And like any winning team, your success is our success. If your leads don't convert, no one wins.

Did you know?

Call Center Leads:

  • Many schools have faced and overcome their growing pains with call center leads.
  • Some schools experience conversions as high as those from TV and newspaper.
  • ASRs receive extensive up-front and ongoing training, as well as weekly performance evaluations.
  • ASRs confirm the prospect’s interest before transferring, ensuring that only those who are truly interested are counted as leads.
  • A quality assurance representative listens to every transferred call to ensure true interest and understanding from the prospects.

Call Center Leads:

A Whole Different Ball Game

In order to prepare for future growth in student recruitment, it's essential to understand the unique qualities of leads generated through a call center. Then you must optimize your approach. As an admissions representative, you cannot approach these leads the same as TV or newspaper leads.

The Internet became a viable and substantial source of leads around 2001. However, conversions were abysmal until admissions reps gained more understanding of them. They realized how those leads were unique and adjusted their approach.

Most schools have now seen Internet surpass TV and newspaper as their top source of media-generated starts. In the future, we fully expect that call center leads will be just as crucial as Internet leads for your school.

Our Ongoing Commitment

PlattForm's top priority is providing you with high-quality leads at the lowest possible cost. And your top priority is to convert those leads to starts. PlattForm wants to help you turn them into students at your school. As with any winning team, your success is our success. If your leads don't convert, then no one wins.

As part of this winning team, we're committed to providing you with call center leads. We’re also committed to helping you convert them into starts. The good news is that many schools have already faced and overcome their growing pains with call center leads. Some experience conversions as high as their TV and newspaper conversions. With call center leads costing significantly less than traditional media leads, this has produced an outstanding cost-per-start (CPS).

The Call Center: An Overview

Target Admissions Support Center (TASC)

Whatever vision you have of a call center, erase it from your mind now. TASC is not actually a call center. It's an admissions support center focused exclusively on postsecondary education. TASC does not employ typical minimum-wage telemarketers. Our professional admissions support representatives (ASRs) receive extensive, up-front training. They also get weekly performance evaluations and ongoing training to improve upon core competencies. A former national training director for a large Midwest-based school group leads the ASR team.

Additionally, a quality assurance team supports the ASRs by listening to every transferred call. This ensures that each lead is truly interested and fully understands that the ASR is going to transfer them directly to an admissions representative at your school. They also provide feedback to the ASRs on an ongoing basis.

The Call Center: 3 Lead Generation Programs

1. OutReach is a traditional telemarketing approach. OutReach utilizes carefully researched and developed lists, similar to direct mail. These lists are then loaded into the predictive dialer. The dialer calls numbers from the list during the campus' hours of operation. When prospects show an interest in learning more about your school, they are warm-transferred to an admissions representative. Keep in mind that ASRs confirm the prospect's interest a second time before transferring. QA makes certain that ASRs are in no way coercing a prospect. This ensures that only prospects who are truly interested are transferred and counted as leads.

2. FirstConnect is a support mechanism predominately for non-warm-transfer lead sources like the Internet, direct mail and inserts. FirstConnect assists your admissions department in reaching prospects quickly and at nontraditional follow-up times. Once TASC receives these leads, they load the information into the predictive dialer and call within minutes. The dialer calls at various times throughout the day, week and even month, if necessary. This allows you to focus on the communication with interested prospects while TASC actually gets them on the phone. Our ASRs remind prospects of their information requests. They warm-transfer these leads to your admissions representatives. FirstConnect transfers are not counted as leads, as they have already been counted and sourced.

3. ReConnect supports admissions by diligently calling on old leads through predictive dialing technology. Remarketing to your current database tends to produce starts at a lower CPL than new leads. We confirm that these prospects have a renewed interest. Then the ASR warm-transfers them to admissions representatives. Again, QA makes certain that no prospect is being coerced. ReConnect ensures that prospects are truly interested and completely understand that they are about to speak with an admissions representative at your school. They are then transferred and counted as a "new" lead.

We will now move on to address more in-depth issues for each of the 3 programs. First, we will lay out the mindset of these different types of prospects. Next, we will offer you advice on the best way to work these leads, given your knowledge of the different mindsets. Finally, we will offer you additional tips and resources to successfully convert your call center leads into starts.