With registration starting on Monday, I have spent the last few weeks ensuring that everything is ready to go & as easy as possible for my clients. Part of this is creating family folders in Google Drive. For each family, I add documents throughout the year so parents can access them & get an overview of what their child(ren) are doing in piano lessons.
In the last few weeks, I have shared how I have prepared for registration. This has included:
- Creating & reviewing my policies, plus
- Essential registration documents for clients.
What Registration Used to Look Like
My registration process probably looked very similar to what many teachers use. Once all my documents were ready, I printed them off, gave them to clients, crossed my fingers that they wouldn’t lose them, & reminded them to hand them in before the deadline.Inevitably, something would go wrong. Documents got lost, the number of students registering changed (hopefully higher, but it could go either way), or any of a number of other issues. Rather than focusing on lessons, I was spending part of the time on document retrieval.I quickly learnt to email documents to clients (rather than just having a paper copy), but looking through emails wasn’t the best solution either. There had to be a better way.
Sharing Folders
What if clients could have access to a family folder that had all the studio information pertinent to their family? Giving access to a folder, ensures clients are able to:
- Access documents whenever & wherever they want (i.e. computer, tablet, phone)
- Download documents for their records
- Fill out documents electronically
- See their child’s work throughout the year
I’ve learnt that having all the registration documents in one easy-to-find place has made registration much easy for me AND my clients. This week, I will be sharing a how-to video on creating folders for each family in your studio.
The video focuses on how to do this within the Google Drive app on your iPad. However, the layout is basically the same for the computer. The only difference is that you are able to drag documents from a computer folder to the Google Drive folder.
Let me know in the comments below how you prepare for registration. What programs do you use to make the process easier for you & your clients?