Making First Contact

First and foremost, BE PROMPT. I cant stress this enough. Make sure to contact any new tutoring requests within 24 hours.

Everyone hates to be kept waiting. If you're going to have a busy few days or go on a holiday, change your availability for KIS tutoring to "Unavailable".

Part of our focus on delighting our clients is about communicating effectively. You don't have to do this all the time, but at the start of the tutor-student relationship, this is vital for building trust and showing your professionalism.

Call them

Nothing beats a quick phone call. This allows you to tick all the important boxes straight away.

Before you jump on the phone, check over the client's details and see if they've mentioned anything in particular in their request message. Make sure to also have your calendar or diary open so you know when to organise a study skills consultation.

Just so you get an understanding of how this call should go, here's a sample script:

"Hi <customer_name>! This is <your_name> from KIS Academics. How are you?"

Build some rapport, engage in some smalltalk.

"Thanks very much for requesting me as your tutor. Just to confirm, you're after tutoring for <**subject**> and you're currently in <year_level>?Oh excellent. I just wanted to give you a call to follow up on your request and book in a time for our first free 30 minute study skills consultation. How does <suggested_time> sound?"

Book in a time with the customer for your study skill consultation based on both your availabilities.

"All done! Just so you know, the study skills consultation will be held over zoom, and future lessons will be done <in_person_or_online>. During the consultation, I'll ask some questions to work out your strengths and weaknesses, then we'll build a plan together for how to proceed with tutoring sessions, and finally I'll onboard you onto the KIS Academics online platform.Any questions at all?"

"Beautiful - I'll see you at <suggested_time>. Nice to meet you!"

 

Usually students or parents will ask some questions here like:

How will payments work?

You'll be emailed an invoice or receipt after every lesson - we never ask you to pay in advance!

Can you do x during the trial lesson?

It's important to get to know the student and build a plan during the trial session so that will be my number 1 priority, but if we've got some time left over at the end I'd be happy to do x

What will you teach during actual lessons?

Lessons are flexible and completely personalised to the student. We'll go over content in the curriculum, can do questions or focus on your own strengths/weaknesses

 

Once you're done with the phone call, send them a text message straight away:

"Hi <customer_name>, nice talking to you and can't wait to kick things off. I'll see you on <suggested_time>. If you need to, you can just contact me on this number, and if you've got any questions, you can find our more info about our tutoring at this link: If you've got any questions about how the tutoring works, just click on this link: https://kisacademics.com/w/private-tutoring-faqs

If a customer doesn't pick up when you call them, then you should send them a text message or email instead. Here's a template that you can adapt:

"*Hi <customer_name>, This is <your_name>, from KIS Academics! I’ve just had your details passed on to me for <subject> tutoring - let’s organise a time for our 30 minute trial lesson. This will give us an opportunity to find out where any strengths and weaknesses lie, and then plan out how to run tutoring sessions based on this.How does <suggested_time> sound? Feel free to give me a call on this number if you want to discuss!If you've got any questions about how the tutoring works, just click on this link: https://kisacademics.com/w/private-tutoring-faqs

As I said earlier, we aim to delight customers, and sending messages and doing things promptly is always the best option. Your goal should be to go from Tutoring Request to Actual Lessons within the shortest period of time, and to guide the student + parent through this process.

Thus, it's important that you try and book your study skills consultation to a date as soon as possible.

What we've noticed through the hundreds of students/parents who contact us is that most like to get things rolling as soon as possible. When we delay this process or keep pushing things back, these clients end up losing interest or finding another tutor. By moving things quickly, we can ensure that we keep students and parents in contact and keen for tutoring with you.

Once you've gotten in contact or organised a trial session, be sure to check the KIS App to ensure the student is there, then tick off the boxes shown below. This will ensure we can email the client with any relevant information so they know what to expect when they rock up to the trial session.

Finally, the day before your trial session, send through a confirmation text message:

"*Hi <customer_name>, just sending a quick text to confirm our study skills session tomorrow at <suggested_time>. See you then!"*

Next up, the study skills consultation...