What We Learned from “Secret Shopping” Your Graduate Programs

0:00:11.9 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. Today, our experts share findings from a recent secret shopping trip we undertook to find out how graduate schools are recruiting, engaging, and nurturing leads from adult learners. The exercise was eye-opening to say the least. We’ll share what we learned, the good, the bad, and the ugly, in terms of how graduate enrollment leaders from more than 50 institutions stack up against one another and against industry best practices in adult learner recruitment. So give these folks a listen and enjoy.

0:00:51.2 Val Fox: Hello and welcome to Office Hours with EAB. My name is Val Fox, and I’m a senior director and principal on EAB’s adult Learner recruitment team, where we’re charged with helping universities grow enrollments for their graduate and professional programs, all adult serving programs. So today we’re here. I’m really excited about this. We’re here to share in insights from secret shopping across 50 universities, lead nurturing efforts. This is basically how they engage and put themselves forward with prospective graduate students. So engaging and supporting those students on this elusive journey from site visitor to lead and inquiry to applicants. And I’m particularly excited about today’s conversation for two reasons. Number one, I’m a former higher ed chief marketing officer whose team was charged with this work, so I know how critical and how hard it is. And two, because I’m joined by one of my favorite people at EAB, my friend and colleague, Kena Wolf. Kena, would you mind introducing yourselves and telling our listeners a little bit about your background and role at EAB?

0:02:03.1 Kena Wolf: Absolutely, Val. It’s so, I’m so happy to be here today to talk about this topic. So a little about my myself. I serve as a partner development executive also on EAB’s adult learner recruitment team. I get to work with colleges and universities that have made growing adult and graduate learners a top priority. And I’m really passionate about this work because prior to coming to EAB, just about six months ago, I served as a chief enrollment management officer at a regional private institution in the Midwest. So I too know how difficult this work really can be. The school that I worked at relied on graduate and adult online enrollments to meet net tuition targets for the institution. And I’ve worked in this space for 24 years. Over that time, I have seen so much change. And I can tell you that institutions that stay up to date on enrollment trends and that are nimble enough to respond to those trends are just much more likely to grab their fair share of enrollments. So I’m really excited to have the conversation and looking forward to spending a little time with you, Val.

0:03:13.7 VF: Well, thank you for that. And you know, it strikes me, I know that sometimes we can use insider language. Secret shopping may be one of those things that may not land on ears the same way for everybody. Right? So let’s just clarify what we mean by that. What we mean by secret shopping is that we went on and pretended we were students. We went on to university websites and signed up for the request for information form. And every university on every program page has a button that says, contact us or learn more or request information. And so by simply filling that form out, we’re able to really see quite clearly how universities go about this really difficult work of convincing prospective students. And the very, the tough and critical adult learners in particular, these are people who are time starved, very busy, but convincing them to apply and enroll, right?

0:04:19.5 VF: So it’s fiercely competitive, it’s very important. And by secret shopping and doing that work and assessing, looking at the communications we receive on the heels of that, we’re really able to kind of compare and contrast how schools are doing there. So just to clarify, that’s what we mean when we talk about secret shopping. And so I would love to hear from you, Kena, you bring so much knowledge and insight in your very close to this work as a former VPEM. Right? Do you think that looking at lead nurturing efforts is top of mind for most higher ed leaders today?

0:04:57.3 KW: Yeah, I think that’s such a great question, Val. And you know, thinking back when I was a Chief enrollment management officer, a VPEM, we actually paid an organization to secret shop for us, our lead nurturing campaign, because we wanted to know what our students were receiving. Like we knew what our communication channel was, but we also wanted to know, you know, what was the quality of the text messages or the phone calls or the other outreach that they might receive. And then we wanted to put ourselves in the perspective of that potential student. So I think lead nurturing efforts are absolutely top of mind. And watching those lead nurturing efforts are top of mind for VPEMs. I think most know that you can’t just place marketing and advertising and expect students to do the rest that they know they have to follow up with them and continue that marketing and nurturing campaign.

0:05:52.8 KW: But I think if we’re being really honest with ourselves, I think most VPEMs would say that their strategy is starting to get a little stale and maybe a little static. So many schools are running kind of static drip campaigns from their CRM. And that’s, you know, and they’re calling it good. And every potential student is getting the same email at the same time, regardless of their interest or their intention. And that strategy is starting to fall short. It’s starting to fall flat a little bit. So secret shopping is a great place to start to figure out what that feels like from a student’s perspective. So I’m so happy that you did that work.

