As the owner of your English school, you need to define what your rules are.
Every sustainable business that offers a service has rules.
In order to create value for students and maximize profit, you need to set and stick to the rules.
One important thing to keep in mind when setting up your school rules is that
one you should only do it once.
It will hurt your school’s bottomline to change them. Inform your students and
be clear about what the rules are, and only budge in extreme cases. Being a
pushover won’t help you in the long run.
Pocket Passport: Save time, eliminate mistakes and offer value
Managing reservations is a lot of work. It can eat up large parts of your day
very quickly.
The Pocket Passport online reservation system is very flexible and is designed
for school owners to create a variety of classes and options to maximize your
class capacity. It gives you options to up sell students on benefits for premium
membership types.
Students will pay extra for flexibility. Offer a premium ticket package that
gives students makeup chances if they cancel their lessons.
Another option might be to offer students makeup lessons that are above
and/or below their level. By offering a plan like this, students will have more
options to take makeup lessons.
Types of Students and Tickets
Note: 1 class = 1 ticket
There are typically two types of tickets: Fixed and flexible.
Students with Fixed Tickets come at the same time and the same day every
week.
Students with flexible tickets come whenever their schedule permits and
according to what’s available at your school.
Cancelation Rule & Grace Period
The first rule you should consider is your cancelation rule.
There are three things to keep in mind here.
1. If a student cancels a lesson after this cancelation rule, they will lose their
ticket. For example, if your cancelation rule is one hour before a lesson and the
student cancels their lesson 30 minutes before the lesson, they will lose their
ticket.
2. By default, Pocket Passport offers a grace period for flexible tickets. The
grace period is 24 hours. So if a student cancels a lesson 24 hours or one full
day before the cancelation rule they will get their ticket back with no penalty.
So for example, if the cancelation rule is set to 60 minutes…
– the student can cancel their class 24 hours + the cancelation rule. In this case
it’s 60 minutes or one hour, so the student must cancel their class 25 hours
before the class starts in order to get their ticket back.
3. If the student cancels their lesson after the grace period, but before the
cancelation period, the student will get a makeup lesson (if you’re offering
makeup lessons).
If you don’t offer makeups, they will lose their ticket completely after the
grace period.
Offer value to your students
Remember you can create multiple ticket types with Pocket Passport.
So for example, your “Basic Plan” might not offer makeup lessons, but your
“Premium Plan” might. If the student didn’t buy the “Premium Plan”, they’ll
lose their ticket when they cancel. If they did buy the “Premium Plan”, they’ll
be able to take a makeup lesson according to your school rules.
With Pocket Passport’s flexible reservation system, you can assign different
types of tickets to different students in the same class.
What are Makeup Level Rules?
There are 2 kinds of makeup lessons.
Renewable and non-renewable
Renewable
A renewable makeup lesson means that the student can cancel their lesson
multiple times within the renewable period.
So for example, if you set the renewable period to 10 days, and Angela cancels
her lesson on April 1st, she has until April 11th to make that lesson up.
If she cancels her lesson again on April 5th, the expiration date remains the
same: April 11th, BUT she can reserve a makeup lesson again.
Non-renewable
A non-renewable makeup lesson means students only have one chance to
make up the canceled lesson before they lose it. If they cancel the makeup
lesson when it’s non-renewable, they lose it entirely.
Of course, you don’t have to offer any makeup lesson if you don’t want.
Again, this is a great option and up sell to offer your students. Offer 3 types of
packages:
1. Basic (no makeup lesson)
2. Silver (non-renewable makeup lesson)
3. Premium (renewable makeup lesson)
NOTE: the makeup level rules are the only rules in school set up that can be
changed.
What is the Upward/Downward Rules for Makeup Lessons?
Next, let’s look at the upward/downward rule for makeup lessons.
If your school allows makeups:
a. are they permitted to take makeup lessons in their level only?
b. are they allowed to take makeup lessons in classes above and below their
level?
If they are allowed to take them in other levels, how many levels above or
below?
NOTE: This is JUST another option and level of flexibility. You do not have to
offer makeup lessons above and below their level. However, this is something
that you may experiment with and change as your school grows.
What’s the Global Setting in Pocket Passport?
The global setting is for flexible tickets only. The global setting is for schools
who allow students to take lessons in other levels. This is a great option to
offer for students with low or high confidence. This allows the student to view
and reserve lessons in other levels in addition to their own.
If your school is set to GLOBAL, this will allow students with normal or monthly
flexible tickets to see and reserve classes in other levels.
If this setting is not on, students will not be able to see other other levels.
What’s the Advance Appointment Rule?
Far in advance rule – how many days in advance are your students allowed to
reserve lessons?
How far into the future can they view the schedule. For example, can they see
lessons 30 days into the future?
Last minute rule.
How many minutes before the lesson can a student reserve the lesson? If a
student can reserve a lesson right up until the lesson starts, you can just set it
as 1. If students must reserve a lesson 60 minutes before the start of the
lesson, you would set this at 60.
The flexibility for students to book right up until the start of the lesson is great
on one hand. On the other hand, if there’s a big gap between student levels at
your school, you may need time to prepare the right lesson material.
Final thoughts
Before you set your rules, there are things that you should carefully consider.
Check out tomorrow’s blog to learn the top 4 things that every school owner
should consider when setting your school rules.
