Many a times, once we get to daycare centre up and running, it’s chasing one operational task after another. Sometimes, it is necessary to take a step back and reassess what you have done with the aim to doing better.
List your daycare services
Make a list of all the various daycare services that you provide; be it half day or full day care, the various types of enrichment lessons, payable or complementary, etc.
What do your customers think
Do you know what your daycare services do for your customers and how it makes them feel? You can learn the answer to that question by speaking with your customers. Depending on the resources you have, you can choose to survey all your customers or every nth customer.
How are you different
Looking at the list of your daycare services, how do you compare with your competitors? You can achieve this by either observing your competitors or asking your customers and suppliers, because chances are, they would either have come in contact with them or knows someone who does.
Have you improved
Evaluate to see if you have improved from a year ago or are you now overwhelmed with so many sign ups that you’ve shelved some of the “nice to have” services that you used to provide. Be objective. Or have you been losing prospects and customers to the daycare centre down the lane?
What do unhappy customers do?
What do your customers do when they are displeased? Do they have a dedicated person looking into their concerns? Or do they simply withdraw their child? A useful exercise will be to conduct an exit interview to find out exactly why they are unhappy when they indicate their intention to withdraw their child.
Most parents usually will not withdraw for minor reasons, especially when the child’s well settled in. It is therefore a good practice to find out what it is that makes the parent withdraw the child and subject the child to a brand new environment. Sometimes, the reason is unrelated to the daycare centre .e.g. they are moving to another state but if otherwise, it is a red flag for the daycare centre to re-evaluate how its business is being conducted.
