Enrollment Team Turnaround
Faced with a team of enrollment counselors who were consistently low-performing, UOP tried something new to get them to turn things around.
136
Enrollments in one month
Top 3
Team in Division
80%+
Student Retention
University of Phoenix is one of the largest for-profit higher education institutions in the world, specializing in online degrees for working adults and first-generation students.
Phoenix, AZ
5,000-10,000
$811.8 Million
We worked with an enrollment team at University of Phoenix to grow enrollments to several online programs.
The Challenge
Unmotivated Team
The team had gone unmanaged for close to a quarter, so they lacked motivation as they were not being held accountable to any sort of strategic plan.
Lackluster Performance
Despite goals laid out by the company for a certain number of enrollments per month, some counselors weren’t enrolling anyone, and those they did enroll did not have the proper expectations set and were not showing up for class.
Untapped CRM potential
Counselors on similar teams were able to get two to three live calls per day from interested potential students, but due to poor time management, these team members weren’t available for the live calls. However, they each still had a database full of students who had expressed interest at some point, but they had no contact strategy for these students.
Process and strategy
Data-driven diagnosis
We reviewed metrics across the entire enrollment cycle to identify the specific drop-off points and looked at the performance of top performers vs. struggling reps to understand key differences in approach.
Reinforced a rhythm
Part of our strategy involved setting up and enforcing a rhythm for the enrollment counselor. This included setting up daily team huddles, having weekly one-on-ones and call listening sessions where reps could listen to their own calls and identify key areas for improvement, and gave access to real-time KPIs that were backtracked from overall goals so reps knew if they were getting off track early before it was too late.
Reduced friction
We decided to streamline the sales process while encouraging reps to support prospective students more in a few key areas. We removed unnecessary friction like when people got stumped at the FAFSA application and created student walkthroughs and even just sat on the phone for moral support while someone filled out their application. We mapped the workflows to the enrollment journey, automated some processes that had been manual and documented and distributed best practices to the rest of the team to encourage teamwork and unity.
This team went from the bottom of 52 other teams to the top 3 within 60 days of consistent effort, enrolling 136 students in one month and having over an 80% retention rate on to the next class.