Negative vs. Positive Parent Experiences & How It Affects School Retention

"Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner claims that it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for ONE unresolved negative experience. 🤔

Now, you may be thinking, "well, I'll just make sure there are no negative experiences for my school families." But let's be realistic. Your school is going to make a mistake. 🙄

Even if you try to deliver excellent customer service, someone will make a mistake.
It could be that one day carpool takes too long and a parent misses an important meeting. 🙄
Or a child misplaces an expensive pair of shoes/outfit. 🙄

Or the only time you call a parent is when the child is in trouble and/or is sick and needs to be picked up ASAP. 🙄

And these are just minor frustrations.
What about when a child tells a parent that school is awful and the teacher is mean? 😬
What if the parent doesn't see the amazing things happening at a school and questions the value? 😬
Or a parent is frustrated with the administration and teachers and the way they handled a situation. 😬

There are a million possible ways that your parents will have a negative experience. So we have to assume that your school will definitely (unintentionally) do just that.

What's the solution?
First, it's obviously reducing the likelihood of a negative experience. 🤨
Next, it's training people on how to respond to negative experiences. 👏
And finally, it's stacking the deck against negative experiences by creating built-in "positive experiences." 😎

This ensures that you have positive experiences—like photo cards, a phone call from the teachers/staff/HOS, email updates about the child's experience, conversations in carpool, a kind note in the mail, and more—to outweigh the negative ones. 🙌

What are you doing to combat negative experiences at your school?

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