0:06:33.6 VF: Well, I’m happy to, now that I’m on the other end of it, but I can tell you that for a few months there, I was… Yes. We were bombarded. We, the proverbial we, my yes, my secret shopping accounts, we were bombarded with calls, texts, emails. And it’s really, really interesting to hear you say that you believe that the static approaches that schools aren’t taking or or the static approach that schools are taking are no longer seeing those results. I think schools that are doing this work really well are committed not just to, I guess the, the front-end communication and branding and messaging, but they’re looking at the results, the open rates, the click through rates, the conversion is email or text or any of these channels serving as a potentially strong assist in that conversion to application. Right?

0:07:31.4 VF: And so you’re saying that most schools are finding, as you talk to them, they’re finding that it isn’t doing the work. And hopefully that’s because they really are sharpening their pencils and measuring the results and they’re learning that they need to do better. So with that, here’s how we approach this, and then we’re gonna dig into the findings, the meat of the conversation, if you will. So again, visited the websites at 50 universities, and this was a range, Kena, this was publics, privates, regionals, nationals, and completed requests for information forms for online and on ground programs. And these were across disciplines, all sorts of disciplines, health professions, business, education, counseling, you name it. And we did get bombarded. And so we have hundreds and hundreds of data points to pull from here. And so I think the first finding that we came across is that campaigns today really need to be dynamic.

0:08:36.3 VF: You just teed up the word static. The opposite of static is dynamic. And that means that they campaigns should be adaptive and respond to students’ intent and behavior. And so there’s a lot there. Student’s intent, we’re not crystal, you know, we don’t have crystal balls. We can’t read into students’ minds, but we can ask them. And I know at EAB, in the adult learner recruitment team that we’re on, we do micro surveys. We ask students what their intentions and motivations are with going back to school, and then we start using their responses to reflect the messaging we send back to them. So when schools aren’t doing that and they’re using kind of what you described as a static approach, they’re really limiting themselves. Right? So I guess a question for you, when we talk about this idea of being dynamic and responding to what we see students telling us they’re interested in, and also their actions online are also kind of this little trail of digital, you know, it’s their, their digital trail. We can follow that and assume that they use certain channels more than others, and we can adapt to that, right?

0:09:52.2 KW: Yeah.

0:09:52.8 VF: So is this attainable for schools when they’re using, you know, every, just about every schools or so many schools we talked to are using Slate, right? That’s very prevalent today. Do tools like that, is that enough for schools to be using Slate and say, “Hey, look, I’m good.” I we created a new campaign, and we’ve got, we’ve got program specific campaigns going out in Slate on a regular basis. I know most schools do that. So tell me, do you think that’s enough?

0:10:21.6 KW: Yeah, I think you’re right. Most schools are doing that. You’re, they’re utilizing the tools within Slate, but they just don’t have the capabilities to get really sophisticated and dynamic. So they are quite good at putting together kind of static drip campaigns that go out based on triggers within their own CRM. So those triggers really have a lot more to do with what the institution needs and wants, rather than what the students needs, desires and interests are. And because of that, the campaigns just aren’t nearly as dynamic and they don’t have the ability to really, or the bandwidth, I would say, to really create those responsive campaigns that are dynamic, that you’re talking about. They’re not running them for much longer than six weeks. They really are all about what they’re looking for in terms of application deadlines and what the student’s next steps would be. And I think you brought up a great point in saying, they’re not asking students what they’re interested in. They’re not asking students beyond the program what they’re really looking for in a program, whether that’s flexibility or return on their educational investment or any of the other needs that students have. And if you’re not asking, it’s really difficult to respond in a dynamic way to those students’ needs and intentions.

0:11:49.0 VF: Agreed. And, and I think for most of us today, we’ve been exposed and educated by some of the best consumer brands out there, right?

0:11:58.7 KW: Yeah.

0:12:00.8 VF: I start watching crime dramas on Netflix. You can imagine what I’m gonna be hearing more about in my outreach from them, they, they want me to be this, they’re trying to create sticky customers. So what is, is it a mindset shift? Is it a technology platform shift? Do schools, I guess, do schools get that they need to start adopting from a playbook that is out, it is out in the world, and it is changing the expectations, I think, for a lot of adults, right? That they’re going to be served and their needs will be addressed based on their actions and their interests.

