Case Study

Rebuilding the Enrollment Pipeline: A Customer-Centered, Data-Informed Approach

🚩The problem:

Prime Academy offered education and training programs for individuals pursuing careers in technology. As the tech industry evolved and learners began seeking more flexible, career-relevant options, Prime recognized the need to adjust its approach. Current methods were no longer effective in driving enrollment, especially with changing student expectations and a rapidly shifting job market. To respond to these trends, Prime aimed to establish an internal team that would develop and execute on a data-informed, student-focused strategy to better align its offerings, support enrollment growth, and anticipate future demand. This cross-functional team would be responsible for developing a plan for improving and supporting customers through the customer journey lifecycle from end-to-end experiences.

This newly formed team needed to create infrastructure (e.g. systems, tactics, content) and modify newly created and existing tools to track and manage customer communication. They also needed to identify new ways to capture the voice of the customer to gather insights for further growth. Prime’s custom CMS – “Student Portal” supported workflows after a customer began an application, however, this team was focused on building systems to support the pre-application phase of the customer journey. This space was highly nuanced, lacked specificity in KPI’s and had minimal and outdated resources for educating the customer on our product and value. Hiring new team members to manage this work would be costly and time-consuming.

The team needed a team of leaders to design, implement, and refine approaches for supporting customers through the pre-enrollment experience. This would require fresh content, improved mechanisms for tracking success, and an iterative approach to bridge the strategy to execution.

👥 The people

Recruitment team members needed to create new touchpoints, content, and be able to access, modify and track data for effective and meaningful student recruitment
Potential students wanting to be understood and guided towards their career goals as quickly and efficiently as possible
Leadership team wanting to understand short-term and long-term trends in recruitment and admissions pipeline in order to make more informed programmatic decisions

This project was designed to strengthen our ability to acquire and retain students by optimizing the full customer journey—from lead generation and enrollment to long-term engagement and retention. Through alignment of marketing, recruitment, and admissions efforts, we aimed to enhance customer education, increase engagement, and implement retention strategies that build lasting loyalty and student success.

🔎The scope:

Roles & Responsibilities:
As the Director of Customer Experience, I oversaw a cross-functional team of recruitment and admissions to ensure seamless execution of tasks to meet our goals. I co-authored a strategic enrollment plan with the recruitment team, which was designed to take an iterative approach to solving this problem. Using a customer-centered and data-informed approach, we continuously worked to define problems and refine our approaches accordingly. In my role, I managed team performance, created marketing content, staff training, and coaching materials, and tracked key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess our strategies. I also contributed as an individual contributor due to staffing shortages – interacting with customers, updating documentation, and analyzing data to identify opportunities for improvement. This hybrid role required both strategic oversight and hands-on involvement to drive the success of the initiative.

⚙️The Work

Our goal was to increase cohort enrollment from 10 to 13-20 students. With no fixed timeline, we tackled the project iteratively by breaking down the work into four focus areas:

Research Customer Journey Pain Points:
By reviewing and updating the customer journey map, we identified key opportunities to enhance the post-lead, pre-application phase. Our team focused on improving outreach and engagement, creating personas, and developing call scripts and recruiting tactics to engage customers more effectively.
Enhance Data-Driven Decision Making:
Partnering with the leadership team, we informed the creation of new data interfaces within Airtable and our custom CRM to track and analyze application activity. This enabled our team to measure the effectiveness of our strategies in real time, with a focus on refining messaging, timing, and event invitations to boost conversion.
(See journey mapping that includes cross-departmental functions and their responsibility for messaging and nurturing candidates.)
Increase Customer Engagement Touchpoints:
By introducing additional touch points throughout the customer journey, we increased opportunities to communicate our value proposition. These real-time engagements allowed us to gather insights on pipeline health and provide more accurate forecasting to stakeholders. (See multi-touchpoint draft image below for engagement mapping.)
Removing Barriers and Elevating the Applicant Journey
We re-imagined the application and enrollment processes to make them more customer-friendly while maintaining organizational integrity. This involved revising the application to remove barriers, enhancing the interview process for clarity, and improving the accepted student experience to celebrate milestones and increase excitement. (The image below depicts a refreshed approach with new touchpoints that met defined goals for each stage)

❗Challenges:

The project faced significant resource constraints, as the organization was understaffed and unable to allocate additional financial support. Our team had to be resourceful, utilizing existing tools and maximizing each member’s strengths to create impactful solutions.

🎯Outcome & impact:

Despite resource limitations, the team made remarkable strides in achieving our goals:

A 20% increase in leads and applicants within the first 3 months.
A rise in applicant activity and engagement compared to the previous quarter.
Conversion rate improved from 18% to 40% within the first 4 months, eventually reaching 60%.
Cohort sizes increased from 10 to 23 candidates for three consecutive cohorts.
Higher customer satisfaction and loyalty scores in post-enrollment feedback.
Reduced redundancies within communication with customers through better tracking and leveraging automation.

🏁 Conclusion:

While the initiative was ultimately impacted by the organization’s financial challenges and closure, the success of the project demonstrated the power of strategic, customer-centered design in driving acquisition, retention, and overall customer satisfaction. I am proud of the work and the impact it had on our customers and team.

Personal takeaway

I am adaptable and resourceful in the face of constraints. While we didn’t have the luxury of additional staffing or financial resources, the experience taught me how to maximize existing tools, leverage cross-functional collaboration, and innovate within limitations. It reinforced my belief that even under challenging circumstances, a strategic, customer-centered approach can lead to measurable impact. This experience deepened my understanding of the importance of being agile and creative in problem-solving, skills I continue to apply in all my work.