CRM for Education

What selling education actually looks like

A parent sends "do you have a place for a 9-year-old in September, and how much is it?" to four schools on a Sunday evening. A student asks a language school on Instagram whether the B2 course starts in January. A working adult fills in a form on a course seller's landing page at 23:10. In every case the decision is large — a year of fees, a career move — and the first contact is small, and the institution that treats the small contact as if it were large gets the enrolment.

Speed matters more here than in most industries because the enquiries arrive together. The Harvard Business Review's study of 2,241 companies found that responding within an hour made a lead nearly seven times as likely to be qualified as waiting even an hour more; the average company took 42 hours. An admissions office answering Monday morning what was asked on Sunday evening is, by that measure, already late — and the school across town answered at 21:00.

The second shape is the visit. Almost nobody enrols without a trial lesson, an open day or a campus tour, and almost every institution loses people between "visit booked" and "visit done". The third shape is length: a September enrolment is often decided in March and paid in June, and a record that nobody owns for three months is a record that quietly goes to a competitor.

The pipeline we recommend starting from

Every stage below is an event that either happened or did not. "Interested" is not a stage; "trial lesson attended" is.

Schools usually run one pipeline per intake type — new admissions, re-enrolments, summer school — and course providers one per product family. Starter includes two pipelines, Growth five, Business ten. Put the stage that leaks — visit booked to visit done — under reminders before tuning anything else.

Student and parent fields worth having

In education the person who enquires and the person who attends are often different. Keep the parent as the contact and the student's details as fields on it, or the reverse for adult learners; the lead-detail layout is configurable per role so each desk sees only its own set.

Tags carry the things that change: "scholarship applicant", "needs transport", "September waiting list". Saved views turn a filter into a one-click list — "all September enquiries with no visit booked" is the list the admissions desk opens every morning.

The inbox: where every enquiry starts

WhatsApp, Instagram DMs and Messenger land in one shared inbox. A new conversation creates a record automatically with the full message history attached, and the phone number is normalised to international format so the parent who messages on WhatsApp and calls the office a week later is one record, not two. A web form on the school site and the lead webhook from a landing page create records the same way, with the ad fields filled.

Two settings carry the load in an admissions office. Distribution: each channel can name the advisers to whom unowned conversations are assigned in turn, so the Sunday-evening enquiry has an owner before Monday. Working-hours reply: an inbound message outside the shift can trigger an automatic reply — "we open at 08:30; here is the programme guide in the meantime" — which holds the family until someone real answers.

Brochures, timetables and fee sheets go out from the same thread, and the reply stays on the record. When an adviser leaves in July, the conversations do not leave with them.

Trial lessons, open days and the no-show

The appointments module is the school's second pipeline. A trial lesson has a date, a duration, a teacher or room and a student; an open day is the same object with many attendees. Bookings can be made by staff from the record or by the family from an online booking page, and reminders go out by WhatsApp, SMS or e-mail on the schedule you set.

1. Book from the conversationThe adviser picks a slot without leaving the thread; the record moves to "visit booked".
2. Reminders go outTypically the evening before and two hours before, to the parent and, for adult learners, the student.
3. Mark the outcomeAttended, cancelled or no-show. A no-show moves the record back and opens a task to rebook — the family is not lost, only late.
4. Ask for feedback the same dayThree questions after the trial lesson produce the reason a family did not proceed while they still remember it.

For institutions with several campuses or teachers, the shift calendar decides who is bookable when, and the response-time report counts working minutes, so a no-show rate by teacher and by weekday becomes a number rather than an impression.

Running an enrolment season

The season is where education differs from most businesses: two hundred enquiries in March, twenty in July. Three tools make the peak survivable.

Select all that match, act once

Filter the list — "September enquiries, no visit, owner X" — select everyone the filter matches, and move, reassign, tag or export them in one action, with a readable log of what was done.

Bulk stage move with pipeline awareness

When the summer-school pipeline closes, move what is left into the autumn pipeline at the right stage rather than one record at a time.

Recurring tasks

"Call the waiting list every Monday" and "send the fee reminder on the 1st" repeat by themselves; each period is completed separately, so nothing is lost in the weeks that matter.

Deferred, not lost

A family who says "next year" gets a stage of its own and a task dated to next season's first week — the cheapest enrolment you will ever make.

