Case Study

The virtual tour’s really helped me because I’m the only person that makes the sales. Whereas before people would come in and say, “Oh, can I just have a look around? I just saw your sign on the road”. Afterwards, they won’t call back and I would have to follow up. But now they’ve seen the virtual tour, they say, “I’ve seen your facility, it looks great. I just want to see if I can enrol and if I can meet the teachers.” And that’s pretty much it and it takes five minutes and the conversation with the client is a lot more authentic. I offer them a seat and a coffee and they fill out the form right then and there. Because before they’ve already seen the virtual tour, they’ve already decided to enrol, so everyone that comes in is 100% enrolled, or going on the waitlist. There’s no mucking around. They know what they want and they’re here to secure their space. And that makes my job a lot easier too.

Before we would have a mom come in and then she would need to go home and talk to her family. Now it is so much easier for them to show their husband or grandma or granddad. So the whole family gets to make the decision on the spot. And one thing that’s come about is we have a few families that don’t speak English, and they have grandparents in their homes that don’t speak English. So showing them that virtual tour is just so easy for them as well. The virtual tour speaks all languages because it’s visual and everybody can understand it.

I used to get probably two to three walk-ins a week, now I’m getting about two to three walk-ins a day. Walk-ins or phone calls, so people that have viewed it and they’ve called us. Or people that live in the neighbourhood and they’ve just viewed it and they’re just popping in to meet us. So, it’s been really busy.

Previously we had to do open days. Open days are really hard, you’re spending a lot of money by paying teachers to come in extra hours on a weekend and you’re just sitting there waiting and hoping for someone to pop in. Whereas the virtual tour is like an open day 24/7! So it has saved us time and money.

The team are actually quite proud of the virtual tour because they get to show off what they do and they show it to their family as well and say, “This is where I’m working, come to have a look online.”. I’ve shared it on my personal Facebook page and said, “Hey family, check out my work.” And I’ve actually had a few inquiries from my personal Facebook page as well.

It’s been a really great investment and we’ve been able to reap the rewards pretty much straight away.

 

I’m just so amazed when you go through the tour about the clarity of the pictures, it’s just so surreal. At the beginning I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so surreal. It’s so futuristic. But it’s just awesome, the visuals, the clarity of the pictures is so good. It’s almost like you’re in there, which is what you’re trying to create. It’s like you’re already there.

If you want to save time on making sales and you want to make a quick turnover, then I would invest in it. It’s just so valuable, you can’t go wrong with it. It’ll never bring your business down. If anything, it’ll get you out there quicker, faster, and you’ll reap the rewards real quick. We’ve increased profitability by 20% already. And we have a waitlist until end of 2021. Oh my gosh, we even changed our logo, we got new road signs, everything. And it hadn’t quite, it was going up slowly, but it didn’t really hit the spot until we got the virtual tour and then that was it.

I worried that people wouldn’t like it. And people were still wanting to be old school and come in and look around. And people wouldn’t visit it through the website or anything as much. But I think in the first couple of weeks that proved me wrong. Mom and dad don’t have the time to both come in in the middle of the day, they’re both working. So, we have to just move with the times and move with technology. And we’re all time-poor. So, creating that resource where they can just be on their tea break in the office and have a look around the centre. Boom, they’ve already made 90% of their choice. All they’ve got to do now is call me. I can scan through an enrolment form or they can do a quick visit after work to pick up a form and meet me and the teachers. And that’s it.