Is the customer experience (CX) at the heart of your customer relationship management (CRM) system?
By now, most institutions have realized the need for dedicated software systems for university admissions, namely CRM for higher education. Still, far too many CRMs for higher education gloss over the “customer experience”, or in the case of higher education, the front-end pages for applicants, students, alumni, parents, donors, recommenders, employers and partners, to name a few. Registration forms are forced to become one-size-fits-all, unable to accommodate complexity and dynamism. Portals similarly suffer from a lack of personalization and often require supplemental processes. Changes and modifications to these systems are the real problem in that they typically require significant software development effort and support.
The most often overlooked problem is the degree of control operational and non-IT staff members have over the creation and maintenance of these constituent experiences. When selecting a new CRM for higher education, how much emphasis should be placed on the CX component of the system?
The rules and logic that govern user interfaces can be incredibly complex. The management of criteria is extensive, such as whether fields should be visible, required, pre populated, and editable/read-only. Pick list values are an even more difficult component to display dynamically based on infinite logic criteria. Software developers could try to code the logic and rules, however, any changes would require all of the concrete code to be torn up and rewritten.
A CRM for higher education should contain a powerful CX component that should allow for the creation and configuration of infinite pages and portals, all through simple decelerative mouse clicks. Gartner calls this Front End as a Service (FEaaS), and Enrollment Rx is the first company to deliver FEaaS to the CRM for higher education marketplace.
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