0:12:48.4 KW: Yeah, you’re a 100% right. I mean, my Netflix feed is completely different from my husband’s Netflix feed, right? And we’re very interested in very different things. All of us have, as consumers have come to expect that the, who we engage with knows us. They understand us, and we don’t have to give them a whole lot of information for them to understand that about us. And I think potential students expect that from, from universities, from institutions, but institutions haven’t gotten there yet with their capabilities. And it’s, you ask what is, it’s a number of things, but I think resources are a part of that. Expertise on campus. This isn’t an area that many in-house units have really had to address in the past. And they’ve made investments in some technologies like Slate that have, that do work well in some ways. And so there’s maybe a hesitant to make additional investment in technology because it’s kind of a race to the bottom, right? What we need today might not be the technology that we need tomorrow. And that’s just becomes this never-ending investment. And so that’s really difficult, I think, for universities to make those deep investments in technology solutions. And so they’re kind of just lagging behind what the rest of the industry is doing.

0:14:15.2 VF: Right. I mean, I feel like when I think of how would I translate our Netflix experience, right, we both have, have come to appreciate very personalized content from brands like Netflix, but in higher ed, that would be, I have been hitting the financial aid pages hard on your website, and so you should know that I care about that.

0:14:37.3 KW: Yes.

0:14:37.9 VF: Start sending me messages about scholarships and aid and return on investment, right? So I think that’s the missing piece for me. And I would say that 90% of the programs I reviewed failed to use responses, dynamic kind of messaging or change the cadence of their outreach as my kind of interactions changed over time. So I was a little frustrated as a perspective student to see that, because I felt like I was sending some pretty clear signals about what I was interested in.

0:15:11.3 VF: All right. The next finding was that, and you talked about most schools sending emails out or texts for maybe six weeks, and the next finding, it’s I think one of the simplest things that schools can start doing, and that is to extend their campaigns over a much longer timeframe. So our research has shown that 40% of adult learners take at least a year to make a decision about going back to school. They are busy, often working individuals supporting families and careers and juggling all of the things. And so it takes ’em a long time. This is a big investment in their time and their other resources. And so with that, I was surprised at how many schools gave up on me so quickly. Right? I think that there’s huge opportunity there. So how would you suggest that enrollment leaders scale their efforts beyond that six-week drip campaign?

0:16:19.7 KW: Yeah, I think that’s a great question and an excellent point that many enrollment leaders are not thinking of. I told you before, I’ve been doing this for 24 years and mostly in adult online and graduate programs. And the truth always was that it was speed to lead and students made decisions within 90 days. That’s what we all knew. And, and that is how we operated. But that has really changed. And EAB’s research has uncovered that, like you said, 40% of students are taking a year or more. And so first of all, I think everybody has some gold in their inquiry pool, in their old inquiry pool. So one of the things that I would suggest is to pay attention to that old inquiry pool. Another is to expand out that lead nurturing campaign that you have. And then finally, I think the schools that are doing this best are really engaging with a partner, to help them to do that, because it requires a multichannel approach.

0:17:19.4 KW: And what I mean by that is that it requires communication to students who are sending signals that they’re ready within 90 days, and a different communication to students that send signals that they’re taking longer in that decision making process. Because if they have life that’s happening to them, school, work, family, and all of the other things that I influence that decision. And so, that’s really the suggestion that I would make to enrollment leaders as they’re thinking about how they can expand this six-week campaign into a much longer opportunity to keep students engaged.

0:17:54.5 VF: Yeah. I’ve had conversations with schools that, and we talk about it this way too, at EAB, we talk about high intent leads, these are leads that are ready now, right? Probably for your next cycle, if they’re searching for certain terms, if they are actively on your site filling out RFIs, push them as quickly as you can. But you’re, but that’s just a fraction of the leads today. There’s also a whole host of leads coming in through other sources that they’re on the slow, that the back burner, this is a long process for them there. It’s a marathon, and so we need to stay with them and stay consistent and continue to warm them, if you will, by sending them content that is relevant, but over a much longer time period. And I think your point about how do you do this when you have maybe one full-time person and a few people that are cobbling some of this together in between the 80 other hats they’re wearing.

0:18:51.2 KW: Yeah.

