Enhancing Retention: The Vital Role of Communication with Absent Students
Effective communication with absent students is crucial for student retention. This is a great time of year to revisit your systems and processes around absences and ensure you have effective communication channels in place. Here are five simple steps to keep the lines of communication open and keep your students registered.
1. Establish Absentee Policies
Clearly outline absentee policies in your dance studio. Ensure parents and students are aware of the preferred notification methods for absences, including deadlines and any specific information required, such as the reason for the absence.
2. Implement an Absentee Reporting System
Create an easy-to-use absentee reporting system. Consider adding an absentee button on your studio's website that links to a mobile-friendly form for parents to fill out when their child will be absent. This system should gather essential details such as the student's name, class, date of absence, and reason for being absent.
3. Follow-Up With Absent Students
Regularly review and follow up on reported absences. Keep records of absences and monitor any patterns that may emerge. Use this information for future planning, scheduling, and to address any potential issues with individual students or classes.
Ask questions to get to the source of the absence: is it an injury or illness? Are they unsatisfied with the teacher, class time, style or level of difficulty? They will appreciate the time you take to care. That one phone call can make the difference sometimes between a student staying or leaving. This will help you increase your overall student retention and make sure class rosters are correct on your end heading into costume season.
4. Give Choices. Be flexible
Missing classes due to schedule conflicts, too much homework, or an injury can be frustrating for students and parents. They may not know how and when they can make up their classes. Give them flexible choices and be sure your make-up policy is clearly stated. Or, suggest switching to another more convenient class time. You can avoid requests for refunds by giving lots of choices!
5. Get feedback, it's priceless
In a recent training and podcast, we explore the Gift of Feedback. If there is an area where studio owners miss golden opportunities to grow and improve it's by failing to ask for feedback when a student leaves. Keep in mind you will always have students that come and go. Attrition is the nature of the business. But what you do with the information will make the difference!
By following these simple steps, you can create a streamlined and supportive system for managing dance student absences while maintaining a positive relationship with both the students and their parents.
Let them know that their input helps to make improvements. You can create a 'Customer Satisfaction Exit Survey' with 3 to 10 questions that ask for ratings on classes, schedule, quality of lessons, and more. Notice trends or areas that you can make immediate changes and implement them. We have a customizable survey you can use here. Become a Dance Studio Owner member so you can download and customize this template to improve your student retention and gather valuable studio feedback.
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Thank you for a great webinar! It's good to know that we're all feeling the same, no matter where we are in the world. Thanks so much x I cannot tell you enough how good it feels to connect with someone who's willing to look at the truth of the situation with humor and cautious optimism... I definitely needed a lot of that advice, but more important, I needed to hear it from two badass, empowered women. Thank you, the webinar has definitely given me some motivation to put some work and time in to plan our new normal in the studio. Thank you so much for today. Lots of great ideas. Thank you!
