How to Improve Your Rebooking Rate.

You get a booking from a new student, the lesson goes very well and the student is clearly enjoying it, at the end they say they would book again soon, you provide them with a nice feedback form, … and you wait, and wait and they never book again.

All you can do is wonder… why?

I wish we could easily say why but I’m afraid there can be multiple reasons. Let’s have a look at some of them and most of all, see what we need to pay attention to in order to improve as teachers on Fluentify.

Some reasons are beyond our control! So first of all, don’t panic as one of the following might be the case:

• The student would simply like to practice with different tutors (he or she might be interested in different accents).
• The student booked a session with you because their favourite tutor was away so as much as they enjoyed the class with you, they want to continue with the tutor they know well. And yes, I know, it would be nice if they let us know about it rather than disappear without any explanation.
• The student received a promotional token or 1 session as a gift but they never had any intention to actually buy a pack. So you did your best but Fluentify was never something they were looking for.
• The student has no idea what they want so they keep trying different tutors until they realise what they are really looking for or until they use up their tokens and their adventure with the English language ends.

Let’s consider now a student who has a few tokens at their disposal, is willing to work with one tutor only, books a session with you hoping you will be the one!

Here is what you should do:

• Start already before the session! Send a message on chat to greet the student and find out a bit more about them. Do some research on the platform if the student has been with Fluentify for a while.
• During the session be very friendly but professional at the same time. You want to become their friend AND their English teacher.
• Find out who they are and what their needs are. Why are they learning English and what would they like to achieve?
• Tell them YOU know how to help them achieve their goals and that after the introductory class, you will provide them with detailed feedback with some ideas for a programme the 2 of you could follow.
• Make sure the student talks most of the time! If they ask you about your life, family etc., answer the question but don’t go on for too long! Bounce the question back to the student and let THEM tell you about themselves.
• Get a good idea of what they are interested in and use this information when sending a follow-up activity.
• If they talk about some important events taking place in their lives soon, make sure you mention them at the end of the feedback form. They will immediately feel that you care about them!
• Don’t forget to teach English during the session! As much as the first lesson is about getting to know each other, you need to teach your students something during the session! After all, they paid for an English lesson. Provide your student with some feedback during and at the end of the session; pick up on some mistakes they have made more than once and provide them with some more structured practice around the mistake – short but effective!; correct them from time to time and feed them some new vocabulary.
• If your student has a low level of English – praise them, boost their confidence but at the same time don’t forget about error correction. Make them feel they are already learning English from the very first minute they met you.
• If you feel the lesson is not going in the right direction, change something! Make sure you have a few resources ready – you could share a file with your student, you could watch a short fun video and talk about it, you could even do a grammar exercise together if this is what the student wants! Be ready for anything and everything.
• Tell them a bit about Fluentify – how to book sessions, when and how often and that they can choose to follow a teacher by clicking on a heart icon on the tutor image. After this the student will know exactly what to do when the session ends, i.e. book their next session with you and mark you as their favourite tutor 🙂

You have now gained a new long-term student! They trust you, they love spending time with you, they can’t imagine their life without you!

Happy tutoring to you all!