0:18:51.3 VF: And so looking for a partner that can support this when you need somebody who’s got the, the ability to help you scale this, let’s say you’ve got dozens of graduate programs, you’ve got learners on all different types of timeframes with different needs and interests. So it’s that scale and then the specialization to really know how to kind of maximize the technology, and the technology platforms it takes to do this. So I think that’s a great suggestion. It’s not defeatist to ask for help. I wish I had learned this a lot earlier in my career, Kena, as a CMO. But yes, it is not, it’s… Too many schools feel like, and too many enrollment and marketing leaders and teams feel like, “Hey look, am I failing if I raise my hand and ask for help?” And it’s not at all, you should be identifying the areas. It’s not that your team won’t, still won’t have plenty to do, right?

0:19:50.8 KW: Yes.

0:19:52.4 VF: But doing some of this work, when we’re talking about the level of complexity with technology and the level of complexity when you look at the various programs, the scale and volume of programs you’ve got today, it’s hard to do all of this inhouse for sure.

0:20:11.0 KW: It really is. I’m sorry, I was just gonna jump in.

0:20:13.7 VF: Well, go on. Go on.

0:20:14.4 KW: One more thing on that point. It really is, it’s good to ask for help and also to understand that this is an area that’s really emerged over time, that’s required greater need than I think most institutions have prepared for. And what I mean by that is that graduate enrollment has always kind of just come to institutions, right? If you build the programs, then they’ll come, that’s really been changing over time. And with more competition entering the space, it requires a different effort than what most institutions have done in the past. And that is why help is so important to ask for, because many institutions likely don’t have the infrastructure built at all when they’re thinking about graduate enrollments or even adult learner enrollments online.

0:21:08.1 VF: And I think it’s fair to say we could probably have a whole other conversation on this one, but it’s fair to say that just borrowing from the undergrad playbook here does not work, right?

0:21:18.6 KW: That’s correct. Yes. These are not plenty of students.

0:21:21.0 VF: There’s no copy and paste from my Slate undergrad campaign. Let me copy and paste that and create a new… Yeah. It’s a very, very different audience.

0:21:32.2 KW: Yes. Completely.

0:21:34.2 VF: So, yeah. Yeah. It’s certainly an area where schools need to either ramp up their abilities really quickly or find a partner. So, another best practice here, and I think this is one where I saw more success than in some of the other areas, but another best practice is that campaigns really need to address student needs and concerns. And students, and this is beyond pushing deadline for application and kind of the application requirements, which you said earlier. Most of these campaigns are very one-sided. It’s like a one-sided conversation. Here’s what I want and I need. As the university, I want your application and I need it in this format. And by this day. We wouldn’t have fun talking to that person at a party.

0:22:31.9 VF: That’s not how you make friends and influence people. That you would not be asked to return if that was kind of your one-sided, one-way conversation personality. So we need, schools really need to start thinking about how to build and create content that asks questions, probes, is supportive, and whether if they don’t have the research themselves, like they haven’t taken the time to ask their prospective students, what do you care most about? Use third party insights from EAB or other partners, right? And so this is where I think that schools really can do a better job. I saw inklings of this, not as consistently as I would’ve expected, but here’s an area I’d like to get your take on too, is do you see enrollment leaders carving out resources to do this kind of research, to understand what’s gonna move the needle? Are these students concerned about finances? Are they concerned about maybe the online format, can they learn how to go back to school online? And I mean, there are just so many different competing interests that students have today. How would an enrollment leader really guide that conversation and seek to understand that.

0:24:02.8 KW: You are right. I mean, adult learners are certainly not a monolith, right? They all, they have different priorities, needs, interests and they expect you to respond to those. And so how do you go about doing that? And I think enrollment leaders know that, they understand that intuitively, but because they might not have the resources necessary to ask each individual student what it is that they’re looking for, I think they make some educated guesses. And that’s probably some of the things that you saw in your secret shopping. You probably saw some things that were pretty standard, right? Maybe cost consciousness, whether information about financial aid, or maybe about career outcomes. And so they probably have three or four kind of buckets of things that they believe students are looking for. And then they’re making some guesses and hoping that those things, those messages are landing with the appropriate students. And while that’s better than just asking for what you need, right? “This is the application deadline and I need you to fill it out in this way,” that’s an improvement. It still, I think, falls flat with students if you’re guessing the wrong thing at the wrong time from what they’re really wanting to hear.

