Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing, Josh Dodson, shares his insights about how the field of higher education is embracing customer-centricity and responding to the demands of the Age of the Customer. Customer experience leadership is quickly becoming an enabler for success in higher education. Josh and show host, Julia, discuss how changing market dynamics are forcing schools to turn up their game, the importance of ease of use in student journeys, the role of personalization in engaging students and how CX success is measured in higher education. If you’re looking for some insight into how customer experience is playing out in an industry facing disruption and steep competition, then this episode is for you.

Driving change in higher education

Josh Dodson is the Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint Marketing. Josh doesn’t just strategize, he delivers results. With his uncanny ability to author strategy, execute nuanced, technical tactics and leverage big data, Josh has helped countless institutions modernize their enrollment and marketing programs. His expertise with digital marketing, analytics and SEO for higher education has made him a sought-after thought leader in the industry. Before joining VisionPoint, he led digital marketing efforts at Bentley University, Southern New Hampshire University, Eastern Kentucky University, and Lincoln Memorial University. His experience both inside the university and partnering with them from the outside gives him a unique perspective that clients find invaluable.While Josh doesn't have "CX" in his title, his work is very much focused around helping higher education institutions deliver better customer (i.e. student) experiences. As a marketer, Josh's work with schools might start with exploration into how to improve the sales funnel and engagement with prospective students, but he's not shy about pointing out the importance of managing the full student lifecycle. He notes that most institutions regard the student lifecycle with a siloed view of the student as a prospective student, student or alumni, though he's working to change this.

Josh Dodson, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at VisionPoint MarketingResponding to a tough market

The numbers of college students in the US have been on the decline over the past decade. A decline in the pool of high school graduates paired with concerns about the cost of college and changing attitudes towards higher education since the 2008 financial crisis have led to a 2 million student drop in enrollment during the last decade. This has hit for-profit schools the hardest, along with public 2-year schools in the US. And the bad news is that it looks like the same trends will persist through the mid 2020s.Adding to the challenge of dropping enrollment is a rise in alternative avenues for education. Josh notes that students are increasingly turning to "bootcamp" style learning over multi-year degree programs, meaning that a larger pool of organizations are now competing for the same (shrinking) pool of prospective students.In response to these changes, US colleges and universities are turning to student experience as a way to stand out and differentiate. From the enrollment side of things, schools are becoming more clever and streamlined about they way that they engage with prospective students, aiming to provide a frictionless experience that integrates digital engagement and personalization a la Amazon.To realize these changes, schools have had to completely change the way they think about the student journey. 

Schools historically have tended to look at [the student journey] from the perspective of the school and not necessarily from the perspective of the student. And I think that that's also a shift that a lot of schools are really having to reckon with at this point.

Just like their business counterparts in the for-profit corporate world,