clients can make enquiries with you, they need to find you and learn that you offer them exactly what they are looking for. To enable this, let’s take a look at an approach to marketing called Inbound Marketing.

Inbound marketing is about creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your potential students, inbound marketing attracts interested parties to your institution and keeps them coming back for more information. For an introduction to inbound marketing, you can download our free Inbound Marketing eBook. We recommend a particular product to help with this process – HubSpot – as it contains all the tools you need to run a complete and successful marketing automation program.

Security is also an extremely important issue when considering CRM for language schools. You work with a lot of sensitive data (often involving child students). This data needs to be kept secure, so you need to be certain that any CRM system you consider has strict security protocols in place to prevent unauthorised access to this data.

Where can I get more help with CRM?

With us! If you’re looking for help choosing the right media CRM software or making sure your CRM project will be a success, talk to our team. We provide the CRM systems used by large and small media companies operating in the UK and rest of the world.

We offer a free, independent CRM consultation that can help you get started with your CRM project. During the consultation one of our CRM experts will help you define what you need to achieve with CRM, how you can go about doing so, and start to think about which CRM software might be right for your organisation. Schedule your consultation today!