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The 3 step guide to a successful Clearing 2017

By close of Clearing 2016, over 63,000 students had entered UK universities with calls to UCAS hitting the 12,000 mark – this is not including the calls to individual universities!

If you search ‘Calls during clearing’ you are hit with numerous student focused blog posts about what to prepare for calling a university, what buzz words to include and what questions to ask. For many prospective students this could be one of the most important calls they will ever make.  But, what does this mean for universities?

This means answering the calls of over 60,000 determined students looking for a place at university, this means working quickly and efficiently to ensure that students are informed and university places are filled.

At Gecko, we have developed Gecko Form & Gecko Call to ensure that your team will be equipped with the tools needed to tackle Clearing, no matter how many inquiries you receive!  We have taken note of how our clients approach Clearing and have developed a three step guide to ensure that you will be fully equipped to tackle Clearing – before, during and after!

 

Step 1: Be Prepared

We are constantly impressed with the ways that our clients have adapted Gecko Form and Gecko Call to capture students details before Clearing has even begun. Here are a few ideas of how you can make sure that students are your team’s primary focus when Clearing begins!

Be prepared with pre-clearing forms

Make sure you are ahead of the game by publishing pre-clearing Gecko Forms early. Pre-clearing forms are designed to capture prospective students details as early as possible – allowing you to plan for the busy period.

Pre-defined scripts

By creating predefined call scripts, you can ensure that your Clearing team is collecting the right information from every call. One of the best features of Gecko Call is that you can’t move on to a new call until you have completed the relevant information on your existing call. Thus meaning no student falls through the cracks!

Clearing hotline

By setting up a dedicated Clearing hotline you will be able to automatically assign incoming telephone numbers to your Clearing campaign. If you foresee a vast amount of international calls, you can create multiple country specific numbers to make it easier for your students.

Create Clearing Campaign

Within Gecko Call you can create a dedicated Clearing call campaign which encompasses the relevant pre-defined scripts, specific telephone numbers for incoming call and import students details into the campaign.

Automate follow-up

Provide your students with the right impression and automate personalised email or SMS follow-up messages instantly (or with delay).

 

Step 2: Be Responsive

As soon as Clearing begins you will be ready to tackle the calls of determined students looking for a place at your university, as long as you follow the suggestions of setup one you and your team will be ready as soon as hotlines open.

Import data and set up in minutes

Collate existing students data into a CSV file and import their details into a Gecko Call campaign. You can export details as many times as you would like to ensure that your campaign is kept up to date.

Record your calls with VOIP Calling

Keeping track of what you’ve said to whom can be a difficult with so many calls coming in every day. By using VOIP calling technology you will be able to record all of your clearing calls, ensuring that you won’t forget a second of you ten thousand coming your way!

VOIP technology is a great way of ensuring that you are providing international students with the correct visa advice. Check out our international blog to find out more!

 

Step 3: Be Smart 

The more information that you input into Gecko before the campaign goes live, the more that you will get back from Gecko’s reporting tools. Our system has around 150 reporting widgets for you to take advantage of, so be prepared and you will save yourself a lot of work when it comes to evaluating your campaign!

Live tracking

The Gecko dashboard provides you with an overview of your call campaign, the widget tool allows you to see who is making calls, how long for and what the outcomes are.

Evaluation

Once your campaign has ended, our widgets will be able to provide you with a campaign overview, this can include conversion rates, total number of calls by user and as a whole.

We’ve watched how Clearing has grown in importance year after year and have been an integral part of our clients campaigns over the past two cycles. We know how crucial it is to get these campaigns right.