I firmly believe that to get parents to follow your policies and procedures you need to constantly regularly remind them of what those are, i.e. childcare reminders. Over time, I have come up with several ways to remind parents how we do things at the childcare. But today I want to share with you another, yet just as effective way of putting reminders on auto-pilot. Here is a quick and easy way to schedule reminders for this week, this month or even a year in advance. Oh, and did I mention it’s totally free? Yep, FREE!
One of the things that I really love to do here at Thrivingchildcare is to share with you some of the practices that I have found to be very helpful in running my own childcare business. Because I know all too well that when you first start you don’t know what you don’t know. I get really excited when I realize that I have something to share with you that can make running your business even a little easier. Today is one of those days
I’m going to show you how to remind your childcare clients about your business practices and policies.
Why?
Well because I know just how hard it is to approach things like tuition payments due dates, late pick-ups, early drop-offs, and other specific policies that you have for your childcare with your clients. I know because I used to avoid them myself.
Then I realized a super-efficient and easy way to do it without the ensuing confrontation that I was hoping to avoid. You won’t believe how easy it is but more than that how effective it can be. This is something that I wish I had known and started right from the beginning of my business.
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How To Easily Remind Childcare Clients On Autopilot
Communication with childcare parents can be dicey, or at least it can feel that way. I know what it’s like to feel a bit intimidated about approaching a parent with either some uncomfortable information or needing to enforce a policy. You don’t want to offend or potentially lose your client.
But you don’t want to be a pushover either.
Effective communication is key!
That being said just like with most relationships, communication is key. The same is true about communicating with childcare clients. But it needs to be effective communication.
Today I’m going to talk about putting childcare reminders on autopilot.
I have talked before about how much of a fan I am of sending out regular notifications to clients. These run the gamut. They could be about tuition due dates, holidays, new policies, anything that I want the parents to be reminded about.
“But I already put all of that information in my childcare contract.”
And I know what you’re probably saying. You’re saying “but I already put all of that information in my childcare contract, or in my handbook that I give to parents when they enroll.”
And I am sure that you do.
The problem is frustrating! The problem is people forget. And that’s assuming they read it in the first place. Which is why I think it’s so important to regularly remind your clients about the policies that you have in your business.
Now you might be thinking that reminding them could become a nuisance. But actually, if you build it into a system of routine notification it becomes expected as opposed to annoying.
Think of it this way nowadays people are quite used to setting up random notifications on their phones, calendars, or any device that can help them to remember a deadline, to pay a bill or something important. Their actually helpful reminders for people.
And the thing is once you set this up you can just about forget it. It will run by itself and send out the needed reminder notifications that you might forget to do otherwise.
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No Holiday For Me
Years ago when I started my business I would try to remind my clients about upcoming holidays. But as you know as providers we are so busy. So of course, there were times when I would simply forget to do that.
Consequently, a client would show up at my door on a holiday. I didn’t want the confrontation with the client so on more than one occasion I wound up taking the child on my holiday. Yep! I was a push-over!
This became super frustrating for me. So I tried to come up with a way to set up reminders that I didn’t need to constantly remember myself. The first thing I did was set up a system of canned responses for typical things I needed to tell the parents.
I put many of them in a guide I called my Little Backbone Book. Then whenever I would see infractions I would grab my prewritten note & send out to parents.
But how could I send out my helpful reminders? Here are 3 ways I get the message out to my clients.
3 Easy Ways to Put Childcare Reminders on Autopilot
1. Daily Notes
Now I use daily notes so I was able to attach my reminders to those. I use my daily notes app to schedule reminders just about every week. You can find out more about how I use my daily notes app here
But if you don’t use daily notes, don’t worry you can still put your reminders on autopilot. Here are a couple more I have up my sleeve!
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2. You’ve Got Mail
Just about everyone has an email address, right? Why not send your helpful reminder notices there?
Last year I realized how to put childcare reminders on autopilot through email. Basically, it’s just scheduling an email to go out sometime in the future. I was so happy to find how simple it is to schedule mass emails to parents.
Here’s a step-by-step guide for scheduling mass emails.
Finally, I’ve got one more way to get your notices out to parents.
3. Text’um childcare reminders
Just like emails, almost everyone has a mobile phone too. Sending notices through text is almost as easy as through daily notes or emails.
And here’s another more detailed step-by-step for scheduling text messages.
Autopilot is Awesome
And there you have it! I told you it was easy. Using a system like this has saved me time and more importantly frustration over the years. I got my holidays back!
The real beauty is this autopilot reminder system is it’s completely customizable. If you want, you can send out messages every day (although that might be a bit much). Or maybe weekly or monthly reminders? If that would be helpful for your clients do that.
At least they can’t say they didn’t know your {insert your policy here}!
I currently have weekly tuition childcare reminders set, but after the newbies get used to the routine I might scale them back to monthly. See customizable.
Oh, and all I have to do is set aside a few minutes every month to set up my autopilot childcare reminders. Heck, I could even do that at nap time.
Do whatever works best for your business. Putting childcare reminders on autopilot was one of the best things I ever did for my business and my sanity. I bet if you build this into your routine you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
