Sit next to whoever answers your phone for one morning and write down every question. You will not need a second morning. It is the same nine, in roughly the same order, from almost every parent.
Now go to your website and count how many of the nine it answers. For most institutes the number is two or three — and the missing ones are not minor details, they are the questions the decision is actually made on.
The nine
- What are the fees, and what is included — admission, materials, examinations, transport?
- How many children are in a class or batch?
- What are the timings, and what does the annual calendar look like?
- Who teaches, and what are their qualifications and experience?
- What have your students achieved, specifically?
- Is transport available, and on which routes?
- What are the safety and supervision arrangements?
- What happens if a child falls behind — is there any support, or do they simply drop?
- What is the admission process, which documents are needed, and by when?
The fee question, which everybody hides
Almost no institute publishes fees, and the reasoning is always the same: we want them to call so we can explain the value.
What actually happens is that a parent who cannot find your fees assumes the worst, or assumes you are hiding something, and calls the institute that was straightforward. The parents you "protect" yourself from by staying silent are mostly the ones who would have been affordable — and you lose an equal number of parents who could easily have paid and simply disliked the opacity.
A range with what it includes is enough. It filters the enquiries that were never going to convert and it earns trust from the ones that were.
Results, and the temptation to round upwards
Publish results honestly and specifically. Numbers of students, actual outcomes, the year they belong to. Resist the industry habit of quoting selections without the base — the claim that impresses a parent least is the one that cannot be true.
There is a practical reason beyond ethics. Advertising claims in the education and coaching sector have drawn increasing scrutiny from India’s consumer regulator, and unsubstantiated success claims are exactly what has been targeted. Say what you can support.
Answering does not cost you the call
The fear behind all of this is that a website which answers everything removes the reason to phone. It does the opposite. A parent who has read the fees, seen the faculty and understood the batch size and still calls is not enquiring — they are close to enrolling. Your front office stops repeating itself and starts having conversations that go somewhere.
The questions do not disappear when you refuse to answer them. Only the parents do.