Automations that do the chasing

Automations are built from triggers (a record enters a stage, a field changes, a date arrives, nothing has happened for N days) and actions (send a message, create a task, change a field, assign, notify). For a school the useful set is small and specific.

• Enters "Contacted", no reply in 2 days → second WhatsApp message with the open-day dates; in 5 days → call task for the owner.
• Visit booked → reminders; no-show marked → stage back, rebooking task, note on the record.
• Offer sent, idle 7 days → alert owner and director; second offer message with the instalment option.
• Intake date minus 14 days → "what to bring on day one" message; minus 1 day → reminder to the parent.
• Enrolled → welcome message, task for the finance desk, tag "2026-27".

Stage-bound automations sit on the stage and run when a record enters it; account-wide ones watch the whole workspace. The log shows which automation ran on which record and whether the message was delivered, which is how you learn that the 23:10 auto-reply is the one that books visits.

Courses as products, instalments as income

A course is a product with a price, an optional cost (teacher hours, materials, exam fees) and custom fields — level, start date, seats. An enrolment is a deal with that product on it. When the deal is won, the income is recorded, the cost is booked as an expense and the seat count comes down, so "how many places are left on the January B2 course" is a number in the products list rather than a question for the coordinator.

Instalments are recorded as income entries against the deal, so the finance view shows what was promised, what was paid and what is due, by course and by month. Adviser commissions — a fixed sum or a percentage per user on won enrolments — are computed in the same movement. Deal profitability per enrolment, cost against fee, is a Business-plan feature; the basic income-and-expense view is on every plan.

A week at the admissions desk

1. Monday 08:30 — the weekend queueEnquiries from Saturday and Sunday, already assigned by distribution, held by the auto-reply. Each gets a call before 10:00.
2. Tuesday — trial lessonsBooked from threads during the week; reminders went out by themselves; outcomes marked from the phone after each one.
3. Wednesday — the no-show listYesterday's no-shows are tasks; two messages and a call each.
4. Thursday — offersThe idle-7-days list surfaced by the automation; one call each, instalment option offered.
5. Friday — the director's glanceResponse time by adviser, visits booked by source, no-show rate by teacher, enrolments by programme against last year. Four numbers, one screen.

Who sees what in a school

Admissions adviser

Own families plus unassigned enquiries; inbox, appointments, leads — view and edit, no delete; sees fees quoted, not other advisers' commissions.

Reception

Inbox and appointments for everyone; no pipeline value, no finance.

Teacher

Trial lessons booked with them and the students on them; nothing else.

Campus or programme head

Department scope over their campus; reassign, reports, activity log.

Finance desk

Deals, income and expense; no inbox.

Departments follow the org chart — campus, then programme — and a manager sees everything below them. The activity log records who opened, edited, exported or reassigned which family's record; for anything involving children's data that is a reasonable expectation, and it arrives with the Growth plan.

Numbers a school director should watch

• First-response time in working minutes — the number that predicts visits more than any other; the Sunday enquiry answered at 08:35 Monday is 5 minutes late, not 11 hours.
• Enquiry → visit booked rate, by source and by adviser — which ads and which people convert.
• No-show rate by teacher, campus and weekday — the leak; usually fixable with reminder timing.
• Visit → enrolment rate — the adviser's real conversion, and the programme's real appeal.
• Enrolments and revenue by programme against capacity — the course that fills the calendar is not always the one that pays for it.
• Deferred pipeline for next season — the enrolments you have already half won.

All of these are pivot reports — rows by adviser or programme, columns by stage or month — with a chart and a CSV export, and they can be saved so the Friday view is one click.

What this is not

This is not a learning management system, a student information system or a timetabling tool. It does not host lessons, grade work, record attendance in class, manage the academic calendar or hold transcripts. It also does not take card payments online — fees are recorded here, collected through whatever your school already uses. Keep the academic record in the system built for it; keep the enquiry, the conversation, the visit, the offer and the follow-up here.

It is also worth saying plainly that automated daily backups of your workspace are not currently part of the service. Export what you must retain, and the CSV export is on every list.

When it stops working

Which plan fits?

A single-site tutoring centre or language school runs on Starter. A school with several advisers, ad-driven enquiries and a real season lands on Growth, for the automations and the roles more than anything else; a group with campuses is a Business-plan account for the ten pipelines and fifty users. See the pricing page, and the appointments and automations pages for the two modules that carry the load.