0:25:24.2 VF: I feel like business schools did this most consistently, and well almost consistently, but it’s no surprise that business students want to see that return on investment and want to know what they’re going to be earning, the demand for the skills they’ll be gaining, starting salaries, et cetera, et cetera. But there are a whole other set of programs out there, and I would love to see more coming out of education programs and healthcare related programs that speak to students, whether that’s impact on the world around them, whether maybe it is ROI, maybe it is the concern about, “Hey, I am, I haven’t been back to school in 15 years. Can I handle this right or can I juggle all my other responsibilities?” And I saw some instances where schools used recent, graduates and, you know, early alum to tell that story for them. And I thought that was really powerful, but I didn’t see it consistently enough.

0:26:28.0 KW: Yeah, that can be an incredibly powerful way, to reach students, is to share real stories. And, especially if you are addressing students’ concerns around will I find meaningful work? And so really understanding what success looks like for a student. It isn’t always necessarily how large their paycheck is. Sometimes it’s about will this lead to a career that I could, I can really feel like I’m making a difference in the world? And understanding that, and then showing a student someone else who’s done it and who has maybe, jumped the same hurdles that they’re concerned or put in front of them, someone who looks like them. Maybe they’re a little older, maybe they have children in the creative. So it becomes more complicated than just the messages, right? Val, as a marketing professional, the imagery is really important too.

0:27:21.5 VF: Right. Absolutely. And I think conveying that sense of like social proof, right? You’re not gonna be alone in this. We’ve got you. And you’re in a really, a group of students that you’re not gonna feel, like you’re the outlier. I think that’s absolutely very, very true. The last one here is one that I would say it surprised me at how few schools are doing this well, because I feel like it’s something we talk about all the time. And that’s omnichannel or multi-channel communications. That means reaching your prospective student audiences, beyond just email drift campaigns. And I was asked, at least on 90% of the requests for information forms for my phone number, and sometimes my address. I did not receive mail. I certainly received calls and texts. I had three or four schools serve me ads as I browsed other websites.

0:28:38.4 VF: So that was great to see, remarketing. We call that digital remarketing, but the majority of schools leaned only on email, which really surprised me, because we are living in a time when there is so little attention, for, right? There’s so many different media, outlets and organizations trying to get our attention. And so as adults, we have to, we have so little attention, we need to break through all that, as institutions trying to reach these adults. And so I think a strong program and campaign really needs to find students where they are.

0:29:21.1 KW: Agreed. Absolutely. I think omnichannel is so key for a couple of reasons. First of all, as you indicated emails for adults, I think if you were to survey your friends, and ask them how many unread emails are in their personal email inbox, that number might, really blow your mind. Like the most folks are not engaged in their emails on a day-to-day basis, and really looking for that communication. So it’s an important channel, but it shouldn’t be the only channel. And I really love your point, Val, about them. They asked for your address, but didn’t send you anything in the mail. I think that’s something that most enrollment leaders might have a little light bulb moment over, right? Like we, every bit of information that you ask for on a request for information, form is an opportunity for students to abandon that form.

0:30:18.9 KW: And so you wanna make sure that you’re using every piece of information that you get. And direct mail can be really important in supporting your email campaign. And so can the other channels, those paid search channels and social media channels to have that remarketing served up directly to students can be really impactful in supporting that campaign. The challenge, I think for most enrollment leaders is that, they just don’t have the staff and the resources. So when my friends in this space are telling me that they are understaffed, that their teams are overworked, almost everyone has open positions posted right now. Or they have been, they have positions that were just unapproved to fill, and so they have fewer people doing, the same amount of work, which can be really a stretch, especially when marketing teams are expected to maintain the website and do all of the branding marketing and the internal communications. This kind of work that we’re asking folks to do, you might need to add five to 10 more positions on your marketing team in order to accomplish, all of these goals to make a really great responsive and robust nurturing campaign.

0:31:38.9 VF: Five to 10 positions, wow. I can tell you that we tried to hire for some of these skills, and these skills, you’re starting to, when you think about digital remarketing, paid search, paid social, you’re starting to veer into digital agency kind of work. Right? It’s really hard to find those kinds of skills in, and make the case to build those, in-house when there are so many potential partners out there that can do it, more cost effective effectively and at scale. So it’s certainly a decision that leaders need to weigh and think about critically if it’s a build or buy moment.

0:32:24.3 KW: Yeah. But I think that’s a great, that’s a great point.

