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3 Ways to Improve the Parent Experience with Self-Service

In 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.

Explore how to start implementing self-service methods in your childcare organization. Increase enrollment and parent satisfaction rates with less work! 🏫

The Importance of Self-Service in Childcare 

The benefits of supplying a self-service enrollment experience to parents include: 

  • Increased enrollment efficiency 

  • Decreased time spent on manual and repetitive administrative tasks 

  • Improved parent experience

  • Minimized lost lead opportunities 

  • Streamlined communication 

These self-serve options effortlessly guide parents through the enrollment process while simultaneously providing a more personalized experience. Automating communications, scheduling tours onlineand digital enrollment ensure that your staff has more time for other important tasks. 

family #11

Happy family

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. 

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 software that includes tour scheduling functionality and customizable workflow automations. This ensures that you can set personalized scheduling periods, according to your team’s availability.

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, and medical information, and fill out necessary state forms without needing to make multiple trips. Minimize center traffic or fill 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 experienceAllow parents to e-sign documents. Plus, never worry about payment privacy again. Look for a solution that ensures financial data is encrypted, transmitted, and stored securely. 

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 solution.

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 - saving countless hours.

So, when parents open their online enrollment packet for the first time, important details are already filled out. This ensures that parents won’t be filling out the same information numerous times.  

registration forms text mockup

Example digital enrollment form

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 experience with a digital experience.  

Learn more about the power of self-serve to boost conversion success by downloading our full 2022 Benchmark Report.   

Download the Report

Meet The Author

Hope Dasher is a marketing professional with years of SEO content writing and social media strategy experience. Hope had a Bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Dallas in Psychology and Child Development and an emphasis on language. She has extensive knowledge of the childcare system, effective marketing strategies, and copywriting. Hope serves as a Content Specialist for the Marketing team at LineLeader by ChildcareCRM.

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