How Scholar Co. uses Boomerang to make meetings more productive

My name is Kyla Brown, and I’m a Senior Advisor at Scholar Co.

Providing outstanding client service takes on a special significance for our team of college admissions consultants. Like any professional, my colleagues and I take pride in the effort we put in on behalf of our customers. But for the high schoolers we serve and their families, we’re helping them navigate a pivotal and incredibly impactful — but stressful — moment that will define the trajectory of their lives. Each client relationship demands thoughtful, timely attention from our advisors. That’s why we use Boomerang to boost our productivity, improve focus on the task at hand, and get more done in less time.

Recurring emails make the most of meeting time

To give a sense of the nature of our work, we advise high schoolers in any grade (often alongside their parents) on academics and course planning, standardized test prep, extracurricular planning, and college-list building. Our busiest season is the summer and fall when we’re supporting our seniors with their applications. During those months, an advisor might have five or more hour-long meetings with students in a day. Our most intensive work is providing feedback on clients’ written materials, which can be extensive, not to mention the myriad other documents that we must review and cross off the application package checklist.

Initially, we sought out Boomerang to schedule weekly reminder emails to our clients. A few days before our scheduled meetings, we use Boomerang’s recurring message feature to remind students to upload their completed assignment before we meet. Each advisor could be managing a caseload of 20+ seniors, so these automated reminder emails are a huge timesaver that ensure meetings are a good use of time and that we stay on track with deadlines. But our favorite Boomerang feature is one we didn’t even know existed before we used it: Inbox Pause.

Inbox Pause improves focus on the task at hand

Before having a pause inbox button, advisors might spot a new email out of the corner of their eye and feel compelled to respond immediately. As you can imagine, the nature of our work during the busy season feels very high pressure. Parents and kids alike are anxious, and many emails that we receive feel quite urgent. We receive a daily average of 30 client emails that require thoughtful responses, which is manageable when an advisor is focused and organized, but becomes stressful when facing constant interruptions. Getting distracted by new emails threatened to slow us all down, and frequently made for long, 10-hour workdays — sometimes longer — during our busy season.

Inbox Pause has been instrumental in allowing each advisor to allocate time for our varied tasks throughout the workday. There’s a dedicated block of time when I respond to emails; all other times, I don’t see new emails coming into my inbox, so I can focus solely on my client meetings and work to support my students. Of course, we’re still responding to emails within a business day, ensuring that we are still tending to our clients’ high-priority needs.

In the past, we’ve provided Boomerang subscriptions to team members who asked, but it’s not something we required of our advisors. As we get past our busy period and have some more down time, we’ll be having a meeting with the whole team to reinforce the benefits of Boomerang and encourage universal adoption across the team. After all, the increased efficiency is undeniable.