0:32:27.3 VF: Yeah. That’s at the core of really modern marketing today, is to be able to go beyond, right? Sending one email, you know, one email on a, you know, day one, okay, day three, they get this, day five they get this. How do you build out a much more sophisticated omnichannel approach that meets students where they are? And you know, infinite number of variations there, because we all have very different needs and approaches we’re gonna take in this journey as we research schools. So it’s certainly, there’s an opportunity, I think. I think of this space is one of the most under leveraged opportunities that teams have, because they work really, really hard. There’s always a lot of focus and energy at that top of the funnel, getting more leads, leads, leads, but then how are you really working those and nurturing those through to application, right? I think this is a blind spot that a lot of universities have and can spend, I think would yield significant impact on their applications if they were doing this. You know, just slightly, slightly better.

0:33:40.9 KW: I would have 100% agree with you.

0:33:45.9 VF: Coming from a compound effect.

0:33:47.3 KW: Yeah 100% agree with you, Val. So what would you suggest, you know, as we wrap it up here today, what are your suggestions for enrollment leaders and how they start to rethink and kind of tackle this real issue where they can make some huge improvements?

0:34:03.6 VF: Yeah, I think making the case, finding the budget to make an investment here. If you, whether you build it or you buy it, making the case, look at, if you could grow, if you could grow your applications by 5% or 10% with your existing lead pool, what would that mean in terms of enrollment and net tuition revenue, right? Yeah. Look at those kinds of metrics and the gains you could generate. And so make it an institutional priority, build the case to get the funding to do this. If your decision is to buy versus build, find the trusted partner that you’re gonna work with. A good partner would set, would have a good test and learn approach and be able to take you from where you are today and test into growth and be able to show you the results.

0:34:54.4 VF: And I think ideally you should have people on your team who have the opportunity to learn from that partner too, right? I’ve spoken and worked alongside organizations and institutions that say, “Well, we wanna learn from this process.” So I think that’s, a good partner will do that. They’ll set the realistic goals, they’ll be able to, you know, do all the things, the targeting the right fit students, but really being able to build and scale this kind of, sophisticated campaign that we’re talking about, and show a return on investment is critical. And then this testing and learning, this should never be a set it and forget it. This shouldn’t be something that you check in on once or twice a year. The tools we’re talking about, the channels we’re talking about, they’re all online, they’re all adaptive. There are so many ways to continue to enhance and optimize this work. So making sure that the people you’ve appointed on your team or your agency partner, whoever it is, has a real plan for testing and learning and is always improving and adapting. What about you? Anything you’d add to that list?

0:36:10.0 KW: Yeah. I think that’s such a great list and really important. And I love the way you describe it because it really is a true partnership. So you’re not suggesting that folks go out and just hire an external agency to do it all for them. That doesn’t work, right? You have to work in tandem with a partner who’s gonna help you, help guide you through and help set that testing and learning agenda, which I absolutely love, Val. I think that’s how you can be most successful. And then I would suggest to start right now by just taking advantage of some of the amazing resources that EAB provides for free. So subscribe to the EAB briefing. I know I did that when I was an enrollment leader. Attend webinars, request visits. My colleagues and I are always happy to have these conversations with your entire team, to explore your goals and your needs and where it’s appropriate, connect you to those appropriate solutions. So that would be my best advice.

0:37:11.6 VF: I love that. I would add one thing to that, and just dipping yourself in the student, prospective student experience. So many leaders today are surprised when we elevate findings. And I think that this is all readily available to leaders. They should be looking very critically at the content that they send out, secret shopping their own school, secret shopping their competitors, sitting down with teams, making sure that you’re in a position to really advocate for the perspective student as much as the current student, right? Current students are hard to ignore. They’re on our campuses, they’re all around us, but those elusive prospective students who aren’t on our campus just yet, sometimes they’re harder for us to kind of really, envision and empathize with, but this is important work. And I feel like having their experience front and center, and in the kind of the mindset of your teams is really, really important. So doing that work to understand the experience and, use it, and create your own testing and learning culture, using that as kind of your baseline, right?

0:38:27.9 KW: Absolutely.

0:38:28.6 VF: How do you improve upon that? So this has been great, Kena, thank you so much for joining me on this journey today. We’re going to include links in the show notes to all the resources, to a few recent EAB blog posts on this topic. And stay tuned. I think there’s gonna be more secret shopping adventures in our future. My multiple burner phones will be burning up, literally. But, yeah, we love doing this work and, would love to hear from anybody that has questions or anything in follow up. I know our bios will be linked too as well. So look forward to continuing the conversation. Thanks Kena.

0:39:14.0 KW: Thank you, Val. Always great to speak with you. Bye.