Member linkage as a booking system for civil service courses, which are rapidly increasing in number of students!

First of all, could you tell us about your business?

We have two businesses: STUDYing, an online certification preparation course, and AirCourse, an e-learning system with unlimited video training.

As a company, we started our service with "commuting courses (now called "studying")," and now we have a lineup of 30 courses, including courses for small and medium-sized enterprise diagnosticians, judicial scriveners, certified tax accountants, and labor and social security attorneys, all of which are popular among those seeking to improve their careers.

I joined the company as the person in charge of launching the civil service course.

Thanks to your support, the Civil Service Course, which started in 2019, has become one of STUDYing's most popular courses with a large increase in the number of students.

It is amazing that you continue to grow so rapidly!

It has been quite a struggle to get to where we are today, lol.

I started my new job in 2018, and at the time, online learning services were increasing, but there were no civil service courses that could be completed online yet, so we started from scratch.

Did you have a hard time at the beginning?

To be honest, we were in a very difficult situation for about a year after the release of the service.

We recruited professional instructors who were well known in the industry and partnered with a well-known production company to produce educational materials, but the number of members did not grow at all in the beginning....

However, the number of members did not grow at all in the beginning... We spent every day conducting marketing research and improving our measures based on the information we had obtained.

Later, the Corona Disaster triggered an online shift, which led to a rapid increase in the number of students.

What specific measures were you implementing?

One of the features of online courses is that students can study freely in their free time. The prices are also more reasonable than those of prep schools and vocational schools.

We considered the low cost, freedom of learning, and the ability to complete the course online to be the greatest advantage of the online course, but we found in our monitoring survey that there was a need to study the course materials in paper form.

Therefore, starting in 2020, the year following the opening of the course, we have provided an option to actually sell the textbooks in book form, which has led to an improvement that has had a significant impact on enrollment rates.

That's a great realization. Are there any other improvements you would like to see?

We have also realized that we need human support in preparing for interviews, which is a characteristic of civil service courses.

Although civil service courses in the past have included videos, correspondence correction, and other teaching materials, many students are very poor at interviews, and it seems that this alone is not enough for many of them.

In this respect, prep schools and vocational schools adopt a class system, and upon enrollment, students receive support from a homeroom teacher. This is very significant in terms of peace of mind for those who are not good at interviews.

This is why many people were in a situation where they would choose a prep school or vocational school even if they had to pay high course fees or go through the hassle of commuting to school.

So it became necessary to launch a full support service for the homeroom teacher?

Yes, we conducted a survey and found that the lack of human support in civil service courses was a major issue. That is why we decided to launch a study support service with a full-time coach.

To do this, we need a system that allows for the booking of meeting schedules between coaches and students.

Since it would be difficult to build a new system in-house, we researched booking tools that could be used externally.

How many tools did you research?

We researched all the tools available for bookings and bookings.

I did some trials, but nothing seemed to fit the bill, but then I happened to find Jicoo on a site that was being reviewed.

I didn't know the brand at the time, but when I registered for a free trial, I found that I was very comfortable with the feel and UI.

What did you appreciate about Jicoo?

First of all, Zoom integration was a must. Naturally, we also looked at the cost.

For the support service, we interview the students at the first meeting to create a study plan, and then support them while confirming the plan at the second meeting.

The most important point is that the exchange of those files can be completed on Jicoo.

The deciding factor was that this was a feature that Jicoo already had, while other tools were difficult to deal with or would have cost more as an additional modification.

Is there anything else you appreciated about Jicoo?

The CS department requested that we be able to link our membership database with Jicoo, and that was also a big factor.

Now that we are able to link our members, they can make bookings with their names and e-mail addresses fixed.

This also facilitates research when there are inquiries, so we were able to fulfill CS's request.

The design of the booking page from the member site is also consistent, providing students with a seamless booking experience.

How was your experience with Jicoo's API?

We used Jicoo's API to develop the linkage from the membership site.

The development department seemed to be able to proceed smoothly.

We were able to customize the site to fit our company's needs by utilizing Jicoo's API, so once again, we are glad we implemented Jicoo.

How many bookings for support services do you accept?

Although it hasn't been long since the service was released, we are consistently receiving bookings for interviews on a daily basis.

Thanks to the response we have received, we are steadily increasing the number of members, so the number of bookings is increasing steadily.

Thanks to Jicoo's system, the process from booking to conducting interviews is going very smoothly.

Could you tell us again about the appeal of Jicoo?

First of all, the basic requirement is the automatic Zoom integration. The other deciding factor was the ability to use Jicoo to complete file exchanges.

Other than that, I think the UI from the host's point of view is great, including the ability to Manage Availability of bookings in detail.

The 14-day free trial includes all the features of the Pro plan, so it was easy for us to verify when we introduced the system.

What do you like about the UI?

When we were researching other companies, we noticed that many tools have complicated management screens.

It was very difficult just to verify the implementation. It takes a lot of power to check.

I think it is very important for team members and coaches to be able to use a tool intuitively when it comes time to select and implement it.

In fact, with Jicoo, we did not need to hold an explanatory meeting, and members were able to use the tool with a simple guide.

This is a very important point when introducing a new tool.

Finally, can you tell us who you would recommend it to?

I highly recommend it for people who want to do online 1-on-1 sessions and are looking for a booking system that is similar to a beauty salon reservation!

I think Jicoo is the only way to achieve the same experience at a reasonable price lol.

For those who are in a manager's position to organize a team, etc., I think it will be easy to incorporate into the team and get them to utilize the system right away.

There are other tools that have sophisticated user interfaces, but many of them are difficult for managers to use.

I believe that Jicoo is the only tool that excels from the perspective of both the administrator and the user.