How to follow up childcare enquiries without losing track

The simplest reliable enquiry system has five fields: owner, status, next action, due date and a short factual note.

Use statuses that match real work:

• new;
• reviewing availability;
• waiting for family;
• tour requested;
• tour booked;
• toured;
• offer pending;
• enrolled;
• not proceeding;
• future follow-up, with permission.

Each open enquiry should have one named owner. Shared responsibility often becomes no responsibility.

After contact, record the useful facts: days needed, start period, likely room, questions raised, what was promised and when the next contact is due. Avoid subjective labels such as “difficult parent”. Notes should be professional and limited to what the service needs.

Use templates for consistency, but personalise the important details. A useful response might say:

Thanks for enquiring about care for Maya from October. We may have Tuesday and Thursday availability in our toddler room. I can call tomorrow afternoon or send you the next available tour times.

Do not continue promotional follow-up indefinitely. Tell families what communications they can expect and make it easy to opt out. Personal information should be used consistently with the stated collection purpose and applicable privacy obligations. ^R11

Set a service standard based on your staffing and test it. Measure the median time to a useful response, not just an automated acknowledgement. The first message should confirm receipt; the substantive response should answer the family’s actual question.

Practical next step: open the enquiry list each day and filter for records with no owner, no next action or an overdue date. Those are the enquiries most likely to be lost.

Related guides

• What makes a childcare enquiry useful to a centre?
• How to make childcare tours easier to arrange
• How to reduce childcare tour no-shows